obey, i.e., be used, become subservient.[1] Here is the foundation for the distinction between means and end in an organism. The superior power overcomes the lesser, incorporates it, gives it its place, making it a means to its own end.[2] Hence the definition of an organ—something that would otherwise be independent is turned into a means, an instrumentality. For example, something that happens to be more or less suitable becomes an eye for the organism, something else a foot or hand, something else still apparatus for digestion, and so on;[3] they may not have been formed for these purposes, but the superior power turns them to account in these ways, cc just as one man may make others his slaves or as the state may convert this or that individual into its tool or agent. dd Wherever we find a thing that serves a purpose and is useful, "a will to power has made itself master of something less powerful, and of its own motion has stamped the meaning of a function upon it."[4]
If we do not read the organic world in terms of power, i.e., of controller and controlled, of master and servant, there is little sense in speaking of organs, functions. The very "meaning" of a thing implies that a superior power has got control of it and given it a place in relation to its own ends. The meaning may have nothing to do with its origin or essence—a thing may in the course of time have various meanings, depending on the nature of the power that gets control of it. Accordingly, the "evolution" of a thing (whether an organ of a body or a custom of society) is by no means necessarily progress toward a goal prefigured in its nature, still less a logical movement along the shortest lines and accomplished with the least expenditure of force, but rather a succession of processes of subjugation which it undergoes, the changes going more or less deep and having no necessary connection with one another—to which may be added its own resistances, attempts at change of form in self-defense, and any successes
- ↑ Ibid., § 492; cf. Zarathustra, II, xii.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 552.
- ↑ I need not say that a view like this does not exclude more or less development and reshaping in detail.
- ↑ Genealogy etc., II, § 12 (Nietzsche explains that this holds good of a legal institution, a social custom, a political practice, a religious form, or an eye or a hand).
