Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/715

Rh as grasping and dishonest as the rest. Because the will is a selfish will, it is bad, and life is an evil, a curse. In order to be good the will must negate itself, it must give up its selfish strivings. When we feel the sufferings of others, when we pity them, when we see ourselves in them, when -we feel that we and they are one, then we are able to negate our selfish desires, we are delivered from the will to live, we are saved, we are at rest. The struggle ceases, we have denied ourselves, we have renounced the world, we are free, our selfish will is dead. Pity or love or sympathy, therefore, is the cause of this negation of will, and hence pity is the fundamental principle of all morality. Sympathy or pity is good because it leads to the negation of the will. The ideal is renunciation, ascetic self-denial; sympathy is the true moral motive, the sole source and standard of morality.

Nietzsche accepts the fundamental thought of Schopenhauer that the will is the principle of existence, but he draws wholly different consequences from this view. Yes, the real fact of our life is the fact of our will. The reality directly known to us is the world of our desires, the world of our instincts, the world of our will. Every living being desires life and desires it extravagantly; its instincts all aim at power and self-assertion. Life is essentially a striving for a surplus of power; all striving is nothing but a striving for power; the will for power is the root of all life and action. And this will for power, for more power, this intense, overflowing, bubbling, healthy, exuberant instinct is good: Alles Gute ist Instinkt. Everything that makes for life in this sense is good, everything that makes for power, that helps to realize this goal, is good. "What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will for power, power itself. What is bad? Everything that springs from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that a resistence is overcome; not contentment, but more power, not peace as such, but war, not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance style, moraline-free virtue)." "I say yes to everything that makes life more beautiful, more intense, more worthy of being lived. If illusion and error develop life, I say yes to them. If hardness, cruelty, strategy, disregard of others, love of struggle, can increase the vitality of man, I say yes to evil and sin. If I believe that suffering helps to educate the human race, I say yes to suffering. If science and morality diminish vitality, I say no to them."

Life is good, the desire for power is good, yes power is the greatest good. If that is so, then the stronger, the intenser, the fuller this will or desire or instinct for power, the better it is. The ideal will, therefore, always be powerful men, a higher, stronger type of men, the overmen. "Mankind should constantly endeavor to produce great individuals—this and nothing else is our mission." The great men, the great personalities, the men of force and power, the few, are the ideal