ds: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even
Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a
question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said,
"beyond good and evil," because he had not the courage to say, "more
good than good and evil," or, "more evil than good and evil." Had he
faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was
nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, "the
purer man," or "the happier man," or "the sadder man," for all these are
ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says "the upper man," or "over man," a
physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly
a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort of
man he wants evolution to produce. And if he does not know, certainly
the ordinary evolutionists, who talk about things being "higher," do not
know either.

Then again, some people fall back on sheer submission and sitting still.
Nature is going to do something some day; nobody knows what, and nobody
knows when. We have no reason for acting, and no reason for not acting.
If anything happens it is right: if anything is prevented it was wrong.
Again, some people try to anticipate nature by doing something, by doing
anything. Because we may possibly grow wings they cut off their legs.
Yet nature may be trying to make them centipedes for all they know.

Lastly, there is a fourth class of people who take whatever it is that
they happen to want, and say that that is the ultimate aim of evolution.
And these are the only sensible people. This is the only really healthy
way with the word evolution, to work for what you want, and to call
_that_ evolution. The only intelligible sense that progress or advance
can have among men, is that we have a definite vision, and that we wish
to make the whole world like that vision. If you like to put it so, the
essence of the doctrine is that what we have around us is the mere
method and preparation for something that we have to create. This is not
a world, but rather the materials for a world. God has given us not so
much the colours of a picture as the colours of a palette. But He has
also given us a subject, a model, a fixed vision. We must be clear about
what we want to paint. This adds a further principle to our previous
list of principles. We have said we must be fond of this world, even in
order to change it. We now add that we must be fond of anothe