The growing evolution of creatures is assumed. All grounds for this
assumption are entirely lacking. Every type has its _limitations_:
beyond these evolution cannot carry it.
_My general point of view. First proposition_: Man as a species is
_not_ progressing. Higher specimens are indeed attained; but they do
not survive. The general level of the species is not raised.
_Second proposition_: Man as a species does not represent any sort of
progress compared with any other animal. The whole of the animal and
plant world does not develop from the lower to the higher.... but all
simultaneously, haphazardly, confusedly, and at variance. The richest
and most complex forms--and the term "higher type" means no more than
this--perish more easily: only the lowest succeed in maintaining their
apparent imperishableness. The former are seldom attained, and maintain
their superior position with difficulty, the latter are compensated
by great fruitfulness.--In the human race, also, the _superior
specimens,_ the happy cases of evolution, are the first to perish amid
the fluctuations of chances for and against them. They are exposed to
every form of decadence: they are extreme, and, on that account alone,
already decadents.... The short duration of beauty, of genius, of the
Cæsar, is _sui generis:_ such things are not hereditary. The _type_ is
inherited, there is nothing extreme or particularly "happy" about a
type----It is not a case of a particular fate, or of the "evil will" of
Nature, but merely of the concept "superior type": the higher type is
an example of an incomparably greater degree of complexity a greater
sum of co-ordinated elements: but on this account disintegration
becomes a thousand times more threatening. "Genius" is the sublimest
machine in existence--hence it is the most fragile.
_Third propositio:_: The domestication (culture) of man does not
sink very deep. When it does sink far below the skin it immediately
becomes degeneration (type: the Christian). The wild man (or, in moral
terminology, the _evil_ man) is a reversion to Nature--and, in a
certain sense, he represents a recovery, a _cure_ from the effects of
"culture." ...
685.
_Anti-Darwin._--What surprises me most on making a general survey of
the great destinies of man, is that I invariably see the reverse of
what to-day Darwin and his school sees or _will_ persist in seeing:
selection in favour of the stronger, the better-constituted, and the
progress of the species. Precisely the reverse of this stares one in
the face: the suppression of the lucky cases, the uselessness of the
more highly constituted types, the inevitable mastery of the mediocre,
and even of those who are _below mediocrity._ Unless we are shown some
reason why man is an exception among living creatures, I incline to the
belief that Darwin's school is everywhere at fault. That will to power,
in which I perceive the ultimate reason and character of all change,
explains why it is that selection is never in favour of the exceptions
and of the lucky cases: the strongest and happiest natures are weak
when they are confronted with a majority ruled by organised gregarious
instincts and the fear which possesses the weak. My general view of
the world of values shows that in the highest values which now sway the
destiny of man, the happy cases among men, the select specimens do not
prevail: but rather the decadent specimens,--perhaps there is nothing
more interesting in the world than this _unpleasant_ spectacle....
Strange as it may seem, the strong always have to be upheld against the
weak; and the well-constituted against the ill-constituted, the healthy
against the sick and physiologically botched. If we drew our morals
from reality, they would read thus: the mediocre are more valuable than
the exceptional creatures, and the decadent than the mediocre; the
will to nonentity prevails over the will to life--and the general aim
now is, in Christian, Buddhistic, Schopenhauerian phraseology: "It is
better not to be than to be."
I _protest_ against this formulating of reality into a moral: and I
loathe Christianity with a deadly loathing, because it created sublime
words and attitudes in order to deck a revolting truth with all the
tawdriness of justice, virtue, and godliness....
I see all philosophers and the whole of science on their knees before a
reality which is the reverse of "the struggle for life," as Darwin and
his school understood it--that is to say, wherever I look, I see those
prevailing and surviving, who throw doubt and suspicion upon life and
the value of life.--The error of the Darwinian school became a problem
to me: how can one be so blind as to make _this_ mistake?
That _species_ show an ascending tendency, is the most nonsensical
assertion that has ever been made: until now they have only manifested
a dead level. There is nothing whatever to prove that the higher
organisms have developed from the lower. I see that the lower, owing to
their numerical strength, their craft, and ruse, now preponderate,--and
I fail to see an instance in which an accidental change produces
an advantage, at least not for a very long period: for it would be
necessary to find some reason why an accidental change should become so
very strong.
I do indeed find the "cruelty of Nature" which is so often referred
to; but in a different place: Nature is cruel, but against her lucky
and well-constituted children; she protects and shelters and loves the
lowly.
In short, the increase of a species' power, as the result of the
preponderance of its particularly well-constituted and strong
specimens, is perhaps less of a certainty than that it is the result of
the preponderance of its mediocre and lower specimens ... in the case
of the latter, we find great fruitfulness and permanence: in the case
of the former, the besetting dangers are greater, waste is more rapid,
and decimation is more speedy.
686.
Man as he has appeared up to the present is the embryo of the man
of the future; _all_ the formative powers which are to produce the
latter, already lie in the former: and owing to the fact that they are
enormous, the more _promising for the future_ the modern individual
happens to be, the more _suffering_ falls to his lot. This is the
profoundest concept of _suffering._ The formative powers clash.--The
isolation of the individual need not deceive one--as a matter of fact,
some uninterrupted current does actually flow through all individuals,
and does thus unite them. The fact that they feel themselves isolated,
is the _most powerful spur_ in the process of setting themselves the
loftiest of aims: their search for happiness is the means which keeps
together and moderates the formative powers, and keeps them from being
mutually destructive.
687.
_Excessive intellectual_ strength sets _itself_ new goals; it is not in
the least satisfied by the command and the leadership of the inferior
world, or by the preservation of the organism, of the "individual."
We are _more_ than the individual: we are the whole chain itself, with
the tasks of all the possible futures of that chain in us.