The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
43
_A quiet hint to Conservatives._—That which we did not know formerly, and know now, or might know if we chose,—is the fact that a _retrograde formation,_ a reversion in any sense or degree, is absolutely impossible. We physiologists, at least, are aware of this. But all priests and moralists have believed in it,—they wished to drag and screw man back to a former standard of virtue. Morality has always been a Procrustean bed. Even the politicians have imitated the preachers of virtue in this matter. There are parties at the present day whose one aim and dream is to make all things adopt the _crab-march._ But not everyone can be a crab. It cannot be helped: we must go forward,—that is to say step by step further and further into decadence (—this is my definition of modern “progress”). We can hinder this development, and by so doing dam up and accumulate degeneration itself and render it more convulsive, more _volcanic:_ we cannot do more.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.