84 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



individual. Now granted that personal might made right in 

 primitive times; that " gut " is related to the ruling " Goths "; 

 that " schlecht " is identical with " schlicht/' — simple, common; 

 that purity is merely ceremonial and priestly in its origin, — all 

 this does not invalidate the social utility of conventions thus 

 derived. Nietzsche seems entirely oblivious to that social 

 phenomenon emphasized by Darwin, Fiske, Drummond and in 

 fact by practically all sociologists, viz., the prevalence and persist- 

 ence in early times of the inter-group struggle, and the survival 

 of that group which was the most powerful, not only by virtue 

 of physical strength but of organization based on social qualities 

 possessed by the members. According to consistent Darwinism 

 no Nietzschean group could have survived to transmit its theory 

 of life by congenital variation or social heredity, — nor is it 

 probable that it could today. It is destructive to the family as 

 well as to the state and can lead only to self-annihilation. Thus 

 it is not social ethics that leads to destruction but dionysian 

 individualism. A study of the history of Nietzscheans for a few 

 generations would be illuminating. If all were such woman- 

 haters as the founder there would be no normal generation. 



Nietzsche's chief contribution to the development of the 

 doctrine of passive material adaptation is by virtue of the fal- 

 lacies in his opposition. Indeed he positively repudiates the 

 doctrine as contrary to the notion of functional activity. 



Laboring under this idiosyncrasy, " adaptation," that is to say, a second- 

 rate activity, in fact, a mere reactivity, is pushed into the foreground, and 

 indeed, life itself has even been defined as " a continuous better adjustment 

 of internal relations to external relations " (Mr. Herbert Spencer). But this 

 is to mistake the true nature and function of life, which is will to power. It is 

 to overiook the principal priority which the spontaneous, aggressive, trans- 

 gressive, new-interpretative and new-directive forces possess, from the result 

 of which " adaptation " follows. It is to deny the sovereign office of the 

 highest functionaries in the organism, in which functionaries the will to live 

 appears as an active and formative principle. The readers will recall here 

 what Huxley objected to in Spencer — his "Administrative Nihilism." 

 But we have to deal here with much more than mere " administration." ^ 



His failure here is in his inability to see that adaptation may 

 be interpreted to include the very will to life and power for which 

 1 A Genealogy of Morals, p. 95. 



