Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/392

376 superiority. Underlying it is will, courage—its opposite is laziness, weakness, fear. Many, he says, do not put through their best right, because a right is a sort of power and they are too lazy or too afraid to exercise power—decorating then their fault perhaps by talking of forbearance and patience. Power, as Nietzsche uses the term, includes will to power, and the trouble with many is that they don't will—they long, they desire, they are ambitious, but they do not will. Willing is saying, So let it be: it is a kind of commanding. Hence Zarathustra's warning, "Do what you will, but first be such as can will." It is, in Nietzsche's eyes, a trouble with the Germans, that they know how to obey, but not to command, though in exceptional circumstances they may do it. In general, the greatest danger for man is not in the qualities that belong to the robber-animal, but in sickliness, weakness. This makes virtue proper impossible. Vice, on the other hand, is the self-indulgence of the weak, their inability to inhibit impulse. I do not mean that Nietzsche counts as virtue everything that goes by that name—he will first have it proved that "virtues" are virtue, i.e., come from strength, and in effect suggests a re-estimation of them, according to the nature of their source. So vices are regarded as manifestations of weakness. It is even possible that what is vice for a weak man should be a permissible liberty to another.

The intimate connection of virtue with power Nietzsche implies in another connection. It is, he says, "in order that the