The history of philosophy is the story of a _secret and mad hatred_ of the prerequisities of Life, of the feelings which make for the real values of Life, and of all partisanship in favour of Life. Philosophers have never hesitated to affirm a fanciful world, provided it contradicted this world, and furnished them with a weapon wherewith they could calumniate this world. Up to the present, philosophy has been the _grand school of slander_: and its power has been so great, that even to-day our science, which pretends to be the advocate of Life, has _accepted_ the fundamental position of slander, and treats this world as "appearance," and this chain of causes as though it were only phenomenal. What is the hatred which is active here? I fear that it is still the _Circe of philosophers--_Morality, which plays them the trick of compelling them to be ever slanderers.... They believed in moral "truths," in these they thought they had found the highest values; what alternative had they left, save that of denying existence ever more emphatically the more they got to know about it?... For this life is _immoral...._ And it is based upon immoral first principles: and morality says _nay_ to Life. Let us suppress the real world: and in order to do this, we must first suppress the highest values current hitherto--morals.... It is enough to show that morality itself _is immoral,_ in the same sense as that in which immorality has been condemned heretofore. If an end be thus made to the tyranny of the former values, if we have suppressed the "real world," a _new order of values_ must follow of its own accord. The world of appearance and the world _of lies_: this constitutes the contradiction. The latter hitherto has been the "real world," "truth," "God." This is the one which we still have to suppress. The _logic of my conception_: (1) _Morality as the highest value_ (it is master of _all_ the phases of philosophy, even of the Sceptics). _Result_: this world is no good, it is not the "real world." (2) _What_ is it that determines the highest value here? What, in sooth, is morality?--It is the instinct of _decadence_; it is the means whereby the exhausted and the degenerate _revenge themselves._ _Historical_ proof: philosophers have always been decadents ... in the service of _nihilistic_ religions. (3) It is the instinct of decadence coming to the fore as _will to power._ Proof: the absolute _immorality_ of the means employed by morality throughout its history. General aspect: the values which have been highest hitherto constitute a specific case of the will to power; morality itself is a specific case of immorality. 462. _The principal innovations_: Instead of "moral values," nothing but _naturalistic values._ Naturalisation of morality. In the place of "sociology," a _doctrine of the forms of dominion._ In the place of "society," the _complex whole of culture,_ which is _my_ chief interest (whether in its entirety or in parts).