The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
684.
_Anti-Darwin._--The _domestication of man:_ what definite value can it have, or has domestication in itself a definite value?--There are reasons for denying the latter proposition. Darwin's school of thought certainly goes to great pains to convince us of the reverse: it would fain prove that the influence of domestication may be profound and fundamental. For the time being, we stand firmly as we did before; up to the present no results save very superficial modification or degeneration have been shown to follow upon domestication. And everything that escapes from the hand and discipline of man, returns almost immediately to its original natural condition. The type remains constant, man cannot "_dénaturer la nature_." Biologists reckon upon the struggle for existence, the death of the weaker creature and the survival of the most robust, most gifted combatant; on that account they imagine a _continuous increase in the perfection of all creatures._ We, on the contrary, have convinced ourselves of the fact, that in the struggle for existence, accident serves the cause of the weak quite as much as that of the strong; that craftiness often supplements strength with advantage; that the _prolificness_ of a species is related in a remarkable manner to that species _chances of destruction_....
_Natural Selection_ is also credited with the power of slowly effecting unlimited metamorphoses: it is believed that every advantage is transmitted by heredity, and strengthened in the course of generations (when heredity is known to be so capricious that ...); the happy adaptations of certain creatures to very special conditions of life, are regarded as the result of _surrounding influences._ Nowhere, however, are examples of _unconscious selection_ to be found (absolutely nowhere). The most different individuals associate one with the other; the extremes become lost in the mass. Each vies with the other to maintain his kind; those creatures whose appearance shields them from certain dangers, do not alter this appearance when they are in an environment quite devoid of danger.... If they live in places where their coats or their hides do not conceal them, they do not adapt themselves to their surroundings in any way. The _selection of the most beautiful_ has been so exaggerated, that it greatly exceeds the instincts for beauty in our own race! As a matter of fact, the most beautiful creature often couples with the most debased, and the largest with the smallest. We almost always see males and females taking advantage of their first chance meeting, and manifesting no taste or selectiveness at all.--Modification through climate and nourishment--but as a matter of fact unimportant.
There are no _intermediate forms.--_ The growing evolution of creatures is assumed. All grounds for this assumption are entirely lacking. Every type has its _limitations_: beyond these evolution cannot carry it. _My general point of view. First proposition_: Man as a species is _not_ progressing. Higher specimens are indeed attained; but they do not survive. The general level of the species is not raised. _Second proposition_: Man as a species does not represent any sort of progress compared with any other animal. The whole of the animal and plant world does not develop from the lower to the higher.... but all simultaneously, haphazardly, confusedly, and at variance. The richest and most complex forms--and the term "higher type" means no more than this--perish more easily: only the lowest succeed in maintaining their apparent imperishableness. The former are seldom attained, and maintain their superior position with difficulty, the latter are compensated by great fruitfulness.--In the human race, also, the _superior specimens,_ the happy cases of evolution, are the first to perish amid the fluctuations of chances for and against them. They are exposed to every form of decadence: they are extreme, and, on that account alone, already decadents.... The short duration of beauty, of genius, of the Cæsar, is _sui generis:_ such things are not hereditary. The _type_ is inherited, there is nothing extreme or particularly "happy" about a type----It is not a case of a particular fate, or of the "evil will" of Nature, but merely of the concept "superior type": the higher type is an example of an incomparably greater degree of complexity a greater sum of co-ordinated elements: but on this account disintegration becomes a thousand times more threatening. "Genius" is the sublimest machine in existence--hence it is the most fragile. _Third propositio:_: The domestication (culture) of man does not sink very deep. When it does sink far below the skin it immediately becomes degeneration (type: the Christian). The wild man (or, in moral terminology, the _evil_ man) is a reversion to Nature--and, in a certain sense, he represents a recovery, a _cure_ from the effects of "culture." ...
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.