If life-denial brings with it so much that is unnatural and fraught with doubt, it cannot be ethics. Ethics, then, must consist of a higher life-affirmation. Nietzsche’s ethic of higher life-affirmation But what is the higher life-affirmation? Fichte and the speculative philosophers generally make it consist in this, that the will of man conceives itself within the infinite will and in consequence of this no longer belongs to the universe in merely natural fashion, but surrenders itself knowingly and willingly to the latter as an energy which acts in intelligent harmony with the infinite will. Nietzsche sees clearly that in this way they have not arrived at any convincing idea of the content of the higher life-affirmation, but are moving in the region of the abstract. He himself means to remain at all costs elemental, and he therefore avoids philosophizing about the universe, showing himself thereby to be a true moralist like Socrates. He jeers at those who, not content with belittling mankind, proceed further to profane the reality of the world by declaring that it exists merely in the human imagination. It is only on the essential nature of the will-to-live and the way to use it most completely in experience, that he himself wishes to reflect. His original belief was that he could conceive the higher life-affirmation as the development to a higher spirituality of the will-to-live. When, however, he attempted to carry this idea through, it took on, without his being aware of it, another form. Higher spirituality means, of course, the repressing of natural impulses and natural claims on life, and is thereby connected in some way or other with life-denial. Higher life-affirmation, therefore, can only consist in the content of the will-to-live being raised to its highest conceivable power. Man carries out the meaning of his life by affirming with the clearest consciousness of [pg 178] himself everything that is within him—even his impulses to secure power and pleasure. But the opposition between the spiritual and the natural Nietzsche cannot get rid of. Just in proportion as he emphasizes the natural does the spiritual shrink back. Under the visible influence of the mental disease which is threatening him the ideal man grows into the “superman,” who asserts himself triumphantly against all fate, and seeks his own ends without any consideration for the rest of mankind.