In the tremendous multiplicity of events within an organism, the part that becomes conscious to us is a mere means: and the little bit of “virtue,” “selflessness,” and similar functions are refuted radically by the total balance of events. We should study our organism in all its immorality.

The animal functions are, as a matter of principle, a million times more important than all our beautiful moods and heights of consciousness: the latter are a surplus, except when they have to serve as tools of those animal functions. The entire conscious life, the spirit along with the soul, the heart, goodness, and virtue—in whose service do they labor? In the service of the greatest possible perfection of the means (means of nourishment, means of enhancement) of the basic animal functions: above all the enhancement of life.

What one used to call “body” and “flesh” is of such unspeakably greater importance: the remainder is a small accessory. The task of spinning on the chain of life, and in such a way that the thread grows ever more powerful—that is the task.

But consider how heart, soul, virtue, spirit practically conspire together to subvert this systematic task—as if they were the end in view! The degeneration of life is conditioned essentially by the extraordinary proneness to error of consciousness: it is held in check by instinct the least of all and therefore blunders the longest and the most thoroughly.

From Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Will to Power, New York: Vintage Books, 1968, pp. 355-356.