duction to the
"Birth of Tragedy". Even to call life "activity," or to define it
further as "the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external
relations," as Spencer has it, Nietzsche characterises as a "democratic
idiosyncracy." He says to define it in this way, "is to mistake the
true nature and function of life, which is Will to Power...Life is
ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak,
suppression, severity, obtrusion of its own forms, incorporation and
at least, putting it mildest, exploitation." Adaptation is merely a
secondary activity, a mere re-activity (see Note on Chapter LVII.).

Pars. 11, 12.

These deal with Nietzsche's principle of the desirability of rearing a
select race. The biological and historical grounds for his insistence
upon this principle are, of course, manifold. Gobineau in his great
work, "L'Inegalite des Races Humaines", lays strong emphasis upon the
evils which arise from promiscuous and inter-social marriages. He alone
would suffice to carry Nietzsche's point against all those who are
opposed to the other conditions, to the conditions which would have
saved Rome, which have maintained the strength of the Jewish race, and
which are strictly maintained by every breeder of animals throughout the
world. Darwin in his remarks relative to the degeneration of CULTIVATED
types of animals through the action of promiscuous breeding, brings
Gobineau support from the realm of biology.

The last two verses of par. 12 were discussed in the Notes on Chapters
XXXVI. and LIII.

Par. 13.

This, like the first part of "The Soothsayer", is obviously a reference
to the Schopenhauerian Pessimism.

Pars. 14, 15, 16, 17.

These are supplementary to the discourse "Backworld's-men".

Par. 18.

We must be careful to separate this paragraph, in sense, from the
previous four paragraphs. Nietzsche is still dealing with Pessimism
here; but it is the pessimism of the hero--the man most susceptible of
all to desperate views of life, owing to the obstacles that are arrayed
against him in a world where men of his kind are very rare and are
continually being sacrificed. It was to save this man that Nietzsche
wrote. Heroism foiled, thwarted, and wrecked, hoping and fighting until
the last, is at length overtaken by despair, and renounces all struggle
for sleep. This is not the natural or constitutional pessimism which
proceeds from an unhealthy body--the dyspeptic's lack of app