On the _contrary_! There is nothing on earth which can have any value, if it have not a modicum of power--granted, of course, that life itself is the Will to Power. Morality protected the _botched_ and _bungled_ against Nihilism, in that it gave every one of them infinite worth, metaphysical worth, and classed them altogether in one order which did not correspond with that of worldly power and order of rank: it taught submission, humility, etc. _Admitting that the belief in this morality be destroyed,_ the botched and the bungled would no longer have any comfort, and would perish. This _perishing_ seems like _self-annihilation,_ like an instinctive selection of that which must be destroyed. The _symptoms_ of this self-destruction of the botched and the bungled: self-vivisection, poisoning, intoxication, romanticism, and, above all, the instinctive constraint to acts whereby the powerful are made into _mortal enemies_ (training, so to speak, one's own hangmen), _the will to destruction_ as the will of a still deeper instinct--of the instinct of self-destruction, of the Will to Nonentity. *** Nihilism is a sign that the botched and bungled in order to be destroyed, that, having been deprived of morality, they no longer have any reason to "resign themselves," that they take up their stand on the territory of the opposite principle, and _will also exercise power_ themselves, by compelling the powerful to become their hangmen. This is the European form of Buddhism, that _active negation,_ after all existence has lost its meaning. *** It must not be supposed that "poverty" has grown more acute, on the contrary! "God, morality, resignation" were remedies in the very deepest stages of misery: _active_ Nihilism made its appearance in circumstances which were relatively much more favourable. The fact, alone, that morality is regarded as overcome, presupposes a certain degree of intellectual culture; while this very culture, for its part, bears evidence to a certain relative well-being. A certain intellectual fatigue, brought on by the long struggle concerning philosophical opinions, and carried to hopeless scepticism _against_ philosophy, shows moreover that the level of these Nihilists is by no means a low one. Only think of the conditions in which Buddha appeared! The teaching of the eternal recurrence would have learned principles to go upon (just as Buddha's teaching, for instance, had the notion of causality, etc.). ***