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The strongest and most evil spirits have so far done the most to advance humanity; again
and again they relumed the passions that were going to sleep--all ordered society puts the
passions to sleep--and they reawakened again and again the sense of comparison, of
contradiction, of the pleasure in what is new, daring, untried; they compelled man to pit
opinion against opinion, model against model. Usually by force of arms, by toppling
boundary markers, by violating pieties--but also by means of new religions and moralities.
In every teacher and preacher of what is new we encounter the same "wickedness"
that makes conquerors notorious, even if its expression is subtler and it does not
immediately set the muscles in motion, and therefore also does not make one that
notorious. What is new, however, is always evil, being that which wants to conquer and
overthrow the old boundary markers and the old pieties; and only what is old is good. The
good people are in all ages those who dig the old thoughts, digging deep and getting them
to bear fruit--the farmers of the spirit. But eventually all the land is exploited, and
the ploughshare of evil must come again and again.



...what preserves the species