Like Professor Huxley, Nietzsche might say that
morality is opposed to the cosmic process. But by morality he would
mean something that is not to be encouraged, but that is to be shed
from human life, or at least fundamentally transformed, just because
it is in opposition to the laws of cosmic progress. On the other hand,
the morality--if we may use the term--which the cosmic process teaches
us will be a development of the conceptions of self-assertion and
self-reliance, qualities which, according to ordinary morality--the
morality, for instance, of Professor Huxley--require to be permeated
and even superseded by self-restraint and possibly self-sacrifice in
order that the moral law may be satisfied. Not obedience, not mutual
help, not benevolence, but the will to rule or desire of power, is
with Nietzsche fundamental, the primary impulse in the history of the
whole progress of the world, and still of first importance for the
further development of mankind.
This view is at the opposite extreme from Huxley's, for it overlooks
the advantages mankind has gained by means of the social instinct and
the social solidarity which it secures. But there is a further
point in Nietzsche's reflexions which is suggested by the theory
of development. Natural selection is not the sole agent in the
development of organic life: it cannot be too often enforced that
natural selection produces nothing, that its operation is purely
negative.
Pages:
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50