but as the significance and highest justification thereof—­that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, for its sake, must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and instruments.  Its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is not allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties, and in general to a higher existence:  like those sun-seeking climbing plants in Java—­they are called Sipo Matador,—­ which encircle an oak so long and so often with their arms, until at last, high above it, but supported by it, they can unfold their tops in the open light, and exhibit their happiness.

259.  To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one’s will on a par with that of others:  this may result in a certain rough sense in good conduct among individuals when the necessary conditions are given (namely, the actual similarity of the individuals in amount of force and degree of worth, and their co-relation within one organization).  As soon, however, as one wished to take this principle more generally, and if possible even as the fundamental principle of society, it would immediately disclose what it really is—­namely, a Will to the denial of life, a principle of dissolution and decay.  Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness:  life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;—­but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped?  Even the organization within which, as was previously supposed, the individuals treat each other as equal—­it takes place in every healthy aristocracy—­must itself, if it be a living and not a dying organization, do all that towards other bodies, which the individuals within it refrain from doing to each other it will have to be the incarnated Will to Power, it will endeavour to grow, to gain ground, attract to itself and acquire ascendancy—­ not owing to any morality or immorality, but because it lives, and because life is precisely Will to Power.  On no point, however, is the ordinary consciousness of Europeans more unwilling to be corrected than on this matter, people now rave everywhere, even under the guise of science, about coming conditions of society in which “the exploiting character” is to be absent—­that sounds to my ears as if they promised to invent a mode of life which should refrain from all organic functions.  “Exploitation” does not belong to a depraved, or imperfect and primitive society it belongs to the nature of the living being as a primary organic function, it is a consequence of the intrinsic Will to Power, which is precisely the Will to Life—­Granting that as a theory this is a novelty—­as a reality it is the fundamental fact of all history let us be so far honest towards ourselves!