r values--values which, as laws and
guides of conduct and opinion, are now to rule over mankind. In general
the doctrine of the Superman can only be understood correctly in
conjunction with other ideas of the author's, such as:--the Order
of Rank, the Will to Power, and the Transvaluation of all Values. He
assumes that Christianity, as a product of the resentment of the botched
and the weak, has put in ban all that is beautiful, strong, proud, and
powerful, in fact all the qualities resulting from strength, and that,
in consequence, all forces which tend to promote or elevate life have
been seriously undermined. Now, however, a new table of valuations
must be placed over mankind--namely, that of the strong, mighty, and
magnificent man, overflowing with life and elevated to his zenith--the
Superman, who is now put before us with overpowering passion as the
aim of our life, hope, and will. And just as the old system of valuing,
which only extolled the qualities favourable to the weak, the suffering,
and the oppressed, has succeeded in producing a weak, suffering, and
"modern" race, so this new and reversed system of valuing ought to rear
a healthy, strong, lively, and courageous type, which would be a glory
to life itself. Stated briefly, the leading principle of this new system
of valuing would be: "All that proceeds from power is good, all that
springs from weakness is bad."

This type must not be regarded as a fanciful figure: it is not a
nebulous hope which is to be realised at some indefinitely remote
period, thousands of years hence; nor is it a new species (in the
Darwinian sense) of which we can know nothing, and which it would
therefore be somewhat absurd to strive after. But it is meant to be
a possibility which men of the present could realise with all their
spiritual and physical energies, provided they adopted the new values.

The author of "Zarathustra" never lost sight of that egregious example
of a transvaluation of all values through Christianity, whereby the
whole of the deified mode of life and thought of the Greeks, as well as
strong Romedom, was almost annihilated or transvalued in a comparatively
short time. Could not a rejuvenated Graeco-Roman system of valuing (once
it had been refined and made more profound by the schooling which
two thousand years of Christianity had provided) effect another such
revolution within a calculable period of time, until that glorious type
of manhood shall finally app