PHILOSOPHY OF FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. 719 



lem of morality itself has been absent, even the suspicion has been 

 wanting that there was anything problematical about it. What the 

 philosophers call explanation of morality is merely only a learned 

 form of the firm belief in the prevailing morality, nay, even a kind of 

 denial that morality can be conceived as a problem." But we must 

 examine, the prevailing morality; if it really is morality, there will be 

 no danger in such an investigation: whatever can not stand the test 

 must go. 



Now such an examination reveals to Nietzsche the perversity of 

 traditional morality. Schopenhauer teaches that pity or sympathy is 

 the basis and standard of morality. Yes, says Nietzsche, pity is the 

 basis of our traditional morality, and therefore our traditional morality 

 is bad. Pity is the negation of healthy egoism, the negation of the 

 desire for life and power; it means renunciation of self, self-denial, 

 self-sacrifice, the suicide of our life-preserving instincts, and therefore 

 pity is bad, and the morality that is based on pity is a symptom of 

 decline. Take out pity and the whole structure of our traditional 

 morality crumbles to pieces. Pity is not a good, as we have already 

 been told, pity is not good because it violates the fundamental principle 

 of existence, the desire for life, the desire for power, and hinders the 

 realization of the true goal: the development of strong men. The 

 morality that is based on pity has corrupted humanity; it teaches men 

 to despise the basal instincts of life, it sets the highest value on unself- 

 ishness, the typical goal of decline. " Entselb stung smoral is the 

 typical decadence-morality par excellence." The desire for life, for 

 more life, the strong affirmation of life, is the basal law of existence; 

 the production of strong individuals or a strong species the goal, the 

 ideal to be realized, the highest good, the value of values. On this 

 principle our new morality must be based; we must create new values 

 in the light of the highest value; we must transform or re- value, re- 

 evaluate, the old values, reform the traditional morality. Not sym- 

 pathy-morality, but will-morality, instinct-morality, that is the end. 



Our present morality, our pity-morality, is the morality of slaves, 

 the true morality, the will-morality, is the morality of lords, Herren- 

 moral. The slave-morality, the pity-morality, represents the ideals of 

 the weak and oppressed, it incorporates the rules which they desire to 

 be followed in order that they may live their paltry lives in peace. 

 Virtue is for these little people what makes men tame and modest; in 

 this way they have changed the wolf into a dog and have transformed 

 man himself into man's best domestic animal. It is based on their 

 hatred and fear of the lords, the strong, the aristocrats; it represents 

 the instincts of the herd against the strong and independent, the in- 

 stincts of the sufferers and the failures against those who have suc- 

 ceeded, the instincts of the mediocre, of the average, against the excep- 

 tions. These little people call pity of the weak good because they are 



