What preserves the species. – The strongest and most evil spirits have so far done the most to advance humanity: time and again they rekindled the dozing passions – every ordered society puts the passions to sleep –, time and again they reawakened the sense of comparison, of contradiction, of delight in what is new, daring, unattempted; they forced men to pit opinion against opinion, ideal model against ideal model. Mostly by force of arms, by toppling boundary stones, by violating pieties – but also by means of new religions and moralities! In every teacher and preacher of what is new we find the same ‘mischief’ that makes conquerors infamous, even if its expression is subtler and does not instantly set the muscles in motion and for just that reason does not make one as infamous! What is new, however, is under all circumstances evil, being that which wants to conquer, to overthrow the old boundary stones and pieties; and only what is old is good! In every age the good men are those who bury the old thoughts deeply and make them bear fruit – the farmers of the spirit. But that land is eventually exhausted, and the ploughshare of evil must come time and again. Nowadays there is a thoroughly erroneous moral theory which is celebrated especially in England: it claims that judgements of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ sum up experiences of what is ‘expedient’ and ‘inexpedient’; that what is called good preserves the species while what is called evil harms it. In truth, however, the evil drives are just as expedient, species-preserving, and indispensable as the good ones – they just have a different function.