The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
864.
_Why the weak triumph._--On the whole, the sick and the weak have more _sympathy_ and are more "humane"; the sick and the weak have more intellect, and are more changeable more variegated, more entertaining--more malicious; the sick alone invented _malice._ (A morbid precocity is often to be observed among rickety, scrofulitic, and tuberculous people.) _Esprit:_ the property of older races; Jews, Frenchmen, Chinese. (The anti-Semites do not forgive the Jews for having both intellect--and money. Anti-Semites--another name for "bungled and botched.") The sick and the weak have always had _fascination_ on their side; they are more _interesting_ than the healthy: the fool and the saint--the two most interesting kinds of men.... Closely related thereto is the "genius." The "great adventurers and criminals" and all great men, the most healthy in particular, have always been _sick_ at certain periods of their lives--great disturbances of the emotions, the passion for power, love, revenge, are all accompanied by very profound perturbations. And, as for decadence, every man who does not die prematurely manifests it in almost every respect--he therefore knows from experience the instincts which belong to it: for _half his life_ nearly every man is decadent. And finally, woman! _One-half of mankind is weak,_ chronically sick, changeable, shifty woman requires strength in order to cleave to it; she also requires a religion of the weak which glorifies weakness, love, and modesty as divine: or, better still, she makes the strong weak--she _rules_ when she succeeds in overcoming the strong. Woman has always conspired with decadent types,--the priests, for instance, against the mighty, against the "strong," against _men._ Women avail themselves of children for the cult of piety, pity, and love:--the _mother_ stands as the symbol of _convincing_ altruism.
Finally, the increase of civilisation with its necessary correlatives, the increase of morbid elements, of the _neurotic_ and _psychiatric_ and of the _criminal._ A sort of _intermediary species_ arises, the artist. He is distinct from those who are criminals as the result of weak wills and of the fear of society, although they may not yet be ripe for the asylum; but he has antennas which grope inquisitively into both spheres, this specific plant of culture, the modern artist, painter, musician, and, above all, novelist, who designates his particular kind of attitude with the very indefinite word "naturalism."... Lunatics, criminals, and realists[1] are on the increase: this is the sign of a growing culture plunging forward at headlong speed--that is to say, its excrement, its refuse, the rubbish that is shot from it every day, is beginning to acquire more importance, the retrogressive movement _keeps pace_ with the advance.
Finally, _the social mishmash,_ which is the result of revolution, of the establishment of equal rights, and of the superstition, the "equality of men." Thus the possessors of the instincts of decline (of resentment, of discontent, of the lust of destruction, of anarchy and Nihilism), as also the instincts of slavery, of cowardice, of craftiness, and of rascality, which are inherent among those classes of society which have long been suppressed, are beginning to get infused into the blood of all ranks. Two or three generations later, the race can no longer be recognised--everything has become _mob._ And thus there results a collective instinct against _selection,_ against every kind of _privilege_, and this instinct operates with such power, certainty, hardness, and cruelty that, as a matter of fact, in the end, even the privileged classes have to submit: all those who still wish to hold on to power flatter the mob, work with the mob, and must have the mob on their side--the "geniuses" _above all._ The latter become the _heralds_ of those feelings with which the mob can be inspired,--the expression of pity, of honour, even for all that suffers, all that is low and despised, and has lived under persecution, becomes predominant (types: Victor Hugo, Richard Wagner).--The rise of the mob signifies once more the rise of old values.
_Result._--A high culture can only stand upon a broad basis, upon a strongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity. In its service and assisted by it, _science_ and even art do their work. Science could not wish for a better state of affairs: in its essence it belongs to a middle-class type of man,--among exceptions it is out of place,--there is not anything aristocratic and still less anything anarchic in its instincts.--The power of the middle classes is then upheld by means of commerce, but, above all, by means of money-dealing: the instinct of great financiers is opposed to everything extreme--on this account the Jews are, for the present, the most _conservative_ power in the threatening and insecure conditions of modern Europe. They can have no use either for revolutions, for socialism, or for militarism: if they would have power, and if they should need it, even over the revolutionary party, this is only the result of what I have already said, and it in no way contradicts it. Against other extreme movements they may occasionally require to excite terror by showing how much power is in their hands. But their instinct itself is inveterately conservative and "mediocre, ... Wherever power exists, they know how to become mighty; but the application of their power always takes the same direction. The polite term for _mediocre,_ as is well known, is the word _"Liberal."_
_Reflection._--It is all nonsense to suppose that this general _conquest of values_ is anti-biological. In order to explain it, we ought to try and show that it is the result of a certain interest of life to maintain the type "man," even by means of this method which leads to the prevalence of the weak and the physiologically botched--if things were otherwise, might man not cease to exist? Problem ... The _enhancement_ of the type may prove fatal to the _maintenance of the species._ Why?--The experience of history shows that strong races _decimate_ each other _mutually,_ by means of war, lust for power, and venturousness; the strong emotions; wastefulness (strength is no longer capitalised, disturbed mental systems arise from excessive tension); their existence is a costly affair in short, they persistently give rise to friction _between themselves;_ periods of _profound slackness_ and torpidity intervene: all great ages have to be _paid for...._ The strong are, after all, weaker, less wilful, and more absurd than the average weak ones. They are _squandering_ races. "_Permanence,_" in itself, can have no value: that which ought to be preferred thereto would be a shorter life for the species, but a life _richer_ in creations. It would remain to be proved that, even as things are, a richer sum of creations is attained than in the case of the shorter existence; _i.e._ that man, as a storehouse of power, attains to a much higher degree of dominion over things under the conditions which have existed hitherto.... We are here face to face with a problem of _economics._ The state of mind which calls itself "idealism," and which will neither allow mediocrity to be mediocre nor woman to be woman! Do not make everything uniform! We should have a clear idea of how _dearly we have to pay for the establishment of a virtue;_ and that virtue is nothing generally desirable, but a _noble piece of madness,_ a beautiful exception, which gives us the privilege of feeling elated....
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.