In morality, Nietzsche starts out by adopting the position of the relativist. He says there are no absolute values “good” and “evil”; these are mere means adopted by all in order to acquire power to maintain their place in the world, or to become supreme. It is the lion’s good to devour an antelope. It is the dead-leaf butterfly’s good to tell a foe a falsehood. For when the dead-leaf butterfly is in danger, it clings to the side of a twig, and what it says to its foe is practically this: “I am not a butterfly, I am a dead leaf, and can be of no use to thee.” This is a lie which is good to the butterfly, for it preserves it. In nature every species of organic being instinctively adopts and practises those acts which most conduce to the prevalence or supremacy of its kind. Once the most favourable order of conduct is found, proved efficient and established, it becomes the ruling morality of the species that adopts it and bears them along to victory. All species must not and cannot value alike, for what is the lion’s good is the antelope’s evil and vice versa. Concepts of good and evil are therefore, in their origin, merely a means to an end, they are expedients for acquiring power. Applying this principle to mankind, Nietzsche attacked Christian moral values. He declared them to be, like all other morals, merely an expedient for protecting a certain type of man. In the case of Christianity this type was, according to Nietzsche, a low one. Conflicting moral codes have been no more than the conflicting weapons of different classes of men; for in mankind there is a continual war between the powerful, the noble, the strong, and the well-constituted on the one side, and the impotent, the mean, the weak, and the ill-constituted on the other. The war is a war of moral principles. The morality of the powerful class, Nietzsche calls NOBLE- or MASTER-MORALITY; that of the weak and subordinate class he calls SLAVE-MORALITY. In the first morality it is the eagle which, looking down upon a browsing lamb, contends that “eating lamb is good.” In the second, the slave-morality, it is the lamb which, looking up from the sward, bleats dissentingly: “Eating lamb is evil.” (B.) The Master- and Slave-Morality Compared. The first morality is active, creative, Dionysian. The second is passive, defensive,—to it belongs the “struggle for existence.” Where attempts have not been made to reconcile the two moralities, they may be described as follows:—All is GOOD in the noble morality which proceeds from strength, power, health, well-constitutedness, happiness, and awfulness; for, the motive force behind the people practising it is “the struggle for power.” The antithesis “good and bad” to this first class means the same as “noble” and “despicable.” “Bad” in the master-morality must be applied to the coward, to all acts that spring from weakness, to the man with “an eye to the main chance,” who would forsake everything in order to live.