His superman is to give his will to live--or will to power, as you please--perfect freedom. As a result, those individuals in whom this instinct most accurately meets the conditions of life on earth will survive, and in their offspring, by natural laws, the instinct itself will become more and more accurate. That is to say, there will appear in future generations individuals in whom this instinct will tend more and more to order the performance of acts of positive benefit and to forbid the performance of acts likely to result in injury. This injury, it is plain, may take the form of unsatisfied wants as well as of broken skulls. Therefore, the man--or superman--in whom the instinct reaches perfection will unconsciously steer clear of all the things which harass and batter mankind today--exhausting self-denials as well as exhausting passions. Whatever seems likely to benefit him, he will do; whatever seems likely to injure him he will avoid. When he is in doubt, he will dare--and accept defeat or victory with equal calm. His attitude, in brief, will be that of a being who faces life as he finds it, defiantly and unafraid--who knows how to fight and how to forbear--who sees things as they actually are, and not as they might or should be, and so wastes no energy yearning for the moon or in butting his head against stone walls. "This new table, O my brethren, I put over you: _Be hard!_"[14] Such was the goal that Nietzsche held before the human race. Other philosophers before him had attempted the same thing. Schopenhauer had put forward his idea of a race that had found happiness in putting away its desire to live. Comte had seen a vision of a race whose every member sought the good of all. The humanitarians of all countries had drawn pictures of Utopias peopled by beings who had outgrown all human instincts--who had outgrown the _one_ fundamental, unquenchable and eternal instinct of every living thing: the desire to conquer, to live, to remain alive. Nietzsche cast out all these fine ideals as essentially impossible. Man was of the earth, earthy, and his heavens and hells were creatures of his own vaporings. Only after he had ceased dreaming of them and thrown off his crushing burden of transcendental morality--only thus and then could he hope to rise out of the slough of despond in which he wallowed. [1] "Nirvana is a cessation of striving for individual existence"--that is, after death. See "Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology," vol. II, pp. 178; New York, 1902. [2] "Der Antichrist," § 2. [3] "_Also sprach Zarathustra,_" III. [4] "_Jenseits von Gut und Böse,_" § 258. [5] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," I. [6] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," II. [7] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," IV. [8] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," I. [9] Galatians V, 19, 20, 21. [10] Job V, 7; XIV, 1; Ecclesiastes I, 1. [11] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," I. [12] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," IV. [13] "_Also sprach Zarathustra_," I.