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 PENGUIN @ CLASSICS

TH E W ILL TO POW E R

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE was born near Leipzig in 1844, the son of

a Lutheran clergyman who died when Nietzsche was four. He attended
the famous Pforta School, then went to university at Bonn and at
Leipzig, where he studied philology and first became acquainted with
Richard Wagner. When he was only twenty-four he was appointed
to the chair of classical philology at Basel University; he stayed there
until his health forced him into retirement in 1879. While in Basel,
he participated as an ambulance orderly in the Franco-Prussian War
and published The Birth of Tragedy (1872), Untimely Meditations
(1873-6) and the first part of Human, All Too Human (1878). From
1880 until 1889, except for brief interludes, he divorced himself from
everyday life and, supported by his university pension, lived mainly in
France, Italy and Switzerland. Works published in the l88os included
Dawn, The Joyous Science, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good
and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals and The Case of Wagner.
In January 1889, Nietzsche collapsed on a street in Turin and
was subsequently institutionalized in Basel and Jena. He spent the
remaining years of his life in a condition of mental and physical
debility, cared for by his mother and later his sister Elisabeth.
The last works published during his lifetime were Twilight of
the Idols (1889), The Anti-Christ (1895) and Nietzsche contra
Wagner (1895). After Nietzsche's death in 1900, Elisabeth assembled
The Will to Power based on her brother's notebooks and published it
the following year; a greatly expanded edition appeared in 1906. Ecce
Homo, Nietzsche's autobiography, was published in 1908.

R. KEVIN HILL is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Portland

State University. From 1994 until 2001 he taught in the Philoso­
phy Department at Northwestern University. He js the author of
Nietzsche's Critiques: The Kantian Foundations of His Thought,
published by Oxford University Press (2003).

MICHAEL A. SCARPITTI is an independent scholar of phi­

losophy whose principal interests include English and German

thought of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as
exegesis and translation theory. His translation of Nietzsche's On
the Genealogy of Morals in published in Penguin Classics.
 FRIEDRICH
NIETZSCHE

The Will to Power

Selections from the
Notebooks of the I88os

Translated by
R. KEVIN HILL and MICHAEL A. SCARPITTI
Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by
R. KEVIN HILL

PENGUIN BOOKS
 PENGUIN CLASSICS

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Translation© R. Kevin Hill and Michael A. Scarpitti, 2017

Editorial material© R. Kevin Hill, 2017

The moral right of the translators and editor has been asserted

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 Contents

Chronology vu

Introduction xi

Note on the Text and Translation xxvu

Further Reading xxxv

THE WILL TO POWER

Preface 7

Book I
European Nihilism
l Nihilism l 5

2 On the History of European Nihilism 49

Book II
Critique of the Highest Values Hitherto

l Critique of Religion 91
2 Critique of Morality 1 59
3 Critique of Philosophy 239

Book III
Principle of a New Determination
of Values
l The Will to Power as Knowledge 28 l
2 The Will to Power in Nature 355
3 The Will to Power as Society
and Individual 407
4 The Will to Power as Art 447

Book IV
Discipline and Cultivation
1 Hierarchy
2 Dionysus
3 The Eternal Recurrence

Notes
Concordance
Name Index
 Chronology

I844 Birth of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche on 1 5 October

in Rocken, Prussian Saxony, to the pastor Karl Ludwig
Nietzsche and his wife Franziska, nee Oehler.
I846 Birth of Elisabeth Nietzsche on 1 0 July.
I848 Birth of Joseph Ludwig Nietzsche.
I849 Death of Karl Ludwig Nietzsche on 3 0 July.
I850 Death of Nietzsche's brother, Joseph Ludwig. Family
moves to cathedral city of Naumburg.
I855 Nietzsche enters school associated with the cathedral.
I858 Accepted at prestigious Pforta school, where he receives
a traditional classical education.
I864 Matriculates at Bonn University to study theology and
classical philology.
I865 Transfers to the University of Leipzig, where he becomes
Friedrich Ritschl's favourite student. First acquaintance with
the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.
I866 Friendship with Erwin Rohde. Reads Friedrich Albert
Lange's History of Materialism.
I867 First publication in classical philology. Enters military
service in October.
1868 Riding accident in March leads to discharge from military
service on l 5 October. First meeting with Richard Wagner in
November.
1869 Appointed to special professorship in Basel in clas­
sical philology (January ) . Awarded doctorate by Leipzig
( 2 3 March) . Gives up Prussian citizenship . Holds inaugural
lecture on 'Homer and Classical Philology' ( 2 8 May ) . Meets
Vlll C H RO N O L O GY

colleagues: historian Jacob Burckhardt and the theologian

Franz Overbeck.
1870 Professorship regularized. Public lectures on 'The Greek
Music Drama' ( l 8 January) and 'Socrates and Tragedy'
( 1 February) . Serves in France as an orderly in Franco­
Prussian War with Prussian army; contracts dysentery and
diphtheria. Discharged in October.
187 1 Granted leave of absence from Basel due to ill-health.
1872 Publication of Birth of Tragedy (January), which was
largely ignored by the academic world. Series of five public
lectures on education ( ' On the Future of Our Educational
Institutions' ) . Present at laying of foundation stone for
Bayreuth opera house ( 2 2 May ) .
l 873 Publication o f first Untimely Meditation: David Strauss,

the Confessor and Writer. Befriends Jewish student and

moral philosopher Paul Ree.
1874 Publication of second and third Untimely Meditation:
On the Advantage and Disadvantage of History for Life and
'Schopenhauer as Educator' .
1875 Meets Heinrich Koselitz (to whom Nietzsche gives the
pseudonym Peter Gast in 1 8 8 1 ) . Elisabeth moves to Basel
and sets up home for herself and her brother.
1876 Publication of fourt h Untimely Meditation: Richard
Wagner in Bayreuth . Attends first Bayreuth festival (July) .
Granted one-year leave o f absence from the university. Lives
in Sorrento with Ree and Malwida von Meysenbug. Sees
Wagner for last time.
1877 Returns to Basel and resumes teaching. Lives with
Elisabeth and Koselitz.
1878 Publication of Human, All Too Human, which finalizes
break with Wagner.
1879 Publication of second volume of Human, All Too
Human (Mixed Opinions and Maxims) . Resignation from
professorship due to ill-health; granted pension. Travels in
Switzerland, then to Naumburg.
1880 Publication of The Wanderer and His Shadow. Travels to
Riva del Garda, Venice, Marienbad, Naumburg, Stresa and
Genoa, where he spends the winter.
CHRONO L O GY IX

I88 I Publication of Dawn. Travels to Recoaro Terme and

Riva with Koselitz; alone to St Moritz and Sils-Maria. Winter
in Genoa.
I882 Publication of The Joyous Science. Meets Lou Salome
in Rome at the home of Malwida von Meysenbug (May ) .
Returns t o Naumburg; visits Berlin a n d Tautenburg, where
Lou j oins him. With Lou and Ree in Leipzig ( October) . Break
with Lou and Ree; leaves for Rapallo (November) .
I883 Publication o f Thus Spoke Zarathustra, parts one
and two. Death of Wagner ( r 3 February) . Travels to
Genoa, Rome, Sils-Maria, Naumburg, Genoa and Nice. In
Naumburg learns of Elisabeth's engagement to anti-Semite
Bernhard Forster, a member of the extended Wagner circle.
I884 Publication of Zarathustra, part three. Stays in Venice,
Sils-Maria, Zurich and Nice.
I885 Publication of Zarathustra, part four (published pri­
vately) . Travels to Venice, Sils-Maria, Naumburg and Nice.
Marriage of Elisabeth and Forster, who leave together for
the colony Nueva Germania in Paraguay.
I886 Publication of Beyond Good and Evil. Stays in
Naumburg, Leipzig, Genoa and Nice.
88
I 7 Publication of On the Genealogy of Morals. Travels to
Sils-Maria, Venice and back to Nice.
I888 Publication of The Case of Wagner. Stays in Turin and
Sils-Maria; returns to Turin in September. Composition of
last sane writings.
I889 Publication of Twilight of the Idols (completed in r 8 8 8 ) .
Collapses o n street i n Turin ( 3 January) . Retrieved by
Overbeck. Enters clinic in Basel ( ro January ) . Transferred
to clinic in Jena (I7 January) . Forster commits suicide in
Paraguay after embezzling colony's funds.
I890 Franziska Nietzsche takes her son to Naumburg, where
he remains in her care. Elisabeth returns from Paraguay.
I892 Plan for first edition of Nietzsche's published works ( dis­
continued after volume five ) , edited by Koselitz but arranged
by Elisabeth, who then returns to Paraguay to clear up busi­
ness of the colony.
I893 Elisabeth returns from Paraguay for good.
x C H RO N O L O GY

I894 Founding of the Nietzsche Archive.

I895 Publication of The Anti-christ and Nietzsche contra
Wagner ( both completed in I 8 8 8 ) . Elisabeth acquires all
rights to Nietzsche's writings.
I896 Archive transferred to Weimar.
I897 Death of Nietzsche's mother. Elisabeth takes Nietzsche
to Weimar.
I900 Death of Nietzsche ( 2 5 August) ; buried in Rocken.
I90 I First version of The Will to Power ( second, expanded
edition I9o6), edited by Elisabeth and Koselitz; based on
Nietzsche's notebooks and plans in his notebooks.
I908 First publication of Ecce Homo (written in I 8 8 8 ) .
 Introduction

During the l 8 8os, not long after he had completed Thus Spoke
Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche intended to write a magnum
opus that would articulate the full range of his mature thought.
The book was announced in 1 8 8 6 as being 'in preparation'
on the back cover of Beyond Good and Evil. He mentions it
again in On the Genealogy of Morals in 1 8 87 . 'I intend to deal
with these things more thoroughly and rigorously in another
connection ( under the title "A Contribution to the History of
European Nihilism " , to be included in a work which I am now
preparing: The Will to Power, an Attempt at a Re-valuation
of All Values, to which I refer the reader ) . ' 1 Throughout the
period from l 8 8 5 to l 8 8 8, Nietzsche kept extensive note­
books in which he developed material for this proj ect. During
Nietzsche's final productive summer of 1 8 8 8 , while he was
staying as he had for many prior summers in a rented room in
Sils-Maria, Switzerland, he made one last attempt to organize
his notes into this work, without success.
Sometime between 26 August and 3 September, Nietzsche
abandoned the proj ect in frustration - at least as he had previ­
ously conceived it. Instead, he envisioned reworking some of
the material collected thus far into texts that would become
Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, regarding the latter
as the first of a new, re-envisioned magnum opus in four parts
to be called Revaluation of All Values. The other three parts
were never drafted, and Nietzsche concluded that with The
Anti-Christ, the Revaluation project could be regarded as com­
pleted. Thus a longer book was never written; instead we have
xii INTRODUCTION

a variety o f works h e published o r prepared for publication,

from Beyond Good and Evil forwards, and his notebooks.2
After Nietzsche's breakdown in 1 8 89, and the passing of
control over his literary estate to his sister Elisabeth Forster­
Nietzsche, Nietzsche's friend Heinrich Koselitz ( 'Peter Gast' )
conceived the notion of publishing selections from these note­
books as a means of communicating the scope and systematic
character of Nietzsche's thought, using one of his simpler
outlines for the magnum opus as a guide to their arrange­
ment. It would appear that his justification for this was that
Nietzsche's late conception of The Anti-Christ as the com­
pleted Revaluation ought not to be credited. As he explained to
Elisabeth on 8 November 1 893 :

Given that the original title appears as: The Anti-Christ.

Revaluation of All Values (and therefore not 'The first book
of the revaluation of all values'), you may think that your
brother at the time of his incipient madness thought the book
completed . . . Nevertheless, the consequences of this revalu­
ation must also be explicitly illustrated in the field of morality,
philosophy and politics. No one today is able to imagine such
consequences - that is why the vast preparations by your brother,
the other three books of the Revaluation, must be ordered
according to my suggestion and gathered into a kind of system. 3

Eventually, Elisabeth warmed to this idea and the proj ect was
undertaken. Most of the editorial work was done by Koselitz
and his associates, not by Elisabeth (as she herself explains in
the preface to the 190 1 edition, where she 'stresses explicitly'
that she is 'not even the editor of the book but at most and
in the most modest sense of the word, a collaborator' ) ,4 whose
particular gifts lay more in the areas of administration and pro­
motion. Koselitz appears to have made a good-faith effort to
select the material that was of the greatest interest, and much
of the editorial activity was merely 'tidying' . Nor was it ever
his intention, as some have claimed, to convey the mislead­
ing impression of a magnum opus. As David Marc Hoffmann
explains, 'The editors, H. Koselitz, E. & A. Horneffer, had
I NTROD U C T I O N Xlll

originally chosen the title which mirrored the other volumes:

" Unpublished material from the years [1882183-1888] ( the
period of the Revaluation)" and in an introduction had dis­
cussed Nietzsche's procedure and the emergence of the late
literary remains. Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche suppressed this
introduction and replaced it with her own, and gave the vol­
ume the title "The Will to Power. Attempt at a Revaluation of
All Values. (Studies and Fragments)" .'5
The result of these two changes was to convey the impres­
sion that Elisabeth had successfully restored a lost magnum
opus, though to be fair to her, she never asserted that the book
was anything but an attempt to transcribe and publish a por­
tion of Nietzsche's literary remains from the l 8 8os; what is
more, he did in fact produce these notes in the hope that some
kind of magnum opus would emerge from them. Hers was a
proj ect not unlike the English archaeologist Arthur Evans' con­
temporaneous attempt to restore the ancient Minoan frescoes
at Knossos: bold to the point of folly surely, a mutilation of his­
torical remains perhaps, but not fundamentally dishonest. And
unlike Evans, Elisabeth did not have to ruin the texts them­
selves in the process, a fact which has made it possible for us to
improve upon her editors' work here.
A first edition was brought out in this somewhat misleading
form in 190 1 and contained 4 8 3 sections; the second, defini­
tive edition expanded the number of sections to l ,0 67 . Little
effort was made to render the material consistent with any of
Nietzsche's projected plans for it, plans he had abandoned in
any case. In many instances, longer discussions were cut up and
their portions given separate numbers without any indication
that this had been done, perhaps more out of pressure to pro­
duce more material than a desire to mislead about its content.
Elisabeth's editorial contribution seems to have been limited
to her insistence that Nietzsche had produced a philosophical
system that could compete with the systems of such figures as
Kant and Hegel ( for without that achievement, Nietzsche might
be regarded as nothing more than a belletrist, an impression
reinforced by the aphoristic style of many of his other works )
and that the text presented that system. Koselitz's editorial
XIV I NTRODUC T I O N

sin lay more in his silent acquiescence t o her overall charac­

terization of the material as Nietzsche's crowning achievement,
rather than in his manipulation of the materials themselves,
which was primarily intended to make them more accessible.
The book that resulted from these peculiar circumstances, Der
Wille zur Macht, is the book you hold in your hands, in English
translation.
Elisabeth's publication of the book was to have further, fate­
ful consequences. By 1930, Nietzsche was in vogue in Germany
j ust as the Nazis were coming into power and the material in
The Will to Power was being represented as the system of the
thinker of first importance to the Nazis by figures as negli­
gible as Alfred Baeumler, whose postscript accompanied the
one-volume edition and whose own philosophical writings
characterized Nietzsche as a Nazi prophet, or as significant as
Martin Heidegger, who regarded The Will to Power as contain­
ing the essence of Nietzsche's philosophy, a philosophy which in
his view was the culmination of the entire Western tradition.
This close association of the book with Nazism has been fur­
ther reinforced by the existence of a now famous photograph
of Elisabeth shaking hands with Adolf Hitler.
However, not long after the Second World War, the rehabil­
itation of Nietzsche's reputation was under way both in France
and the English-speaking world, and putting distance between
Nietzsche and The Will to Power was central to that task. In
one sense, this was easily accomplished: The Will to Power
was in no way the magnum opus some took it for, and was, at
most, the shadow of an imaginary book which had existed only
in Nietzsche's mind as an unfulfilled possibility, an anthology
of Nietzsche's notes to himself.
Unfortunately, these circumstances have conditioned the
way in which we view these texts, as if the published works
were 'canonical' and the notebooks 'apocryphal' . Matters are
not helped by the fact that Nietzsche seems here to speak glow­
ingly of domination and war, of Zuchtung ( which we translate
as 'cultivation' but which others have translated as 'breeding' ,
thus suggesting eugenics ) and even occasionally of a 'master
race ' . The impression conveyed by such remarks was far more
IN T R O D U C TI O N xv

troubling after the Second World War. As a result, some of

Nietzsche's advocates sought to delegitimize the notebooks,
as if one could confine everything distasteful about Nietzsche
within them and then somehow attribute it all to Elisabeth,
who bears ultimate responsibility for their publication in this
form ( and who is known to have forged some of Nietzsche's
letters, and thus seemed to be an unreliable custodian of the
Nietzsche corpus in any case ) . This problem was exacerbated
by the widespread myth that the Nietzsche of the notebooks
was more of a 'traditional' philosopher who offers a sweeping
metaphysical theory, that the world is 'will to power', while the
published Nietzsche is something far superior: an opponent of
metaphysics and a forerunner of deconstruction. The method
was to exorcize him of his colonialist and vitalist demons, drive
that legion into Elisabeth, and thence off a cliff.
One means by which this was accomplished was to suggest
that Nietzsche's failure to publish the material implied a deci­
sion not to do so, a rej ection of some kind. Now one might
think that not getting around to publishing something was not
a sufficiently effective repudiation. Consequently, stories began
to circulate that Nietzsche had literally abandoned the mater­
ial, with instructions that it be destroyed. According to R. J.
Hollindale, when Nietzsche left Sils-Maria on 20 September
1 8 8 8 , he left with his landlord some significant quantity of
what would become his literary remains from which The Will
to Power was constructed, with instructions to burn it.6 But on
this account, might we not say that, like Franz Kafka's friend
Max Brod, who received a similar request which would have
engulfed The Trial and The Castle in flames, the landlord, by
silently ignoring the request, saved Nietzsche from himself?
However that may be, there does not appear to be much rea­
son to regard the 'burning' story as true. If one goes back to the
1 893 report by Fritz Koegel of his friend visiting the locale and
finding the materials, it turns out that what Nietzsche wished
to dispose of were largely printer's proofs, precisely the sort of
thing one might abandon to destruction.7 And if Nietzsche did
leave behind manuscripts at Sils-Maria ( and there is no reason
to doubt it), it would be utterly without significance, for he no
XVI I NTRODU C T I O N

doubt left materials there i n September after every previous sum­

mer he had spent there. To leave them there would not be to
abandon them. After all, he would no doubt return, in the sum­
mer of 1 8 89, or so he thought. It was his unexpected collapse
into madness, not careful deliberation, which stranded these texts.
But might not Nietzsche have tacitly repudiated all this
material ? This view makes little sense on closer inspection. He
had been drawing from these notebooks continuously through
the l 8 8os for his published writings, and apart from his own
crossing-out of paragraphs, it is simply unknowable what value
he assigned to the notes he left unused. Even if we take the
completion of the longer books, Beyond Good and Evil and
On the Genealogy of Morals, before his final productive year
of l 8 8 8 as evidence that material left unused which was prior
to or contemporaneous with the composition of these books
was therefore abandoned, this accounts for at most a portion
of the material here; well over half of our texts were written
after On the Genealogy of Morals was completed. From that
point forwards, Nietzsche was writing at a frantic pace, turn­
ing out short work after short work, The Case of Wagner,
Twilight of the Idols, Ecce Homo, The Anti- Christ and hun­
dreds of pages of notes, from which much of The Will to Power
was taken. While we might speculate that Nietzsche might not
have returned to earlier notes, it is simply absurd to presuppose
that the material fr om the last year of his authorship which did
not find its way into the final works was therefore rejected.
There simply wasn't enough time for Nietzsche to formulate
and manifest such an intention; he had been attempting to
fashion some sort of unified work from this material as late
as August 1 8 8 8 and his collapse was to come the following
January. In any event, it might be thought a bit strange to sup­
pose that as Nietzsche approached his final breakdown, the
acuity of his judgement about the worth of his own writings
could only improve. Nietzsche's abandonment of the Will to
Power project seems to imply frustration with his inability to
fashion them into a coherent whole, rather than any rejection
of their content. If that is correct, the editors may have done
him a favour, not a disservice.
I N T R O DU C T I O N XVJI

In a sense, these questions are all irrelevant, for it was only

Elisabeth's presentation of the text in light of Nietzsche's inten­
tion to produce a magnum opus that has made the question of
his intentions relevant in the first place. Once the shadow cast
by the imaginary work is eliminated, the text can be j udged
for what it is: a posthumously published anthology of liter­
ary remains. In essence, what the editors provided was but one
possible path through the vast and dense forest of Nietzsche's
thought; in so doing, they ended up giving prominence to
certain aspects of his thinking which were less obvious in his
published writings . Three topics stand out in particular: nihil­
ism, metaphysics and the future of Europe.
In the notes that comprise the first book, 'European Nihilism',
Nietzsche attempts to describe and diagnose this pernicious
cultural condition which he believed was gradually overtaking
European civilization. Nietzsche had long sensed that some­
thing was wrong with modernity, and the root diagnosis he
offered in 1 874 in his essay 'Schopenhauer as Educator' was to
remain fundamentally the same henceforth:

The explanation of this spiritlessness and of why all moral

energy is at such a low ebb is difficult and involved; but no
one who considers the influence victorious Christianity had
on the morality of our ancient world can overlook the reac­
tion of declining Christianity upon our own time. Through the
exaltedness of its ideal, Christianity excelled the moral systems
of antiquity and the naturalism that resided in them to such a
degree that this naturalism came to excite apathy and disgust;
but later on, when these better and higher ideals, though now
known, proved unattainable, it was no longer possible to return
to what was good and high in antique virtue, however much one
might want to. It is in this oscillation between Christianity and
antiquity, between an imitated or hypocritical Christianity of
morals and an equally despondent and timid revival of antiquity,
that modern man lives, and does not live very happily; the fear
of what is natural he has inherited and the renewed attraction
of this naturalness, the desire for a firm footing somewhere,
the impotence of his knowledge that reels back and forth
XVlll I N T R O DU C T I O N

between the good and the better, all this engenders a restless­
ness, a disorder in the modern soul which condemns it to a
joyless unfruitfulness. 8

Though much would deepen and become shaded with irony as

Nietzsche came to regard the 'unattainability' of Christianity's
ideals as grounds for rej ecting the assessmetit that they were
'higher and better', this account remained at the centre of
Nietzsche's concerns. Finding some cure for this cultural ail­
ment is rendered all the more urgent when we consider that
the condition nihilism destroys, 'j oyful fruitfulness', in his view
should be the central aim of human existence. And a solution
becomes all the more difficult if it is to meet the stringent stand­
ards of our intellectual conscience by being altogether secular.
As Nietzsche sought to identify the central causes of nihilism,
he came to see Christianity as but one version of a deep-seated
human tendency to respond to our sense of fragility and in­
security by imagining a world very different from the world
in which we live: a world which possesses a meaningfulness,
coherence and stability which the real world actually lacks, a
world in which conflict, suffering and death prove to be illu­
sions, appearances beyond which a more satisfying reality lies.
Some of the material in the first book represents Nietzsche's
most sustained and incisive discussion of this subject, particu­
larly the so-called 'Lenzerheide fragment' of IO June r 8 87
(most of which the editors used for § 5 5 ) .
The notes that fill the remaining three books o f The Will to
Power represent various attempts both to deepen the account
of nihilism and, more importantly, offer intellectual and prac­
tical responses to it. But underlying all these exercises lies
one comprehensive thought: the reason why we have tended
to rej ect the real world, whether this rej ection takes moral,
religious or philosophical form, is that it is pervaded with
conflict and domination. Not only does the intent to domi­
nate manifest itself clearly in the political sphere, but many
social and psychological phenomena can be shown to harbour
it in concealed forms. When we turn to the natural world
viewed from a post-Darwinian perspective, competition seems
I N T R O DU C T I O N XIX

pervasive there as well. Nietzsche even entertains the hypoth­

esis ( following the inspiration of the great Croatian natural
philosopher Roger Boscovich) that all mechanical processes
can be reduced to a single physical force in which attraction
and repulsion ('attack' and 'defence' ) are but two sides of the
same tendency. As he puts it in the final words with which
the editors chose to end the volume, ' This world is the will to
power - and nothing besides! And even you yourselves are this
will to power - and nothing besides ! '
Such a hypothesis serves many purposes in the course of
Nietzsche's argument. The first and most important is that
Nietzsche identifies the will to power with creativity, which
he sees as the heart of what value is. If we are to be radically
secular thinkers, our standards of value must not lead us to
condemn the fundamental character of life and the world itself
as worthless. To discover that the world is will to power and
nothing besides is to discover that our prior scheme of val­
ues, which inspired Christianity and which Christianity in turn
has propagated, is itself inherently nihilistic and thus must be
replaced with something in harmony with the world as we
find it. Since everything is motivated by the will to power any­
way, the act of valuing itself is invariably an expression of it,
the scheme of values associated with Christianity very much
included. But this scheme of values condemns itself once we see
that it is the expression of the will to power of the very people
who fail to achieve power by more ordinary means: the weak.
It is because they are weak that they fail to respond creatively
and efficaciously to life, and it is because they are weak that a
world of conflict, suffering and death discourages them. Our
traditional values are nothing but the sour grapes of fragile and
insecure human animals, and we can do better than that. Once
we adopt a more pagan, more robust, more aggressive scheme
of values, the realization that the world is a world of will to
power should not only encourage us, but make us feel more at
home in the cosmos.
In the second book, 'Critique of the Highest Values
Hitherto', Nietzsche sets himself the task of exposing the role
that the will to power of the weak has played in shaping our
xx I N TRODU C T I O N

moral, religious and philosophical thinking and valuing for a

variety of reasons: to confirm the will to power hypothesis, to
deepen the explanation of the genesis of nihilism, to condemn
these modes of thought and evaluation and, finally, to pave the
way for new values which are consistent with the will to power
hypothesis and contribute to the overcoming of nihilism.
The 'Lenzerheide fragment' had argued, however, that our
tendency to regard the real world as an illusion is inspired not
only by suffering, but by the failure to find within experience
the purpose, unity and coherence our intellects expect real­
ity to possess. This theme introduces the 'Kantian' dimension
of Nietzsche's thought, for like Kant, Nietzsche viewed these
intellectual expectations not as signs of what reality must be
like (that way lies rationalist metaphysics, and again, nihilism,
once we discover that the world is fundamentally irrational )
but as artefacts of how the mind (the brain) organizes the raw
materials of experience. But whereas Kant regarded the point
of these organizing processes to be the achievement of scien­
tific knowledge, Nietzsche viewed them pragmatically, as tools
for better dominating our environment: in other words, the
intellect is also 'will to power and nothing beside'. Some of
Nietzsche's most interesting and obscure notes lie along these
lines, and collectively constitute his own naturalistic 'critique
of pure reason', which we find at the beginning of the third
book, 'Principle of a New Determination of Values'. And
again, if the 'categories of reason' are nothing but tools for
coping with and ultimately dominating our environments, it
would be unreasonable to demand that ultimate reality must
conform to them. This in turn destroys one central motivation
for positing a hidden, 'better' reality behind the veil of appear­
ance, and thus undermines the nihilism we would otherwise
fall into when we find, as we must, that there is no such reality.
The balance of the third book is taken up with the attempt to
interpret various natural, psychological and social phenomena
in terms of the will to power, once we have removed the false
unities of 'substance', 'causal law' and 'teleology' from them.
If the first three books of The Will to Power were all there
were, the publication of these notes would have been far less
I N T R O DU C T I O N XX!

controversial than it has been. Much of what Nietzsche has to

say up to that point has echoes in anti-Christian polemicists
like Voltaire, vitalists like Henri Bergson, pragmatists like John
Dewey and critics of modern culture and society like Matthew
Arnold and John Stuart Mill. However, in the fourth book,
'Discipline and Cultivation', Nietzsche hints at a practical,
perhaps even a political, solution to the crisis of nihilism. For
a part of Nietzsche's diagnosis of modernity is that centuries of
Christian influence have made us so submissive and mediocre that
we willingly allow ourselves to become exploited politically
and economically; as a result the world has become a kind of
vast social machine with human beings as its cogs and wheels.
Cultural creativity, 'j oyful fruitfulness', becomes impossible
for people like ourselves, and as a result higher culture begins
to die. The principal modes of revolt against these conditions,
whether liberal or Socialist, are rooted in levelling doctrines of
egalitarianism which are themselves j ust so much secularized
Christianity; only a renewed aristocratic sensibility, a new
cultural elitism, can save us.
In the end, Nietzsche does not seek to turn back the tide
of levelling and the reduction of most people to mere social
functions, even though he perceives this to be modernity's
own form of slavery. Rather, noting that in the past, cultural
achievement has always been the product of an aristocracy, and
that every aristocracy presupposes some form of exploitation,
he embraces this otherwise horrifying development ( which in
places he claims may culminate in some form of Socialism)
as precisely the desired precondition for the emergence of a
new cultural elite, an elite which will feed off this great social
machine and use it in pursuit of its own ends. In order to do
this, these new aristocrats will have to reject the enervating,
egalitarian values which have prevailed among the many; for
them to recognize that the world is will to power means to
recognize that being a part of a dominating and exploiting elite
is good. When the final book is not developing this account, it
devotes itself to sketching what these new aristocrats will be
like. Taken in the abstract, these sketches represent the begin­
nings of a new virtue ethic, one which conceivably could have
xxn I NT R O DU C T I O N

been put t o partial use b y liberal o r progressive individualists.

Indeed, much of the account resembles John Stuart Mill's own
description of individual self-formation and development once
the individual is given freedom fr om the stultifying effects
of the conformist many, but whereas Mill wants to get away
from the many, Nietzsche wants to get above them, and to use
them. And given his metaphysical setting, the world as will to
power, the sensibility of Nietzsche's imagined elite proves to be
far more aggressive, as befits a people whose task will involve,
in part, maintaining their dominance and perpetuating the
exploitation their lives require.
It was this book that Alfr ed Baeumler fastened upon and
tried to promote in the 1 9 3 0s and 1940s as a kind of Nazi
bible, a gospel of what he called in his book Nietzsche: der
Philosoph und Politiker ( Leipzig: Reclam, 193 1 ) 'heroic
realism' . Although Nietzsche is quite vague about the politi­
cal basis of this new elite which is supposed to save Europe
from itself, his celebration of conflict, domination and exploit­
ation seemed to Baeumler to dovetail sufficiently with Hitler's
actions and goals to j ustify claiming for Nietzsche the status of
chief ideologue for National Socialism. But there were prob­
lems all along, and even dissenters from this view among the
Nazis themselves. For one thing, race was ultimately not a cen­
tral category for Nietzsche in the way that it was for the Nazis.
Like most people of his time, Nietzsche thought that there
were human populations with their distinctive characteristics
and histories, but his· refusal to reify racial essences precluded
him from regarding them as fundamental, despite the biologis­
tic character of many of his remarks. Moreover, any detailed
and plausible history of Europe, whether cultural or biological,
could not possibly identify some alleged ancient Aryan race
with any particular European nationalities, and then in turn
ascribe all cultural achievements to it as the Nazis had rather
absurdly tried to do.9
For Nietzsche, the cultural achievements of Europe were
the product of an enormously complex and multifarious
process, one to which Germans had contributed many unfor­
tunate elements (e.g. the Protestant Reformation ) , and one
I N T R O DU C T I O N xxm

in which the Jews had played an essential role, albeit an ambig­

uous one: they invented Christianity after all, but those who
remained Jewish contributed greatly to Europe's intellectual
development, especially the Enlightenment, to which Nietzsche
himself owed a considerable debt. Furthermore, he regarded
anti-Semitism as a manifestation of the resentment of the less
gifted many. As for nationalism, Nietzsche had nothing but
contempt for it, regarding it as an expression of the gregarious
mentality of the levelled masses, and German nationalism, the
variety closest to home, was an object of his especial wrath.
The desire for Socialism he also regarded as more a symptom
of modernity's shortcomings and a problem to be solved than
a noble sentiment to be embraced. Indeed, as the Nazi ideo­
logue Ernst Krieck sarcastically put it, 'All in all, Nietzsche was
an opponent of Socialism, an opponent of nationalism, and an
opponent of racial thinking. Apart from these bents of mind,
he might have made an outstanding nazi.'10
That said, Nietzsche's proposed elite remains a troublingly
ambiguous notion. It presupposes the synthesis of a wide diver­
sity of European cultures and populations, both within itself and
in the world it bestrides. It may indeed dominate and exploit
nations and perhaps even Socialist ones, but it cannot itself
believe in doctrines like National Socialism, which are barbaric
communal ideologies beneath its dignity. Few of the prominent
figures associated with the Third Reich could be mistaken for
the virtuous nobles and creative dynamos he foresaw; men
like Goebbels and Himmler were little more than pretentious
bigots and thugs. And yet, in the end, the views that emerge
from 'Discipline and Cultivation' are sufficiently vague and
disturbing that thay give one pause, or even lead one to hope
that these were not Nietzsche's considered views. By rendering
them far more accessible than thousands of pages of chaotic,
sometimes indecipherable manuscripts, The Will to Power has
arguably done Nietzsche's reputation some harm. However,
whether it has done so j ustly or not remains to be seen; while
many have argued that Nietzsche's notebooks should be
ignored in preference to his published writings, no one has ever
satisfactorily shown that The Will to Power is unrepresentative
XXIV I N T R O DU C T I O N

o f his unpublished writings o r the thoughts which animated

them throughout the r 8 8os. By offering this corrected and, we
hope, more clearly translated edition, we offer what is at the
very least a fascinating collection of fragments penned by one
of the great minds of modernity, and what was at one time
thought by some to express the very essence of his thought. To
paraphrase Nietzsche's own late self-description, it is not so
much a book as it is 'dynamite', and, as such, should be read
and handled with extreme caution.
I am indebted to the support and assistance of numerous
people, but most notably and in no particular order: Portland
State University for sabbatical support; Iain Thomson at the
University of New Mexico for innumerable stylistic sugges­
tions; Jessica Harrison at Penguin for rescuing the proj ect from
near-oblivion; David Marc Hoffmann at Nietzsche House in
Sils-Maria, and Beat Rollin at the University of Basel, for their
insights into the editorial history of the text; Gerald Simon of
the Nietzsche Channel for help with identifying sources; Carmel
Swann for assistance with the French passages; Chiara Brown
for assistance with the Italian passages; Anna Herve, Linden
Lawson and Michael Brown for editorial assistance; my
mentor Richard Schacht, for his insights into Nietzsche
and his persistent championing of this text in the teeth of
overwhelming academic opposition; my late mother-in-law,
Marguerite Wichowski, whose bequest made the completion
of this proj ect possible at all; and my wife, LisaMary, for her
endless patience and generosity.

R. Kevin Hill
r September 20 1 6

NOTES

r. On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Michael A. Scarpitti, ed.

Robert C. Holub (London: Penguin Classics, 201 4), p. 1 42.
2. Mazzino Montinari, Reading Nietzsche, trans. Greg W hitlock
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003),
pp. 98-9.
I NTRODU C T I O N xxv

3. David Marc Hoffmann, Zur Geschichte des Nietzsche-Archivs.

Chronik, Studien und Dokumente (Berlin and New York: De
Gruyter, 1991), p. 15.
4. Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche, Vorwart, Der Wille zur Macht in
Nietzsche's Werke, 15 vols (Leipzig: Druck und Verlag von C. G.
Naumann, 1901), XV, p. 22.
5. Hoffmann, Nietzsche-Archivs, pp. 49-50. Hoffmann himself
leaves the dates blank, presumably because while the prior vol­
umes he is referring to read '1882/83-1888', in fact two notes in
The Will to Power (the unnumbered material between§ 134 and
§ 135, along with§ 149) pre-date 1882.
6. R. ]. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), p. 298.
This story was subsequently removed from the Cambridge
edition of Hollingdale's biography, but has taken on a life of its
own.
7. Fritz Koegel, 'Friedrich Nietzsche. Ein ungedrucktes Vorwort
zur Gotzendammerung', Das Magazin fur Literatur 62 (1893),
pp. 702-4.
8. Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale,
trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), p. 133·
9. For a detailed discussion of this, see David B. Dennis,
Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture (Cam­
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
IO. Quoted in Max W hyte, 'The Uses and Abuses of Nietzsche in
the Third Reich: Alfred Baeumler's "Heroic Realism"', Journal
of Contemporary History 43(2) (2008), p. 188.
 Note on the Text and Translation

Even apart from the question of whether these notes had

Nietzsche's imprimatur, they would still be of value in the way
that the notebooks of any important author can be of value; as
our predecessor Walter Kaufmann put it, they afford a glimpse
into Nietzsche's workshop. However, they are fragmentary
and chaotic, hopscotching from one topic to another. A purely
chronological presentation, while immeasurably valuable for
scholarship, renders them all but unreadable. Happily, the
original editors of The Will to Power solved this problem for
us: the material was rearranged topically, following a rough,
four-part outline taken from Nietzsche ( one of many and by
no means the latest) , and further subdivided by a scheme of
the editors' own devising. This rendered the material readable.
Our solution to the problem of how to present this material has
thus involved the same compromise that Walter Kaufmann fol­
lowed: preserve the thematic ordering, while correcting errors
and flagging or removing editorial creativity as much as feas­
ible. Unfortunately, Walter Kaufmann's translation was made
prior to the publication of the German historical-critical edi­
tion of Nietzsche's writings, which Giorgio Colli and Mazzino
Montinari began to edit in 1 967, continuing work which
they had begun in the late 1 9 5 0s for an Italian translation of
Nietzsche's works. Though Kaufmann in principle had access
to the original manuscripts, our research suggests that he did
not always avail himself of them, and that much of the editor­
ial activity which created the German editions of The Will to
Power was thus largely invisible to him. By contrast, we have
benefited from the opportunity to compare the German edition
xxvm N O T E O N T H E T EXT AND T RA N S LAT I O N

with the manuscripts transcribed i n the Colli-Montinari edition

( and in light of subsequent, published corrections of these), in
order to see what exactly was done with these texts.
If our research had shown that the editorial activity so
thoroughly modified the texts as to make them useless as
sources of information about Nietzsche's thought and writing,
then we would never have decided to translate a new edition
of The Will to Power for publication. But neither is the text a
successfully reconstituted magnum opus: we find that the truth
lies somewhere in the middle. In most cases, breaking up the
manuscripts into fragments and rearranging them obscured
Nietzsche's meaning no more than tidying up his punctuation
and paragraphing did. A more serious difficulty involved the
editors' occasional preference for crossed-out rough drafts over
Nietzsche's final draft. Also, the editors failed to note that some
passages are merely Nietzsche's reading notes about passages
from other authors (many of Nietzsche's remarks on the differ­
ence between the ethics of Jesus and the culture of the Church
are merely reader's notes on Tolstoy, and express Tolstoy's
views, albeit views Nietzsche would appropriate and repeat in
The Anti-Christ) . Perhaps the worst practice involved combin­
ing sentences and paragraphs fr om different manuscripts into
single, apparently continuous notes and sometimes modifying
sentence order within a note ( fortunately, this is quite rare;
where this has occurred, we have indicated the independence of
the various portions of text by separating them with a centred
asterisk) . Thus, while the textual foundation of this translation
is Der Wille zur Macht. 1884188. Versuch einer Umwerthung
aller Werthe (the second, expanded edition contained in vols
9 and IO of Nietzsche's Werke, Taschen-Ausgabe, Leipzig: C.
G. Naumann Verlag, 1906), all of its discrepancies with the
original manuscripts have been corrected.1 In all instances we
have followed the most recent draft short of a published text,
taking full account of Nietzsche's own corrections. If the entire
section was crossed out, we ignored Nietzsche's rej ection of it
rather than leave a section blank, but indicate this fact in an
endnote. Where Nietzsche quotes from material in a language
other than German, we have reproduced or translated the
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
found numerously within 100 miles of it. They adhere to stones in
rapid water, and differ from the Melaniidae of the Old World and of S.
America in the absence of a fringe to the mantle and in being
oviparous. They do not occur north of the St. Lawrence River, or
north of U.S. territory in the west, or in New England. Three-quarters
of all the known species inhabit the rough square formed by the
Tennessee River, the Mississippi, the Chattahoochee River, and the
Gulf of Mexico. The Mississippi is a formidable barrier to their
extension, and a whole section (Trypanostoma, with the four genera
Io, Pleurocera, Angitrema, and Lithasia) does not occur west of that
river. The Viviparidae are also very largely developed, the genera
Melantho, Lioplax, and Tulotoma being peculiar. The Pulmonata are
also abundant, while the richness of the Unionidae may be gathered
from the fact that Wetherby states[377] that in 1874 no less than 832
species in all had been described.
The entire Mississippi basin is inhabited by a common
assemblage of Unionidae, and a considerable number of the species
are distributed over the whole of this area, Texas, and parts of E.
Mexico. Some species have spread out of this area into Michigan,
Canada, the Red River, and Hudson’s Bay district, and even into
streams in New York which drain into the Atlantic. An entirely
different set of forms occupy the great majority of the rivers falling
into the Atlantic, the Appalachian Mountains acting as an effective
barrier between the two groups of species, which appear to mingle
below the southern end of the range. In many cases Unionidae seem
to have no difficulty in migrating from river to river, if the distance is
not extreme; they probably are carried across overflowed districts in
time of flood.[378]
 Fig. 227.—Helix (Arionta)
fidelis Gray, Oregon.
(2) The Californian Sub-region is markedly distinct from the rest
of N. America. The characteristic sombre Helices of the Eastern
States are almost entirely wanting, and are replaced by Arionta (20
sp.), a larger and more varied group, which may have some affinity
to Chinese forms. Glyptostoma (1 sp.) is also peculiar. Selenites
here has its metropolis, and Pristiolma is a remarkable group of
small Hyalinia (Zonites), but the larger forms of the Eastern States
are wanting. Several remarkable and quite peculiar forms of slug
occur, namely, Ariolimax (whose nearest relation is Arion),
Prophysaon, Hemphillia, and Binneya. There are no land
operculates.
Not more than 15 to 20 species of the Pleuroceridae (sect.
Goniobasis) occur west of the Rocky Mountains, and only a single
Unio, 5 Anodonta, and 1 Margaritana, which is common to New
England. Pompholyx is a very remarkable ultra-dextral form of
Limnaea, apparently akin to the Choanomphalus of L. Baikal.
Bithynia, absent from the Eastern States, is represented by two
species. The general indications are in favour of the Californian
fauna having migrated from an Old World source after the upheaval
of the Sierras; the American fauna, on the other hand, is purely
indigenous, with no recent Old World influence at all.
Land Mollusca of the Nearctic Region
Glandina 4
Selenites 6
Limax 4
Vitrina 4
 Vitrinozonites 1
Mesomphix 15
Hyalinia 22
Conulus 1
Gastrodonta 9
Pristiloma 2
Tebennophorus 4
Ariolimax 6
Prophysaon 2
Hemphillia 1
Binneya 1
Patula 18
Punctum 2
Arionta 20
Praticola 2
Glyptostoma 1
Mesodon 27
Stenotrema 11
Triodopsis 21
Polygyra 23
Polygyrella 2
Gonostoma 1
Vallonia 1
Strobila 2
Pupa 18
Vertigo 8
Holospira 2
Cionella 1
Bulimulus 6
Macroceramus 1
Succinea 21
Vaginulus 1
Helicina 2

F. The Neotropical Region

The land Mollusca of the Neotropical Region stand in complete
contrast to those of the Nearctic. Instead of being scanty, they are
exceedingly abundant; instead of being small and obscure, they are
among the largest in size, most brilliant in colour, and most singular
in shape that are known to exist. At the same time they are, as a
whole, isolated in type, and exhibit but little relation with the Mollusca
of any other region.
The most marked feature is the predominance of the peculiar
genera Bulimus and Bulimulus, the centre of whose development
appears to lie in Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, but which diminish, both
in numbers and variety of form, in the eastern portion of the region.
In the forests of Central America, Venezuela, and Ecuador, and, to a
lesser degree, in those of Peru and Brazil, occurs the genus
Orthalicus, whose tree-climbing habits recall the Cochlostyla of the
Philippines. These three groups of bulimoid forms constitute, as far
as the mainland is concerned, the preponderating mass of the land
Mollusca. Helix proper is most strongly developed in the Greater
Antilles, which possess several peculiar groups of great beauty. In
Central America Helix is comparatively scarce, but in the northern
portions of the continent several fine genera (Labyrinthus, Isomeria,
Solaropsis) occur, which disappear altogether towards the south.
Carnivorous land Mollusca are, so far as Central America is
concerned, more highly developed than in any other quarter of the
world, particularly in the genera Glandina and Streptostyla. These
genera also penetrate the northern portions of the continent,
Glandina reaching as far as Ecuador, and Streptostyla as far as
Peru. The Greater Antilles have also characteristic forms of these
genera. Streptaxis is tolerably abundant all over tropical South
America, and is the one pulmonate genus which shows any affinity
with the African fauna.
The slugs are exceedingly scarce. Vaginula occurs throughout,
and is the only genus in any sense characteristic.
Clausilia, in the sub-genus Nenia, occurs along the Andean chain
from the extreme north (but not in Central America) as far south as
Bolivia. It has in all probability made its way into S. America in
exceedingly remote ages from its headquarters in Eastern Asia. No
species survives in N. America, and a single straggler is found in
Porto Rico. The genera Macroceramus, Cylindrella, and Strophia,
are characteristic West Indian forms, which are only slightly
represented on the mainland. Homalonyx, a curious form akin to
Succinea, is peculiar to the region.

Fig. 228.—Homalonyx unguis Fér.,

Demerara. sh, Shell (shown also
separate); p.o, pulmonary orifice.
Land operculates attain a most extraordinary development in the
Greater Antilles, and constitute, in some cases, nearly one-half of the
whole Molluscan fauna. Several groups of the Cyclostomatidae find
their headquarters here, and some spread no farther. On the
mainland this prominence does not continue. West Indian influence
is felt in Central America and on the northern coast district, and
some Antillean genera make their way as far as Ecuador. The whole
group entirely disappears in Chili and Argentina, becoming scarce
even in Brazil.
Among the fresh-water operculates, Ampullaria is abundant, and
widely distributed. Vivipara, so characteristic of N. America, is
entirely absent. Chilina, a remarkable fresh-water pulmonate, akin to
Limnaea, is peculiar to Chili, Patagonia, and Southern Brazil, but is
not found in the tropical portion of the continent. Of the fresh-water
Pelecypoda Mycetopus, Hyria, Castalia, Leila, and Mülleria are
peculiar forms, akin to the Unionidae.
(1) The Antillean Sub-region surpasses all other districts in the
world in respect of (1) extraordinary abundance of species, (2) sharp
definition of limits as a whole, (3) extreme localisation of the fauna of
the separate islands. The sub-region includes the whole of the half-
circle of islands from the Bahamas to Grenada, together with the
extreme southern end of the peninsula of Florida, which was once,
no doubt, a number of small islands like the Bahamas. Trinidad, and
probably Tobago, although containing an Antillean element, belong
to the mainland of S. America, from which they are only separated
by very shallow water.
The sub-region appears to fall into four provinces:—
(a) Cuba, the Bahamas, and S. Florida; (b) Jamaica; (c) San
Domingo (Haiti), Porto Rico, and the Virgin Is., with the Anguilla and
St. Bartholomew group; (d) the islands from Guadeloupe to
Grenada. The first three provinces contain the mass of the
characteristic Antillean fauna, the primary feature being the
extraordinary development of the land operculates, which here
reaches a point unsurpassed in any other quarter of the globe. The
relative numbers are as follows:—
Cuba Jamaica San Domingo Porto Rico
Inoperculate 362 221 152 75
Operculate 252 242 100 23
It appears, then, that the proportion of operculate to inoperculate
species, while very high in Cuba (about 41 per cent of the whole),
reaches its maximum in Jamaica (where the operculates are actually
in a majority), begins to decline in San Domingo (about 40 per cent),
and continues to do so in Porto Rico, where they are not more than
24 per cent of the whole. These operculates almost all belong to the
families Cyclostomatidae and Helicinidae, only two genera
(Aperostoma and Megalomastoma) belonging to the Cyclophorus
group. Comparatively few genera are absolutely peculiar to the
islands, one or two species of most of them occurring in Central or S.
America, but of the several hundreds of operculate species which
occur on the islands, not two score are common to the mainland.
 Map to illustrate the
GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION
of the Land Mollusca of the
WEST INDIES.
The red line marks the 100 fathom line.
London: Macmillan and Cọ. London: Stanford’s Geogḷ Estabṭ.
The next special feature of the sub-region is a remarkable
development of peculiar sub-genera of Helix. In this respect the
Antilles present a striking contrast to both Central and S. America,
where the prime feature of the land Pulmonata is the profusion of
Bulimus and Bulimulus, and Helix is relatively obscured. No less
than 14 sub-genera of Helix, some of which contain species of
almost unique beauty and size, are quite peculiar to the Greater
Antilles, and some are peculiar to individual islands.
 Here, too, is the metropolis of Cylindrella (of which there are 130
species in Cuba alone), a genus which just reaches S. America, and
has a few species along the eastern sea-board of the Gulf of Mexico.
Macroceramus and Strophia are quite peculiar; the former, a genus
allied to Cylindrella, which attains its maximum in Cuba and San
Domingo, is scarcely represented in Jamaica, and disappears south
of Anguilla; the latter, a singular form, resembling a large Pupa in
shape, which also attains its maximum in Cuba, is entirely wanting in
Jamaica, and has its last representative in S. Croix. One species
irregularly occurs at Curaçao.
The carnivorous group of land Mollusca are represented by
several peculiar forms of Glandina, which attain their maximum in
Jamaica and Cuba, but entirely disappear in the Lesser Antilles.
A certain number of the characteristic N. American genera are
found in the Antillean Sub-region, indicating a former connexion,
more or less intimate, between the W. Indies and the mainland. The
genera are all of small size. The characteristic N. American Hyalinia
are represented in Cuba, San Domingo, and Porto Rico; among the
Helicidae, Polygyra reaches Cuba, but no farther, and Strobila
Jamaica. The fresh-water Pulmonata are of a N. American type, as
far as the Greater Antilles are concerned, but the occurrence of
Gundlachia (Tasmania and Trinidad only) in Cuba is an unexplained
problem at present. Unionidae significantly occur only at the two
ends of the chain of islands, not reaching farther than Cuba (Unio 3
sp.) at one end, and Trinidad (which is S. American) at the other.
A small amount of S. American influence is perceptible throughout
the Antilles, chiefly in the occurrence of a few species of Bulimulus
and Simpulopsis. The S. American element may have strayed into
the sub-region by three distinct routes: (1) by way of Trinidad,
Tobago, and the islands northward; (2) by a north-easterly extension
of Honduras towards Jamaica, forming a series of islands of which
the Rosalind and Pedro banks are perhaps the remains; (3) by a
similar approximation of the peninsula of Yucatan and the western
extremity of Cuba. Central America is essentially S. American in its
fauna, and the characteristic genera of Antillean operculates which
occur on its eastern coasts are sufficient evidence of the previous
existence of a land connexion more or less intimate (see map).
(a) Cuba is by far the richest of the Antilles in land Mollusca, but it
must be remembered that it is also much better explored than San
Domingo, the only island likely to rival it in point of numbers. It
contains in all 658 species, of which 620 are land and 38 fresh-
water, the land operculates alone amounting to 252.
Carnivorous genera form but a small proportion of the whole.
There are 18 Glandina (which belong to the sections Varicella and
Boltenia) and 4 Streptostyla, the occurrence of this latter genus
being peculiar to Cuba and Haiti (1 sp.) among the Antilles, and
associating them closely with the mainland of Central America,
where Streptostyla is abundant. These two genera alone represent
the Agnatha throughout the sub-region.
There are no less than 84 species of Helix, belonging to 12 sub-
genera. Only one of these (Polymita) is quite peculiar to Cuba, but of
7 known species of Jeanerettia and 8 of Coryda, 6 and 7
respectively are Cuban. Thelidomus has 15 species (Jamaica 3,
Porto Rico 3); Polydontes has 3, the only other being from Porto
Rico; Hemitrochus has 12 (Jamaica 1, Bahamas 6); Cysticopsis 9
(Jamaica 6); Eurycampta 4 (Bahamas 1).
The Cylindrellidae find their maximum development in Cuba. As
many as 34 Macroceramus occur (two-thirds of the known species),
and 130 Cylindrella, some of the latter being most remarkable in
form (see Fig. 151, B, p. 247).
The land operculates belong principally to the families
Cyclostomatidae and Helicinidae. Of the former, Cuba is the
metropolis of Ctenopoma and Chondropoma, the former of which
includes 30 Cuban species, as compared with 1 from San Domingo
and 2 from Jamaica. Megalomastoma (Cyclophoridae) is also
Haitian and Porto Rican, but not Jamaican. Blaesospira, Xenopoma,
and Diplopoma are peculiar. The Helicinidae consist mainly of
Helicina proper (58 sp.), which here attains by far its finest
development in point of size and beauty, and of Eutrochatella (21
sp.), which is peculiar to the three great islands (Jamaica 6 sp., San
Domingo 6 sp.).
The Bahamas, consisting in all of more than 700 islands, are very
imperfectly known, but appear to be related partly to Cuba, partly to
San Domingo, from each of which they are separated by a narrow
channel of very deep water. They are certainly not rich in the
characteristic groups of the Greater Antilles. The principal forms of
Helix are Plagioptycha (6 sp.), common with San Domingo, and
Hemitrochus (6 sp.), common with Cuba. Strophia is exceedingly
abundant, but Cylindrella, Macroceramus, and Glandina have but
few species. There are a few species of Ctenopoma, Chondropoma,
and Cistula, while a single Schasicheila (absent from the rest of the
sub-region) forms a link with Mexico.

Fig. 229.—Characteristic Cuban

Helices. A, Polydontes imperator
Montf. B, Caracolus rostrata Pfr.
C, Polymita muscarum Lea.
Southern Florida, with one or two species each of Hemitrochus,
Cylindrella, Macroceramus, Strophia, Ctenopoma, and
Chondropoma, belongs to this province.
(b) Jamaica.—The land Mollusca of Jamaica are, in point of
numbers and variety, quite unequalled in the world. There are in all
as many as 56 genera and more than 440 species, the latter being
nearly all peculiar. The principal features are the Glandinae, the
Helicidae, and the land operculates. The Glandinae belong
principally to the sub-genera Varicella, Melia, and Volutaxis,
Streptostyla being absent, although occurring in Cuba and San
Domingo. There are 10 genera of Helix, of which Pleurodonta is
quite peculiar, while Sagda (13 sp.) is common only with S.W. San
Domingo (2 sp.), and Leptoloma (8 sp.) only with Cuba (1 sp.). The
single Strobila seems to be a straggler from a N. American source.
Macroceramus has only 2 species as against 34 in Cuba, and of
Cylindrella, in which Cuba (130 sp.) is so rich, only 36 species occur.
The genus Leia, however (14 sp.), is all but peculiar, occurring
elsewhere only in the neighbouring angle of San Domingo, which is
so closely allied with Jamaica. The complete absence of Strophia is
remarkable.

Fig. 230.—Characteristic
Jamaican and Haitian
Mollusca: A, Sagdae
pistylium Müll., Jamaica; B,
Chondropoma salleanum Pfr.,
San Domingo; C,
Eutrochatella Tankervillei
Gray, Jamaica; D, Cylindrella
agnesiana C. B. Ad.,
Jamaica.
 The land operculates form the bulk of the land fauna, there being
actually 242 species, as against 221 of land Pulmonata, a proportion
never again approached in any part of the world. As many as 80 of
these belong to the curious little genus Stoastoma, which is all but
peculiar to the island, one species having been found in San
Domingo, and one in Porto Rico. Geomelania and Chittya, two
singular inland forms akin to Truncatella, are quite peculiar. Alcadia
reaches its maximum of 14 species, as against 4 species in San
Domingo and 9 species in Cuba, and Lucidella is common to San
Domingo only; but, if Stoastoma be omitted, the Helicinidae
generally are not represented by so many or by so striking forms as
in Cuba, which has 90 species, as against Jamaica 44, and San
Domingo 35.
(c) San Domingo, although not characterised by the extraordinary
richness of Cuba and Jamaica, possesses many specially
remarkable forms of land Mollusca, to which a thorough exploration,
when circumstances permit, will no doubt make important additions.
From its geographical position, impinging as it does on all the islands
of the Greater Antilles, it would be expected that the fauna of San
Domingo would not exhibit equal signs of isolation, but would appear
to be influenced by them severally. This is exactly what occurs, and
San Domingo is consequently, although very rich in peculiar species,
not equally so in peculiar genera. The south-west district shows
distinct relations with Jamaica, the Jamaican genera Leia,
Stoastoma, Lucidella, and the Thaumasia section of Cylindrella
occurring here only. The north and north-west districts are related to
Cuba, while the central district, consisting of the long band of
mountainous country which traverses the island, contains the more
characteristic Haitian forms.
The Helicidae are the most noteworthy of the San Domingo land
Mollusca. The group Eurycratera, which contains some of the finest
existing land snails, is quite peculiar, while Parthena, Cepolis,
Plagioptycha, and Caracolus here reach their maximum. The
Cylindrellidae are very abundant, but no section is peculiar. Land
operculates do not bear quite the same proportion to the Pulmonata
as in Cuba and Jamaica, but they are well represented (100 to 152);
Rolleia is the only peculiar genus.
The relations of San Domingo to the neighbouring islands are
considerably obscured by the fact that they are well known, while
San Domingo is comparatively little explored. To this may perhaps
be due the curious fact that there are actually more species common
to Cuba and Porto Rico (26) than to Porto Rico and San Domingo.
Cuba shares with San Domingo its small-sized Caracolus and also
Liguus, but the great Eurycratera, Parthena, and Plagioptycha are
wholly wanting in Cuba. The land operculates are partly related to
Cuba, partly to Jamaica, thus Choanopoma, Ctenopoma, Cistula,
Tudora, and many others, are represented on all these islands, while
the Jamaican Stoastoma occurs on San Domingo and Porto Rico,
but not on Cuba, and Lucidella is common to San Domingo and
Jamaica alone. An especial link between Jamaica and San Domingo
is the occurrence in the south-west district of the latter island of
Sagda (2 sp.). The relative numbers of the genera Strophia,
Macroceramus, and Helicina, as given below (p. 351), are of interest
in this connexion.
Porto Rico, with Vièque, is practically a fragment of San Domingo.
The points of close relationship are the occurrence of Caracolus,
Cepolis, and Parthena among the Helicidae, and of Simpulopsis,
Pseudobalea, and Stoastoma. Cylindrella and Macroceramus are
but poorly represented, but Strophia still occurs. The land
operculates (see the Table) show equal signs of removal from the
headquarters of development. Megalomastoma, however, has some
striking forms. The appearance of a single Clausilia, whose nearest
relations are in the northern Andes, is very remarkable. Gaeotis,
which is allied to Peltella (Ecuador only), is peculiar.
 Fig. 231.—Examples of West Indian
Helices: A, Helix (Parthena)
angulata Fér., Porto Rico; B,
Helix (Thelidomus) lima Fér.,
Vièque; C, Helix (Dentellaria) nux
denticulata Chem., Martinique.
Land Mollusca of the Greater Antilles
Cuba. Jamaica. S. Domingo. Porto Rico.
Glandina 18 24 15 8
Streptostyla 4 ... 2 ...
Volutaxis ... 11 (?) 1 ...
Selenites 1 ... ... ...
Hyalinia 4 11 5 6
Patula 5 1 ... ...
Sagda ... 13 2 ...
Microphysa 7 18 8 3
Cysticopsis 9 6 ... ...
Hygromia (?) ... ... 3 ...
Leptaxis (?) ... ... 1 ...
Polygyra 2 ... ... ...
Jeanerettia 6 ... ... 1
Euclasta ... ... ... 4
Plagioptycha ... ... 14 2
Strobila ... 1 ... ...
Dialeuca ... 1 ... ...
Leptoloma 1 8 ... ...
Eurycampta 4 ... ... ...
Coryda 7 ... ... ...
Thelidomus 15 3 ... 3
Eurycratera ... ... 7 ...
Parthena ... ... 2 2
Cepolis ... ... 3 1
Caracolus 8 ... 6 2
Polydontes 3 ... ... 1
Hemitrochus 12 1 ... ...
Polymita 5 ... ... ...
Pleurodonta ... 34 ... ...
Inc. sed. 5 ... ... ...
Simpulopsis ... ... 1 1
Bulimulus 3 3 6 7
Orthalicus 1 1 ... ...
Liguus 3 ... 1 ...
Gaeotis ... ... ... 3
Pineria 2 ... ... 1
Macroceramus 34 2 14 3
Leia ... 14 2 ...
Cylindrella 130 36 35 3
Pseudobalea 2 ... 1 1
Stenogyra 6 7 (?) ...
Opeas 8 (?) 4 6
Subulima 6 14 2 2
Glandinella 1 ... ... ...
Spiraxis 2 (?) 2 1
Melaniella 7 ... ... ...
Geostilbia 1 ... 1 ...
Cionella 2 ... ... ...
Leptinaria ... 1 ... 3
Obeliscus ... ... 1 2
Pupa 2 7 3 2
Vertigo 4 ... ... ...
Strophia 19 ... 3 2
Clausilia ... ... ... 1
Succinea 11 2 5 3
Vaginula 2 2 2 1
Megalomastoma 13 ... 1 3
Neocyclotus 1 33(?) ... ...
Licina 1 ... 3 ...
Jamaicia ... 2 ... ...
Crocidopoma ... 1 3 ...
Rolleia ... ... 1 ...
Choanopoma 25 12 19 3
Ctenopoma 30 2 1 ...
 Cistula 15 3 3 3
Chondropoma 57 (?) 19 4
Tudora 7 17 5 ...
Adamsiella 1 12 ... ...
Blaesospira 1 ... ... ...
Xenopoma 1 ... ... ...
Cistula 15 3 3 ...
Colobostylus 4 13 5 ...
Diplopoma 1 ... ... ...
Geomelania ... 21 ... ...
Chittya ... 1 ... ...
Blandiella ... ... 1 ...
Stoastoma ... 80 1 1
Eutrochatella 21 6 6 ...
Lucidella ... 4 1 ...
Alcadia 9 14 4 ...
Helicina 58 16 24 9
Proserpina 2 4 ... ...
The Virgin Is., with St. Croix, Anguilla, and the St. Bartholomew
group (all of which are non-volcanic islands), are related to Porto
Rico, while Guadeloupe and all the islands to the south, up to
Grenada (all of which are volcanic), show marked traces of S.
American influence. St. Kitt’s, Antigua, and Montserrat may be
regarded as intermediate between the two groups. St. Thomas, St.
John, and Tortola have each one Plagioptycha and one Thelidomus,
while St. Croix has two sub-fossil Caracolus which are now living in
Porto Rico, together with one Plagioptycha and one Thelidomus
(sub-fossil). The gradual disappearance of some of the characteristic
greater Antillean forms, and the appearance of S. American forms in
the Lesser Antilles, is shown by the following table:—
S
P S S G M t
o t S t u a S .
r . t A . a D r t B T
t S . T n A d o t . a V G r
o T t o g K n e m i r i r i
h . C r u i t l i n L b n e n
R o r t i t i o n i u a c n i
i m J o o l t g u i q c d e a d
c a a i l l ’ u p c u i o n d a
 o s n x a a s a e a e a s t a d
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bulimulus 7 4 2 4 1 2 2 3 8 9 5 3 3 6 2 4
Cylindrella 3 2 1 1 1 . . . . 1 1 1 1 . . 1
Macroceramus 3 1 1 . 2 1 . . . . . . . . . .
Cyclostomatidae, etc.23 4 1 5 1 1 1 . 4 . . . . . . 1
Dentellaria . . . . . . 1 1 8 5 11 2 2 . 1 1
Cyclophorus . . . . . . . . 1 2 2 . . . . .
Amphibulimus . . . . . . . . 2 3 1 . . . . .
Homalonyx . . . . . . . . 1 1 . . . . . .

(d) In Guadeloupe we find Cyclophorus, Amphibulimus,

Homalonyx, and Pellicula, which are characteristic of S. America,
and nearly all recur in Dominica and Martinique. These islands are
the metropolis of Dentellaria, a group of Helix, evidently related to
some of the forms developed in the Greater Antilles. Stragglers
occur as far north as St. Kitt’s and Antigua, and there are several on
the mainland as far south as Cayenne. Traces of the great Bulimus,
so characteristic of South America, occur as far north as S. Lucia,
where also is found a Parthena (San Domingo and Porto Rico).
Trinidad is markedly S. American; 55 species in all are known, of
which 22 are peculiar, 28 are common to S. America (8 of these
reach no farther north along the islands), and only 5 are common to
the Antilles, but not to S. America. The occurrence of Gundlachia in
Trinidad has already been mentioned.
The Bermudas show no very marked relationship either to the N.
American or to the West Indian fauna. In common with the former
they possess a Polygyra, with the latter (introduced species being
excluded) one species each of Hyalosagda, Subulina, Vaginula, and
Helicina, so that, on the whole, they may be called West Indian. The
only peculiar group is Poecilozonites, a rather large and depressed
shell of the Hyalinia type.
(2) The Central American Sub-region may be regarded as
extending from the political boundary of Mexico in the north to the
isthmus of Panama in the south. It thus impinges on three important
districts—the N. American, West Indian, and S. American; and it
appears, as we should perhaps expect, that the two latter of these
regions have considerably more influence upon its fauna than the
former. Of the N. American Helicidae, Polygyra is abundant in
Mexico only, and two species of Strobila reach N. Guatemala, while
the Californian Arionta occurs in Mexico. S. American Helicidae, in
the sub-genera Solaropsis and Labyrinthus, occur no farther north
than Costa Rica. Not a single representative of any of the
characteristic West Indian Helicidae occurs. Bulimulus and
Otostomus, which form so large a proportion of the Mollusca of
Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru, together with Orthalicus,
are abundant all over the region. Again, Cylindrella, Macroceramus,
and some of the characteristic Antillean operculates, are
represented, their occurrence being in most cases limited to the
eastern coast-line and eastern slope of the central range.
Besides these external elements, the region is rich in indigenous
genera. Central America is remarkable for an immense number of
large carnivorous Mollusca possessing shells. There are 49 species
of Glandina, the bulk of which occur in eastern and southern Mexico;
36 of Streptostyla (S.E. Mexico and Guatemala, only 1 species
reaching Venezuela and another Peru); 5 of Salasiella, 2 of Petenia,
and 1 of Strebelia; the last three genera being peculiar. Streptaxis,
fairly common in S. America, does not occur. Velifera and
Cryptostracon, two remarkable slug-like forms, each with a single
species, are peculiar to Costa Rica. Among the especial peculiarities
of the region are the giant forms belonging to the Cylindrellidae,
which are known as Holospira, Eucalodium, and Coelocentrum (Fig.
232). They are almost entirely peculiar to Mexico, only 7 out of a
total of 33 reaching south of that district, and only 1 not occurring in it
at all.
 Fig. 232.—Examples of
characteristic Mexican
Mollusca: A, Coelocentrum
turris Pfr.; B, Streptostyla
Delattrei Pfr.
The land operculates are but scanty. Tomocyclus and
Amphicyclotus are peculiar, and Schasicheila, a form of Helicina,
occurs elsewhere only in the Bahamas. Ceres (see Fig. 18, C, p. 21)
and Proserpinella, two remarkable forms of non-operculate
Helicinidae (compare the Chinese Heudeia), are quite peculiar.
Pachychilus, one of the characteristic fresh-water genera, belongs to
the S. American (Melaniidae) type, not to the N. American
(Pleuroceridae). Among the fresh-water Pulmonata, the Aplecta are
remarkable for their great size and beauty. In the accompanying
table “Mexico” is to be taken as including the region from the United
States border up to and including the isthmus of Tehuantepec, and
“Central America” as the whole region south of that point.
Land Mollusca of Central America
Mexico Central Common to
only. America both.
only.
Strebelia 1 ... ...
Glandina 33 13 3
Salasiella 4 ... 1
Streptostyla 18 12 6
Petenia ... 1 1
Limax ... 1 ...
Velifera ... 1 ...
Omphalina 10 1 1
Hyalinia 2 5 3
Guppya ... 8 3
Pseudohyalina 2 ... 2
Tebennophorus 1 ... ...
Cryptostracon ... 1 ...
Xanthonyx 4 ... ...
Patula 3 ... 4
Acanthinula 1 2 2
Vallonia ... 1 ...
Trichodiscus 2 2 3
Praticolella 1 ... 1
Arionta 3 ... ...
Lysinoe 1 1 1
Oxychona 2 5 ...
Solaropsis ... 2 ...
Polygyra 14 1 2
Strobila 1 1 ...
Labyrinthus ... 5 ...
Otostomus 23 20 7
Bulimulus 6 5 2
Berendtia 1 ... ...
Orthalicus 6 3 3
Pupa 1 1 1
Vertigo 1 ... ...
Holospira 12 ... ...
Coelocentrum 6 1 1
Eucalodium 15 ... 5
Cylindrella 6 4 ...
Macroceramus 2 1 ...
Simpulopsis 2 1 ...
Caecilianella 1 ... ...
Opeas 1 2 3
Spiraxis 8 2 1
Leptinaria ... 2 ...
Subulina 2 3 4
Succinea 11 3 1
Vaginula 1 ... ...
Aperostoma ... 4 1
Amphicyclotus 2 1 2
Cystopoma 2 ... ...
Tomocyclus ... 1 2