The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
712.
"God" is the culminating moment: life is an eternal process of deifying and undeifying. _But withal there is no zenith of values,_ but only a zenith of _power._ Absolute _exclusion of mechanical and materialistic interpretations._ they are both only expressions of inferior states, of emotions deprived of all spirit (of the "will to power"). _The retrograde movement front the zenith_ of development (the intellectualisation of power on some slave-infected soil) may be shown to be the _result_ of the highest degree of energy _turning against_ itself, once it no longer has anything to organise, and utilising its power in order to _disorganise._ _(a)_ The ever-increasing _suppression_ of societies, and the latter's subjection by a smaller number of stronger individuals. (b) The ever-increasing suppression of the privileged and the strong, hence the rise of democracy, and ultimately of _anarchy,_ in the elements. _Value_ is the highest amount of power that a man can assimilate--a man, not mankind! Mankind is much more of a means than an end. It is a question of type: mankind is merely the experimental material; it is the overflow of the ill-constituted--a field of ruins. Words relating to values are merely banners planted on those spots where a _new blessedness_ was discovered--a new _feeling._
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.