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 material 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 another world (real or imaginary)
in order to have something to change it to.

We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress:
personally I prefer to call it reform. Fo