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№1436
[And as such, the whole of Nietzsche's dynamic of thought, and even the whole of it's direction (which can be easily extrapolated without reducing it to so-called "acceleration", which is just an another "ascetic ideal", grown out of "christian-like" (speaking in Nietzsche's terms) despair), succinctly summed up...
My task, to prepare a moment of supreme self-reflection for humanity, a great noon where it looks back and forward, where it steps out from the domination of chance and priests and poses the question of why?, of what for? for the first time as a whole — this task follows necessarily from the insight that humanity is not on the right path of its own accord, that it is by no means divinely governed, but rather that, precisely under its most sacred concepts of value, the instinct of negation, of corruption, the instinct of decadence, has seductively prevailed. The question of the origin of moral values is therefore a matter of the highest order for me because it determines the future of humanity. The demand that one should believe that everything is fundamentally in the best hands, that a book, the Bible, provides final reassurance about divine guidance and wisdom in the destiny of humanity, is, translated back into reality, the will to prevent the truth about the pitiable opposite of this from emerging: namely, that humanity has been in the worst hands until now, that it has been ruled by the downtrodden, the malicious and vindictive, the so-called "saints," these world-slanderers and human-violators. The decisive sign that reveals that the priest (including the hidden priests, the philosophers) has become master not only within a particular religious community, but in general, that decadent morality, the will to the end, is considered morality in itself, is the unconditional value that is universally accorded to the unegoistic and the hostility that is universally accorded to the egoistic. Anyone who disagrees with me on this point, I consider infected... But everyone disagrees with me... For a physiologist, such a contrast in values leaves no room for doubt. If the smallest organ within the organism fails, however minimally, to assert its self-preservation, its power-substitution, its "egoism" with complete certainty, the whole degenerates. The physiologist demands the excision of the degenerating part; he denies any solidarity with the degenerate, he is far from compassionate toward it. But the priest desires precisely the degeneration of the whole, of humanity: that is why he preserves the degenerate — at this price he dominates it… What purpose do those false concepts, the auxiliary concepts of morality, "soul," "spirit," "free will," "God," have, if not to physiologically ruin humanity?… If one diverts the seriousness from self-preservation, from the increase of physical strength, that is, from life, if one constructs an ideal out of anaemia, from contempt for the body "the salvation of the soul," what is that other than a recipe for decadence? — The loss of gravity, the resistance to natural instincts, "selflessness," in one word — that has been called morality until now…
[It is a painful, a horrific spectacle that has unfolded before me: I have drawn back the curtain on the depravity of humanity. This word, in my mouth, is protected against at least one suspicion: that it contains a moral indictment of humanity. It is—I would like to emphasize this again—meant to be morally free, to the extent that I feel this depravity most strongly precisely where, until now, one has most consciously aspired to "virtue," to "divinity." I understand depravity, as you can already guess, in the sense of decadence: my assertion is that all the values in which humanity now sums up its highest desirability are decadent values.
I call an animal, a species, an individual depraved when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers what is detrimental to it. A history of the "higher feelings," of the "ideals of humanity"—and it is possible that I must tell it—would almost also explain why humanity is so corrupt.
Life itself, I consider, is an instinct for growth, for permanence, for the accumulation of strength, for power: where the will to power is lacking, there is decline. My contention is that all of humanity's highest values lack this will—that declining values, nihilistic values, reign supreme under the holiest names.*]]
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