That _species_ show an ascending tendency, is the most nonsensical assertion that has ever been made: until now they have only manifested a dead level. There is nothing whatever to prove that the higher organisms have developed from the lower. I see that the lower, owing to their numerical strength, their craft, and ruse, now preponderate,--and I fail to see an instance in which an accidental change produces an advantage, at least not for a very long period: for it would be necessary to find some reason why an accidental change should become so very strong. I do indeed find the "cruelty of Nature" which is so often referred to; but in a different place: Nature is cruel, but against her lucky and well-constituted children; she protects and shelters and loves the lowly. In short, the increase of a species' power, as the result of the preponderance of its particularly well-constituted and strong specimens, is perhaps less of a certainty than that it is the result of the preponderance of its mediocre and lower specimens ... in the case of the latter, we find great fruitfulness and permanence: in the case of the former, the besetting dangers are greater, waste is more rapid, and decimation is more speedy. 686. Man as he has appeared up to the present is the embryo of the man of the future; _all_ the formative powers which are to produce the latter, already lie in the former: and owing to the fact that they are enormous, the more _promising for the future_ the modern individual happens to be, the more _suffering_ falls to his lot. This is the profoundest concept of _suffering._ The formative powers clash.--The isolation of the individual need not deceive one--as a matter of fact, some uninterrupted current does actually flow through all individuals, and does thus unite them. The fact that they feel themselves isolated, is the _most powerful spur_ in the process of setting themselves the loftiest of aims: their search for happiness is the means which keeps together and moderates the formative powers, and keeps them from being mutually destructive. 687. _Excessive intellectual_ strength sets _itself_ new goals; it is not in the least satisfied by the command and the leadership of the inferior world, or by the preservation of the organism, of the "individual." We are _more_ than the individual: we are the whole chain itself, with the tasks of all the possible futures of that chain in us. 3. Theory of the Will to Power and of Valuations. 688. _The unitary view of psychology._--We are accustomed to regard the development of a vast number of forms as compatible with one single origin. My theory would be: that the will to power is the primitive motive force out of which all other motives have been derived;