Nietzsche cannot be persuaded that "mechanical adjustment to ambient conditions," or "adaptation to environment"--both purely passive, meek, and uncreative functions--should be given the importance, as determining factors, which the English and German schools give them. With Samuel Butler, he protests against this "pitchforking of mind and spirit out of the universe," and points imperatively to an inner creative will in living organisms, which ultimately makes environment and natural conditions subservient and subject. In the _Genealogy of Morals_[12] he makes it quite clear that he would ascribe the greatest importance to a power in the organism itself, to "the highest functionaries in the animal, in which the life-will appears as an active and formative principle," and that even in the matter of the mysterious occurrence of varieties (sports) he would seek for inner causes. Darwin himself threw out only a hint in this direction; that is why it is safe to suppose that, if Nietzsche and Darwin are ever reconciled, it will probably be precisely on this ground. In the _Origin of Species_, speaking of the causes of variability, Darwin said: "... There are two factors, namely the nature of the organism, and the nature of the conditions. _The former seem to be much the more important_,[13] for nearly similar variations sometimes arise under, as far as we can judge, dissimilar conditions; and on the other hand, dissimilar variations arise under conditions which appear to be uniform." Thus differing widely from the orthodox school of evolutionists, Nietzsche nevertheless believed their hypothesis to be sound; but once more he has an objection to raise. Why did they halt where they halted? If the process is a fact, if things have become what they are, and have not always been so; then why should we rest on our oars? If it was possible for man to struggle up from barbarism, and still more remotely from the lower Primates, and reach the zenith of his physical development; why, Nietzsche asks, should he not surpass himself and attain to Superman by evolving in the same decree volitionally and mentally? "The most careful ask to-day: 'How is man preserved?' But Zarathustra asketh as the only and first one: 'How is man surpassed?'[14] "All beings (in your genealogical ladder) have created something beyond themselves, and are ye going to be the ebb of this great tide? "Behold I teach you Superman!"[15]