Though he never accomplished the classification, it has been attempted in a most interesting way by Professor Richter, who makes a survey and hypothetical valuation of varying religions, philosophies, moralities, types of art, personalities, and cultures, from this point of view.[1]
V
But now let us attend a little more closely to what Nietzsche means by power. He makes no formal definition of it, i and does not attempt to say what is its final metaphysical nature. j He appears to take the concept simply as he finds it in common use—the essential element being ascendency, effectual superiority of some sort. By giving it an inner turn, taking it practically as will to power, he indicates that it is not anything static that he has in mind, but a principle of movement and progress (or at least change). The implication is that there is no result that does not tend to be transcended, perhaps destroyed. "Whatever I create and however much I love it, I have soon to be hostile to it," says Zarathustra.[2] Power, at least will to power, is eternally avid. k Hence successive grades or levels of power, a Rangordnung. It is from inattention to this that Nietzsche is much misconceived—as if "power" must always be on a physical level! Emerson speaks of a "scale of powers;"[3] Nietzsche's idea is the same. Emerson advances the paradoxical idea that it is "not talent but sensibility which is the best," and Nietzsche finds power in things which are often contrasted with it. But the higher sorts of power, though so different from the lower that they seem antithetical and a part of another order of reality, are really extensions, refinements, spiritualizations of the lower sorts, and have the same essential character. l They too give predominance, ascendency, though, in other ways, by different means. Indeed, it would seem to go along with the general view that the refinements, spiritualizations of power should be just intensifications of it—since only on this basis can their ascendency over the grosser forms be explained. m
Nietzsche gives us no set scale of powers, and I can only
