In the third and last subdivision of this second section, "Criticism of Philosophy," we have an extension of Chapter I in "Beyond Good and Evil," "Prejudices of Philosophers," and of the two chapters in "The Twilight of the Idols"--"The Problem of Socrates" and "Reason in Philosophy." The notes (excepting a few pages of general remarks) occupy themselves with a criticism of Greek philosophy and with an analysis of philosophical truths and errors. These notes touch only indirectly on Nietzsche's doctrines, and may be looked upon as explanations of his intellectual methods. Despite their fragmentariness, the notes in this volume, as I have said, permit one to gain an adequate idea of Nietzsche's purpose. In making my excerpts from this book, I have chosen those passages which will throw new light upon his philosophy rather than those statements of conclusions which have been previously encountered. EXCERPTS FROM "THE WILL TO POWER" volume I What does Nihilism mean?--_That the highest values are losing their value._ 8 Thorough Nihilism is the conviction that life is absurd, in the light of the highest values already discovered; it also includes the view that we have not the smallest right to assume the existence of transcendental objects or things in themselves, which would be either divine or morality incarnate. This view is the result of fully developed "truthfulness": therefore a consequence of the belief in morality. 8 _Moral valuations are condemnations, negations; morality is the abdication of the will to live._ 12 All values with which we have tried, hitherto, to lend the world some worth, from our point of view, and with which we have therefore _deprived it of all worth_ (once these values have been shown to be inapplicable)--all these values, are, psychologically, the results of certain views of utility, established for the purpose of maintaining and increasing the dominion of certain communities: but falsely projected into the nature of things. It is always man's _exaggerated ingenuousness_ to regard himself as the sense and measure of all things. 15 Every purely _moral_ valuation (as, for instance, the Buddhistic) _terminates in Nihilism:_ Europe must expect the same thing! It is supposed that one can get along with a morality bereft of a religious background; but in this direction the road to Nihilism is opened. 19 Nihilism is not only a meditating over the "in vain"--not only the belief that everything deserves to perish; but one actually puts one's shoulder to the plough; _one destroys._ 22 The time is coming when we shall have to pay for having been _Christians_ for two thousand years: we are losing the equilibrium which enables us to live--for a long while we shall not know in what direction we are travelling. We are hurling ourselves headlong into the _opposite_ valuations, with that degree of energy which could only have been engendered in man by an _overvaluation_ of himself.