mphasize the fact
again--without any moral significance: and this is so far true that the
rottenness I speak of is most apparent to me precisely in those quarters
where there has been most aspiration, hitherto, toward "virtue" and
"godliness." As you probably surmise, I understand rottenness in the
sense of _decadence_: my argument is that all the values on which
mankind now fixes its highest aspirations are _decadence_-values.

I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its
instincts, when it chooses, when it _prefers_, what is injurious to it.
A history of the "higher feelings," the "ideals of humanity"--and it is
possible that I'll have to write it--would almost explain why man is so
degenerate. Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for
survival, for the accumulation of forces, for _power_: whenever the will
to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest
values of humanity have been emptied of this will--that the values of
_decadence_, of _nihilism_, now prevail under the holiest names.

7.

Christianity is called the religion of _pity_.--Pity stands in
opposition to all the tonic passions that augment the energy of the
feeling of aliveness: it is a depressant. A man loses power when he
pities. Through pity that drain upon strength which suffering works is
multiplied a thousandfold. Suffering is made contagious by pity; under
certain circumstances it may lead to a total sacrifice of life and
living energy--a loss out of all proportion to the magnitude of the
cause (--the case of the death of the Nazarene). This is the first view
of it; there is, however, a still more important one. If one measures
the effects of pity by the gravity of the reactions it sets up, its
character as a menace to life appears in a much clearer light. Pity
thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural
selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; it fights on
the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining
life in so many of the botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a
gloomy and dubious aspect. Mankind has ventured to call pity a virtue
(--in every _superior_ moral system it appears as a weakness--); going
still further, it has been called _the_ virtue, the source and
foundation of all other virtues--but let us always bear in mind that
this was from the standpoint of a philosophy that was nihilistic, and
upon whose shiel