Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/216

200 it may win. The form changes, flows, and the "meaning," purpose, still more so. Even in an individual organism it is not otherwise: with every essential growth of the whole, the "meaning" of single parts shifts also—under given conditions, a partial perishing of some parts, a reduction in the number of others (for example, an elimination of intermediate organs) may be proof of the growing power and perfection of the whole. In other words, degeneration, losing of meaning and purpose, or death, may belong to the conditions of actual progress—something that ever appears in the form of a will and way to greater power and is accomplished at the expense of numberless lesser powers. The greatness of an advance may, indeed, be measured by the amount of what is sacrificed to it. For example, the mass of mankind sacrificed to the growth of a single, higher, stronger species of man—that would be an advance.

This relation of controller and controlled (in whatever form of organic life) involves what Nietzsche calls an order of rank (Rangordnung). It is a conception that plays a great part in his social speculations; but it originates in the general biological field. The human body itself involves an order of rank; there are higher and lower in it, ends and means—it is teleologically constituted, though the teleology comes not from God or from a vague thing called Nature, but is established by the supreme controlling force in the body itself. Nietzsche speaks of the "lower world" in the body and of "the higher functions and functionaries for ruling, anticipating, predetermining,"—for "our organism is oligarchically arranged." The mind is a part of the ruling, determining forces, and an instrument for accomplishing that on which they are bent. Every center of power in a sense measures and estimates other power outside it, but when this is done in clear consciousness, the measuring may be surer and more effective. In the development of mind and consciousness, the need of communication between those with common interests plays an important part. Mind grows in intercourse and with reference to the needs of intercourse—hence also the limitations of