the morality—­if we may use the term—­which the cosmic process teaches us will be a development of the conceptions of self-assertion and self-reliance, qualities which, according to ordinary morality—­the morality, for instance, of Professor Huxley—­require to be permeated and even superseded by self-restraint and possibly self-sacrifice in order that the moral law may be satisfied.  Not obedience, not mutual help, not benevolence, but the will to rule or desire of power, is with Nietzsche fundamental, the primary impulse in the history of the whole progress of the world, and still of first importance for the further development of mankind.

This view is at the opposite extreme from Huxley’s, for it overlooks the advantages mankind has gained by means of the social instinct and the social solidarity which it secures.  But there is a further point in Nietzsche’s reflexions which is suggested by the theory of development.  Natural selection is not the sole agent in the development of organic life:  it cannot be too often enforced that natural selection produces nothing, that its operation is purely negative.  It does not properly select at all, it only excludes.  What it does is to cut off the unfit specimens of living beings which nature supplies.  It would have no field of operation were it not for the variety of nature.  While individuals tend to repeat the characteristics of their parents, they do not repeat them without change:  the principle of heredity is counterbalanced by a principle of variety equally hard to explain.  All organic life exhibits this tendency to variation; and one variation proves better adapted than another to the environment.  It is this which makes possible the operation of ‘natural selection.’  Unfit varieties are exterminated by natural selection, and room is thus left for varieties which are fit to perpetuate themselves and to increase in efficiency.

Now, if we apply this conception to human conduct, should we not encourage all varieties to carry on their experiments in living and in morality so that we may see whether success will justify them?  An affirmative answer to this question is sometimes vaguely hinted at; by Nietzsche it is proclaimed from the housetops.

“There is no monopoly of morals, and every morality which exclusively asserts itself destroys too much good strength, and is too dearly bought by mankind.  The straying ones, who so often are the inventive and productive ones, shall no longer be sacrificed; it shall not even be deemed a disgrace to stray from morals either in deeds or thoughts; numerous new experiments shall be made in matters of life and society; an enormous incubus of bad conscience shall be removed from the world—­these are the general aims which ought to be recognised and furthered by all honest and truth-seeking people."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Nietzsche, Werke, iv. 161, 162; Dawn of Day, sec. 164.]