All this is not taken into account by those—and they are a host, all the way from college presidents down to penny-a-liners in the newspapers—who think that Nietzsche proclaims an indiscriminate "gospel of might," having particularly in mind might of the "wild beast" type;[1] and we shall have to proceed with a little care in connecting his ethical end, as defined in the previous chapter, with will to power. In a way the matter was problematical to him. He makes a note, "Rule! Force my type on others? Horrible (grässlich)! Is not my happiness just in contemplating a variety of types! Problem."[2] Indeed, he writes to a friend about his proposed book, Will to Power, "I have not gone beyond tentatives, introductions, promises of all sorts.… It has been, all in all, a torture, and I have no more courage to think about it. In ten years I shall do better."[3] If Nietzsche had lived even half so long, he might have produced something that would have made his views quite clear; as it is, we have to do the work of clarification more or less ourselves.
III
As nearly as I can make out, the logic of his procedure was something like this:—The world at bottom is a complex of forces, and each pushes itself as far as it can—each on its inner side is a will to power. There is no law over these forces restraining them, but they are held in check by one another. Sometimes order may come from a simple balancing. But some may be stronger than others: there are different levels or gradations of force. A higher level may make the lower subject. What we call the organic world masters thus to a certain extent the inorganic, and the higher organic the lower. Force becomes more sublimated, spiritual. Man, the weakest thing in nature from one point of view, controls through intelligence.[4] He is after power, like every other energy in nature, but he has this peculiar means. The single individual's weakness, too, leads him to combine with others, groups arise, and morality, the law
