The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
953.
_The two paths._--There comes a period when man has a surplus amount of power at his disposal. Science aims at establishing the _slavery of nature._ Then man acquires the _leisure_ in which to develop himself into something new and more lofty. _A new aristocracy._ It is then that a large number of virtues which are now _conditions of existence_ are superseded.--Qualities which are no longer needed are on that account lost. We no longer need virtues: _consequently_ we are losing them (likewise the morality of "one thing is needful," of the salvation of the soul, and of immortality: these were means wherewith to make man capable of enormous self-tyranny, through the emotion of great fear!!!). The different kinds of needs by means of whose discipline man is formed: need teaches work, thought, and self-control. *** _Physiological_ purification and strengthening. The new aristocracy is in need of an opposing body which it may combat: it must be driven to extremities in order to maintain itself. _The two futures of mankind_: (1) the consequence of a levelling-down to mediocrity, (2) conscious aloofness and self-development. A doctrine which would cleave a _gulf:_ it maintains the _highest and the lowest species_ (it destroys the intermediate). The aristocracies, both spiritual and temporal, which have existed hitherto prove nothing _against_ the necessity of a new aristocracy. 4. The Lords of the Earth.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.