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Rh and might (Nietzsche later calls it Der Wille zur Macht) has frequently been overthrown by the uprising of the moral slaves—in Buddhism, in Socrates, in Christianity, in modern humanism. Even the tendency of natural science is in this direction: it even makes a democracy of nature by its principle of general uniformity!

Nietzsche frequently expresses himself as if he would abolish all morality. But he really demands nothing more than an inversion which has been necessitated by the domination of the morality of slavery. As he observes in one of his essays published posthumously (Der Wille zur Macht), he wishes to introduce a moral naturalism. He must however also have a standard for his "inversion." He discovers such a standard in the principle of the affirmation of life and of the increase of vital energy. From this point of view he wanted to elaborate a "number and measurement scale of energy," by which all values could be systematized scientifically. There is no kind of vital energy or vital pleasure which could here be excluded. Here Nietzsche appears as a utilitarian of the first rank. And he finally renounces his social dualism definitively, and then proposes as the end, not the happiness of the individual but the vigorous development of "the total life."

This change of attitude is still more prominent in the poetic elaboration of his ideas. The real tragedy and contradiction of his life consisted in his wasting so much time and energy in the effort to set forth his antipathy and contempt for things in general, whilst he failed to describe fully and clearly the tremendous positive conception of life which constituted his central idea. The poetic-philosphic treatise, Also sprach Zarathusthra 1883-1891), was left unfinished. Here he elaborates his