Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/725

Rh of morality itself has been absent, even the suspicion has been wanting that there was anything problematical about it. What the philosophers call explanation of morality is merely only a learned form of the firm belief in the prevailing morality, nay, even a kind of denial that morality can be conceived as a problem." But we must examine, the prevailing morality; if it really is morality, there will be no danger in such an investigation: whatever can not stand the test must go.

Now such an examination reveals to Nietzsche the perversity of traditional morality. Schopenhauer teaches that pity or sympathy is the basis and standard of morality. Yes, says Nietzsche, pity is the basis of our traditional morality, and therefore our traditional morality is bad. Pity is the negation of healthy egoism, the negation of the desire for life and power; it means renunciation of self, self-denial, self-sacrifice, the suicide of our life-preserving instincts, and therefore pity is bad, and the morality that is based on pity is a symptom of decline. Take out pity and the whole structure of our traditional morality crumbles to pieces. Pity is not a good, as we have already been told, pity is not good because it violates the fundamental principle of existence, the desire for life, the desire for power, and hinders the realization of the true goal: the development of strong men. The morality that is based on pity has corrupted humanity; it teaches men to despise the basal instincts of life, it sets the highest value on unselfishness, the typical goal of decline. "Entselbstungsmoral is the typical decadence-morality par excellence." The desire for life, for more life, the strong affirmation of life, is the basal law of existence; the production of strong individuals or a strong species the goal, the ideal to be realized, the highest good, the value of values. On this principle our new morality must be based; we must create new values in the light of the highest value; we must transform or re-value, reevaluate, the old values, reform the traditional morality. Not sympathy-morality, but will-morality, instinct-morality, that is the end.

Our present morality, our pity-morality, is the morality of slaves, the true morality, the will-morality, is the morality of lords, Herren-moral. The slave-morality, the pity-morality, represents the ideals of the weak and oppressed, it incorporates the rules which they desire to be followed in order that they may live their paltry lives in peace. Virtue is for these little people what makes men tame and modest; in this way they have changed the wolf into a dog and have transformed man himself into man's best domestic animal. It is based on their hatred and fear of the lords, the strong, the aristocrats; it represents the instincts of the herd against the strong and independent, the instincts of the sufferers and the failures against those who have succeeded, the instincts of the mediocre, of the average, against the exceptions. These little people call pity of the weak good because they are