Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: The Moral Ideal§339 The very obscure and arbitrary idea that mankind has a single task to perform, that it is moving as a whole towards some goal, is still very young. Perhaps we shall be rid of it again before it becomes a “fixed idea” —
This mankind is not a whole: it is an inextricable multiplicity of ascending and descending life-processes — it does not have a youth followed by maturity and finally by old age; the strata are twisted and entwined together — and in a few millennia there may still be even younger types of man than we can show today. Decadence, on the other hand, belongs to all epochs of mankind: refuse and decaying matter are found everywhere; it is one of life’s processes to exclude the forms of decline and decay.