The _declining_ vitality of modern Europe formulates its social ideals in its decaying instincts: and these ideals are all so like those of _old and effete_ races, that they might be mistaken for one another. The _gregarious instinct,_ then,--now a sovereign power,--is something totally different from the instinct of an _aristocratic society_: and the value of the sum depends upon the value of the units constituting it.... The whole of our sociology knows no other instinct than that of the herd, _i.e.,_ of a _multitude of mere ciphers_--of which every cipher has "equal rights," and where it is a virtue to be----naught.... The valuation with which the various forms of society are judged to-day is absolutely the same with that which assigns a higher place to peace than to war: but this principle is contrary to the teaching of biology, and is itself a mere outcome of decadent life. Life is a result of war, society is a means to war.... Mr. Herbert Spencer was a decadent in biology, as also in morality (he regarded the triumph of altruism as a desideratum!!!). 54. After thousands of years of error and confusion, it is my good fortune to have rediscovered the road which leads to a Yea and to a Nay. I teach people to say Nay in the face of all that makes for weakness and exhaustion. I teach people to say Yea in the face of all that makes for strength, that preserves strength, and justifies the feeling of strength. Up to the present, neither the one nor the other has been taught; but rather virtue, disinterestedness, pity, and even the negation of life. All these are values proceeding from exhausted people. After having pondered over the physiology of exhaustion for some time, I was led to the question: to what extent the judgments of exhausted people had percolated into the world of values. The result at which I arrived was as startling as it could possibly be--even for one like myself who was already at home in many a strange world: I found that all prevailing values--that is to say, all those which had gained ascendancy over humanity, or at least over its tamer portions, could be traced back to the judgment of exhausted people. Under the cover of the holiest names, I found the most destructive tendencies; people had actually given the name "God" to all that renders weak, teaches weakness, and infects with weakness.... I found that the "good man" was a form of self-affirmation on the part of decadence. That virtue which Schopenhauer still proclaimed as superior to all, and as the most fundamental of all virtues; even that same pity I recognised as more dangerous than any vice. Deliberately to thwart the law of selection among species, and their natural means of purging their stock of degenerate members--this, up to my time, had been the greatest of all virtues.... One should do honour to the _fatality_ which says to the feeble: "perish!"