The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
685.
_Anti-Darwin._--What surprises me most on making a general survey of the great destinies of man, is that I invariably see the reverse of what to-day Darwin and his school sees or _will_ persist in seeing: selection in favour of the stronger, the better-constituted, and the progress of the species. Precisely the reverse of this stares one in the face: the suppression of the lucky cases, the uselessness of the more highly constituted types, the inevitable mastery of the mediocre, and even of those who are _below mediocrity._ Unless we are shown some reason why man is an exception among living creatures, I incline to the belief that Darwin's school is everywhere at fault. That will to power, in which I perceive the ultimate reason and character of all change, explains why it is that selection is never in favour of the exceptions and of the lucky cases: the strongest and happiest natures are weak when they are confronted with a majority ruled by organised gregarious instincts and the fear which possesses the weak. My general view of the world of values shows that in the highest values which now sway the destiny of man, the happy cases among men, the select specimens do not prevail: but rather the decadent specimens,--perhaps there is nothing more interesting in the world than this _unpleasant_ spectacle....
Strange as it may seem, the strong always have to be upheld against the weak; and the well-constituted against the ill-constituted, the healthy against the sick and physiologically botched. If we drew our morals from reality, they would read thus: the mediocre are more valuable than the exceptional creatures, and the decadent than the mediocre; the will to nonentity prevails over the will to life--and the general aim now is, in Christian, Buddhistic, Schopenhauerian phraseology: "It is better not to be than to be." I _protest_ against this formulating of reality into a moral: and I loathe Christianity with a deadly loathing, because it created sublime words and attitudes in order to deck a revolting truth with all the tawdriness of justice, virtue, and godliness.... I see all philosophers and the whole of science on their knees before a reality which is the reverse of "the struggle for life," as Darwin and his school understood it--that is to say, wherever I look, I see those prevailing and surviving, who throw doubt and suspicion upon life and the value of life.--The error of the Darwinian school became a problem to me: how can one be so blind as to make _this_ mistake? That _species_ show an ascending tendency, is the most nonsensical assertion that has ever been made: until now they have only manifested a dead level. There is nothing whatever to prove that the higher organisms have developed from the lower. I see that the lower, owing to their numerical strength, their craft, and ruse, now preponderate,--and I fail to see an instance in which an accidental change produces an advantage, at least not for a very long period: for it would be necessary to find some reason why an accidental change should become so very strong.
I do indeed find the "cruelty of Nature" which is so often referred to; but in a different place: Nature is cruel, but against her lucky and well-constituted children; she protects and shelters and loves the lowly. In short, the increase of a species' power, as the result of the preponderance of its particularly well-constituted and strong specimens, is perhaps less of a certainty than that it is the result of the preponderance of its mediocre and lower specimens ... in the case of the latter, we find great fruitfulness and permanence: in the case of the former, the besetting dangers are greater, waste is more rapid, and decimation is more speedy.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.