Up to the present, morality has developed at the _cost_ of: the ruling classes and their specific instincts, the well-constituted and _beautiful_ natures, the independent and privileged classes in all respects. Morality, then, is a sort of counter-movement opposing Nature's endeavours to arrive at a _higher type._ Its effects are: mistrust of life in general (in so far as its tendencies are felt to be immoral),--hostility towards the senses (inasmuch as the highest values are felt to be opposed to the higher instincts).--Degeneration and self-destruction of "higher natures," because it is precisely in them that the conflict becomes _conscious._321 Suppose the _strong_ were masters in all respects, even in valuing: let us try and think what their attitude would be towards illness, suffering, and sacrifice. Self-contempt on the part of the weak would be the result: they would do their utmost to disappear and to extirpate their kind. And would this be desirable?--should we really like a world in which the subtlety, the consideration, the intellectuality, the _plasticity_--in fact, the whole influence of the weak--was lacking? ... 323 Under "Spiritual freedom" I understand something very definite: it is a state in which one is a hundred times superior to philosophers and other disciples of "truth" in one's severity towards one's self, in one's uprightness, in one's courage, and in one's absolute will to say nay even when it is dangerous to say nay. I regard the philosophers that have appeared heretofore as _contemptible libertines_ hiding behind the petticoats of the female "Truth." 384 XII "The Will to Power" Volume II The second volume of "The Will to Power," even in its present fragmentary form, is the most important of Nietzsche's works. It draws together under one cover many of the leading doctrines voiced in his principal constructive books, and in addition states them in terms of his fundamental postulate--the will to power. In Volume I of this work we had the application of this doctrine to morality, religion and philosophy. In the present book it is applied to science, nature, society, breeding and art. The notes are more analytical than in the former volume; and the subject-matter is in itself of greater importance, being more directly concerned with the exposition of Nietzsche's main theory. Volume II is also fuller and more homogeneous, and contains much new material. So compact is its organisation that one is able to gain a very adequate idea of the purpose which animated Nietzsche at the time of making these notes.