against his house, "He only knows how to conquer, who knows how to forgive."[1]
Indeed, as we have already seen, power takes to Nietzsche's mind a new turn in the human world in general. Man passes as the strongest animal—but why? Because, Nietzsche answers, he is the cunningest. Intelligence is power along the human line of evolution. In the progress of mankind, ever less physical force is necessary; as time goes on, we wisely let machines work, man becomes stronger and more spiritual.[2] Once in speaking of the greatest events and the greatest thoughts, he corrects himself: "but the greatest thoughts are the greatest events."[3] He even allows Zarathustra to say, "thoughts that come with the feet of doves rule the world," and he gives as an instance the thought of good and evil: Zarathustra had seen many lands and peoples and had found no greater power on earth than this category.[4] For what is thinking or knowing? At bottom and in its most commonplace form, it is to Nietzsche a kind of grasping of things to the end of getting control over them, making an idea and orderly scheme of them to the end of control—the senses, memory, all develope in this way: behind the whole process is the instinct for power. Philosophy (as distinguished from ordinary thinking) is a more sublimated expression of the same instinct; and it is because the philosopher wants the best conditions for expanding his force and reaching a maximum of power, that he renounces on occasion the delights of other men, such as home, children, family-ties, even verging towards ascetic ideas.[5] And the difference between the mere skeptic or critic or historian in philosophy and real philosophers, i.e., constructive, creative thinkers, is a difference in power. The former can think to the extent of doubting or analyzing or describing but are incapable of more, while the latter are capable and from the fullness and overflow of their
- ↑ Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, p. 87. Cf. what Cæsar said, in letting his enemies of Pompey's party go free after they had fallen into his hands: "I will conquer after a new fashion and fortify myself in the possession of the power I acquire, by generosity and mercy."
- ↑ Will to Power, § 856; cf. § 544; The Antichristian, § 14; Werke, XIV, 97, § 207.
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 285.
- ↑ Zarathustra, II, xxii; I, xv.
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 9; Genealogy etc., III, § 7.
