II
“There is no Will to Existence,” says Zarathustra; “for what does not yet exist, cannot will; and, as to that which does exist, how could it possibly will to exist?”
Besides a combination of a truism (“that which does not exist, cannot will”) with an entirely unproven assumption (“that which does exist cannot will to exist”), we have here a confusion between an abstract metaphorical statement and an individual concrete fact. Philosophically speaking, no one has ever attributed to the individual human being dominant, unfailing desire for continued existence, so that its denial cannot be the core of Zarathustra’s supreme discovery; and we must look for that in the denial of that metaphorical Will under which the genius of Schopenhauer adumbrated the great generalisations of modern biology. The necessity of growing, reproducing, varying, adapting, of surviving at any price, this, and this only, can be called the Will to Existence. But this is an abstraction, an allegory, though a perfectly fitting one, and the Will to Existence can be postulated, and has been postulated, only of that abstract and allegorical entity, the Species. For this Will to Existence Nietzsche, in probably conscious contradiction to his discarded master, Schopen‐ page: 164 hauer, tries therefore to substitute a Will to Power; and the form of speech renders such a substitution superficially possible; Will is will, and you need only write “Power” after effacing “Existence.” But this operation is a delusion or a piece of trickery, an attempt at exchanging things which do not belong to the same category. Looking at that abstraction called “the Species,” and expressing our generalisations about it under the metaphorical form of Will, we are struck immediately by the utter indifference manifested by the Species to any such relation as is implied by the word “Power”; and by the metaphorical readiness which the Species displays, on the contrary, for proceedings absolutely negatived by the word “Power”: a readiness to alter, to dwindle, to lie low, to degenerate, to submit to any tyranny, privation or parasitic condition, or even to self‐mutilation rather than allow itself to die. Indeed, the survival through self‐effacement, as distinguished from self‐assertion (and power implies self‐assertion), is so frequent an occurrence in the life of Species, that I cannot read Nietzsche’s description of the methods towards survival attributed by him to primitive Christian communities, without thinking of some naturalist’s account of a sort of animal which, after living in decent independence on land or in water, has got itself imprisoned, by the ruthless Will to Existence, in the diseased body of some more powerful kind of creature. So that, if Zarathustra meant to replace Schopenhauer’s great Will, the Will to Existence, tingling (as we seem to feel it) throughout the universe, by his more “vornehm” Will to Power, he page: 165 must take back his remark; for Nature cares nothing for his new scale of values.
Nor is this all. The Will to Power may and does exist as an individual phenomenon. But (and here we begin our real examination of Nietzsche’s views in reference to that very “Life,” which he thought he so aristocratically accepted), whatever exists in the individual is, speaking metaphorically, yet very correctly, subject to the Will of the Species; and the Will of the Species is, as we have seen, the mere Will to Existence. Like any other peculiarity, the Will to Power develops so long as it conduces to survival, and atrophies to the extent to which it becomes a danger. The individual who possesses it either flourishes and hands it on to his descendants and his imitators, or comes to grief and carries the quality which has ruined him into helplessness or annihilation.
Thus the Will to Existence, of which, as of all other divinities, the exclusive pride of Nietzsche would not brook the reality, shows itself to be a god of most ruthless practicality; and every other kind of volition, every instinct, habit or tendency of living creatures, all the demiurgi, Olympian or subterranean, radiantly conscious or obscurely and blindly teeming, can hold their way only at its inexorable behest.
Translated into prosaic literalness, the question may therefore be stated as follows: Does the predominance of self‐consciousness and the assertion of the ego, which, taken together, constitute Nietzsche’s Will to Power, offer such advantages to the human race as to have fostered this Will to Power to an exorbitant page: 166 degree in the past, or as to foster it, so far as we can foresee, to still completer supremacy in the future? We may get an approximate answer to this question in the course of examining some of the mental and emotional tendencies and habits which Nietzsche condemns in mankind, as the unworthy rivals to the Will to Power, and perhaps arrive at some conclusion by subsequently glancing also at the position which Nietzsche takes up towards life as a whole, that is to say, towards that Will to Existence of which he so rudely denies the existence.
