in this work.

In offering this little commentary to the Nietzsche student, I should
like it to be understood that I make no claim as to its infallibility or
indispensability. It represents but an attempt on my part--a very feeble
one perhaps--to give the reader what little help I can in surmounting
difficulties which a long study of Nietzsche's life and works has
enabled me, partially I hope, to overcome.

...

Perhaps it would be as well to start out with a broad and rapid sketch
of Nietzsche as a writer on Morals, Evolution, and Sociology, so that
the reader may be prepared to pick out for himself, so to speak, all
passages in this work bearing in any way upon Nietzsche's views in those
three important branches of knowledge.

(A.) Nietzsche and Morality.

In morality, Nietzsche starts out by adopting the position of the
relativist. He says there are no absolute values "good" and "evil";
these are mere means adopted by all in order to acquire power to
maintain their place in the world, or to become supreme. It is the
lion's good to devour an antelope. It is the dead-leaf butterfly's
good to tell a foe a falsehood. For when the dead-leaf butterfly is in
danger, it clings to the side of a twig, and what it says to its foe is
practically this: "I am not a butterfly, I am a dead leaf, and can be
of no use to thee." This is a lie which is good to the butterfly, for
it preserves it. In nature every species of organic being instinctively
adopts and practises those acts which most conduce to the prevalence
or supremacy of its kind. Once the most favourable order of conduct is
found, proved efficient and established, it becomes the ruling morality
of the species that adopts it and bears them along to victory. All
species must not and cannot value alike, for what is the lion's good is
the antelope's evil and vice versa.

Concepts of good and evil are therefore, in their origin, merely a means
to an end, they are expedients for acquiring power.

Applying this principle to mankind, Nietzsche attacked Christian
moral values. He declared them to be, like all other morals, merely
an expedient for protecting a certain type of man. In the case of
Christianity this type was, according to Nietzsche, a low one.

Conflicting moral codes have been no more than the conflicting weapons
of different classes of men; for in mankind there is a continual war
between the powerful, the noble, the strong, and the well-constituted
on the on