Is morality--its justification in our midst and its mode of action--comprehended at all?--He replies to this question so daringly and so uprightly, that at first his clearness may only bewilder us. These terms "good" and "evil," he tells us, are merely a means to the acquisition of power. And, indeed, in the very resistance we offer when he attempts to criticise our notions of morality, we tacitly acknowledge that in this morality our strength does actually reside. "No greater power on earth was found by Zarathustra than good and evil"[2] "No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth."[3] In the last sentence we have seized Nietzsche's clue to the whole question. If you would maintain yourself, you cannot and must not value as your neighbour values. Good and evil, then, are not permanent absolute values; they are transient, relative values, serving an end which can be explained in terms of biology and anthropology. But now let us halt a moment, for the sake of clearness, and let us inquire precisely how Nietzsche himself was led to this conclusion. In the summer of 1864, when he was in his twentieth year, he was given some home work to do which he was expected to have ready by the end of the holidays. It was to consist of a Latin thesis upon some optional subject, and he chose "Theognis, the Aristocratic Poet of Megara." While preparing the work he was struck with the author's use of the words "good" and "bad" as synonymous with aristocratic and plebeian, and it was this valuable hint which first set him on the right track. Theognis and his friends, being desirous of making their power prevail, were naturally compelled to regard any force which assailed that power as bad--"bad," in the sense of "dangerous to their order of power"; and thus it came to pass that Theognis, as an aristocrat in the heat of a struggle between an oligarchy and a democracy, spoke of the democratic values as "bad" and of those of his own party as "good." The writing of this essay had other consequences which I shall only be able to refer to in the next chapter; but at present let it suffice to say that, in recognising the arbitrary use made by Theognis of the epithets good and bad in designating the oligarchy and the democracy respectively, Nietzsche was first induced to look upon morality merely as a weapon in the struggle for power, and he thus freed himself from all the usual bias which belongs to the absolutist's standpoint. Hence his claim to the surname "amoralist," and his use of the phrase "Beyond Good and Evil," as the title of one of his greatest works.