of group-life, becomes as vital to him as intelligence—it is a means to power, just as intelligence is.[1] And group-life once attained, and the existence of the species becoming tolerably secure, the underlying urge of force may push to higher levels still and use the group itself as a means. It is the peculiar mark of Nietzsche's ethical thinking that he conceives an end for man beyond society. Society is a form of human existence, but not the highest form. Great individuals spring from society, but they rise above it—the social individual is not the highest type.[2] The lonely, the solitary, those whose occupations and interests are beyond the sympathy and perhaps even the comprehension of most of us, who are half like Epicurean Gods apart from the world and move like stars in orbits of their own—they are the real end of humanity, they alone are properly ends in themselves, mankind existing for them, not they for mankind, save as from afar they shine upon us, and lift our hearts. Yet the driving force of the whole process from humblest plant to possible superman is will to power, will not to be, but to be more, each level putting itself on top of what lies beneath it, and being a new level only as it does so—so that if the plant had not had a will to dominate, it would never have emerged from the lower inorganic realm, if the animal had not had the will to dominate, it would never have differentiated itself from the plant, if man had not had the will to dominate and put plants and animals under his feet, he would never have become what he distinctively is; and if somewhere among men now, there is not the will to dominate over other men, to use the rank and file as means, instruments to ends beyond them, there can never be a higher order of mankind or superman. In other words, will to power is the driving force in the whole scheme of cosmic evolution, and if there is to be any further advance, will to power must still be the inner impulsion.
If then, as stated in the preceding chapter, life and the highest possible ascent of life is Nietzsche's moral aim, will to power turns out to be vitally related to it—is indeed but a closer and more interior determination or definition of it. One
