WWZD? I

Men of great creativity, the really great men in my understanding, will be sought in vain today and probably for a long time to come: they are missing; until after much disappointment one finally has to begin to understand why it is that they are missing and that nothing now presents, or will present for a long time to come, a more hostile obstacle to their emergence and development than what is called ‘morality’ - that morality of the herd animal which strives with all its force for a universal green-pasture happiness on earth, namely security, harmlessness, comfort, easy living; that also hopes to rid the world of all kinds of shepherds and bellwethers. The two doctrines it preaches most profusely are ‘equal rights’ and ‘sympathy with all that suffers’ - and it takes suffering itself to be something that absolutely must be abolished.

However, anyone who has thought carefully about how and where the human plant has hitherto sprung up most vigorously must suppose that it was under the reverse conditions: that the danger of man’s situation has to grow huge, his powers of invention and dissimulation to fight their way up through protracted pressure and coercion, his will to live become intensified into an unconditional will to power and overpower, and that danger, harshness, violence, inequality of rights, secrecy, stoicism, the arts of temptation, devilry of all kinds - in short, the antithesis of everything desirable for the herd - are needed if the human type is to be heightened.

A morality with such reverse intentions, which wants to breed men to be high, not comfortable and mediocre - a morality whose intention is to breed a ruling caste - must follow upon the breeding of a new human species as well, in which the same will, the same instinct is guaranteed to last through many generations: a new species and caste of monsters.

To prepare a reversal of values for a certain strong species of men of the highest spirituality and strength of will, and for this purpose to unleash in them many instincts previously reigned in and calumniated. For certainly in the world of antiquity a different and more masterful morality ruled. And the man of antiquity, under the educating spell of his morality, was a stronger and more profound man than the man of today. The seduction of antiquity on strong and enterprising souls of today, those dissatisfied with present-day man, is in-effect an anti-democratic and anti-Christian seduction. In short, a new ‘What for?’ - that is what mankind needs.