B. If power over Nature has been attained, this power can be used as a help in our development: Will to Power as a self-enhancing and self-strengthening principle. 404. Morality may be regarded as the _illusion of a species,_ fostered with the view of urging the individual to sacrifice himself to the future, and seemingly granting him such a very great value, that with that _self-consciousness_ he may tyrannise over, and constrain, other sides of his nature, and find it difficult to be pleased with himself. We ought to be most profoundly thankful for what morality has done hitherto: _but now it is no more than a burden_ which may prove fatal. _Morality itself_ in the form of honesty urges us to deny morality. 405. To what extent is the _self-destruction of morality_ still a sign of its own strength? We Europeans have within us the blood of those who were ready to die for their faith; we have taken morality frightfully seriously, and there is nothing which we have not, at one time, sacrificed to it. On the other hand, our intellectual subtlety has been reached essentially through the vivisection of our consciences. We do not yet know the "whither" towards which we are urging our steps, now that we have departed from the soil of our forebears. But it was on this very soil that we acquired the strength which is now driving us from our homes in search of adventure, and it is thanks to that strength that we are now in mid-sea, surrounded by untried possibilities and things undiscovered--we can no longer choose, we must be conquerors, now that we have no land in which we feel at home and in which we would fain "survive." A concealed "_yea_" is driving us forward, and it is stronger than all our "nays." Even our _strength_ no longer bears with us in the old swampy land: we venture out into the open, we attempt the task. The world is still rich and undiscovered, and even to perish were better than to be half-men or poisonous men. Our very strength itself urges us to take to the sea; there where all suns have hitherto sunk we know of a new world.... III. CRITICISM OF PHILOSOPHY. 1. GENERAL REMARKS. 406. Let us rid ourselves of a few superstitions which heretofore have been fashionable among philosophers! 407. Philosophers are prejudiced _against_ appearance, change, pain, death, the things of the body, the senses, fate, bondage, and all that which has no purpose. In the first place, they believe in: absolute knowledge, (2) in knowledge for its own sake, (3) in virtue and happiness as necessarily related, (4) in the recognisability of men's acts. They are led by instinctive determinations of values, in which _former_ cultures are reflected (more dangerous cultures too). 408. What have philosophers _lacked_! (1) A sense of history, (2) a knowledge of physiology, (3) a goal in the future.--The ability to criticise without irony or moral condemnation. 409.