714 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



struggle with each other ? Certainly not for happiness, but for power. 

 Pain as an obstacle to man's will for power is a normal fact, the normal 

 ingredient of every organic occurrence. Man does not avoid pain, he 

 needs it; every victory, every feeling of pleasure, every occurrence, 

 presupposes a resistance overcome. The psychologists have not dis- 

 tinguished between the pleasure of falling asleep and the pleasure of 

 victory. The exhausted want rest, they want to stretch out their 

 weary bones, they want peace and quiet — it is the happiness of the 

 nihilistic religions and philosophies. The robust and active natures 

 desire victory, they want to overcome opponents, to extend the feeling 

 of power over wider areas than before. All healthy functions of the 

 organism have this need — and the whole organism is such a complexus 

 of systems striving for the increase of the feelings of power. " To be 

 preoccupied with oneself and one's everlasting salvation is not the 

 expression of a perfect and self-confident nature, for such a nature 

 doesn't care a straw whether it is to be blessed or not — it has no such 

 interest in happiness of any kind, it is power, action, desire — it puts 

 its impress upon things." 



Life in short is hard and cruel and can not help being so ; it is full 

 of suffering. But we must not only learn to suffer ourselves, we 

 must learn to see others suffer, yes to make them suffer where it is 

 necessary. " Who can achieve anything great unless he feels the power 

 and the will in himself to inflict great pains? The ability to suffer 

 pain is the very least; weak women and even slaves often become 

 masters in this. But not to perish of grief and distrust when we inflict 

 great suffering and hear the cry of anguish — that is great, that is a part 

 of greatness." 



We must not only bear suffering in ourselves and be brave enough 

 to inflict it upon others ; we must not pity it. Schopenhauer had made 

 pity or sympathy the sole basis and standard of morality, because it is 

 the negation of the selfish will to live. For that very reason Nietzsche 

 repudiates pity. In the first place pity is by no means so disinterested 

 and admirable a feeling as the moralists make it. The weakling pities 

 those who are beneath him, who do not compete with him, whom he 

 need not fear — it increases his self-love to pity. Pity is the virtue of 

 mediocre souls. Pity is one of the saddest symptoms of decline. More- 

 over pity crosses the law of evolution which is the law of selection. It 

 preserves what is ripe for destruction. Suffering itself becomes con- 

 tagious through pity. It augments misery and preserves everything 

 that is miserable, and so becomes the chief means for intensifying 

 decadence. " What is falling we should even push down." " Oh my 

 brothers, am I then cruel ? But I say : what is falling we should even 

 push down ! All these things of to-day — they are all falling, they are 

 all decaying ; who would keep them from it ? But — I would even push 

 them. And him whom you do not teach to fly, why teach him — to fall 



