The essential thing ... in a good and healthy aristocracy is that it should _not_ regard itself as a function either of the kingship or the commonwealth, but as the _significance_ and highest justification thereof--that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, _for its sake,_ must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments. Its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is _not_ allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and in general to a higher _existence._... 225 Life itself is _essentially_ appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation.... 226 People now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which "the exploiting character" is to be absent:--that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions. "Exploitation" does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society; it belongs to the _nature_ of the living being as a primary organic function; it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life. 226 In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring regularly together and connected with one another, until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light. There is _master-morality_ and _slave-morality;_--I would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilisations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities; but one finds still oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed, sometimes their close juxtaposition--even in the same man, within one soul. 227