Note 236 — Chapter VII · THE GODS AND THE SONS OF GOD

Ten years ago, in my Nietzsche: His Life and Works, I wrote (p. 72): “Given a degenerate, mean, and base environment and the fittest to survive therein will be the man who is best adapted to degeneracy, meanness, and baseness, therefore the worst kind of man. Given a community of parasites, and it may be the flattest, the slimiest, and the softest, will be the fittest to survive.” See also my Who is to be Master of the World? pp. 91–93, and Herbert Spencer, Collected Essays, vol. i., p. 397, and Huxley’s Romanes Lecture, Evolution and Ethics (ed., 1903, p. 32).