Setting the Stage for The Will to Power 301when he remarked in a letter to Meta von Salis: "I must have been in a
state of nearly uninterrupted inspiration to have made this book flow
like the most natural thing in the wodd. You cannot even notice any
trials and tribulations in it" (B 8,397; Aug. 22, 1888).
On the Genealogy of Morals was Nietzsche's first book since The Birth of
Tragedy and Untimely Meditations to be structured as a self-contained major
treatise. It is divided into three sections, which treat the subjects of
"'Good and Evil,' 'Good and Bad' " (first essay), " 'Guilt,' 'Bad
Conscience,' and the Like" (second essay), and "What Is the Meaning of
Ascetic Ideals?" (third essay). Following the principle that the founda-
tions of morality are themselves not moral, but instead mirror existing
strengths and positions, Nietzsche in the first section presented a set of
ideas he had already broached in Daybreak. He now undertook the syn-
thesis of these ideas into a unified theory that would explain the birth of
morality from the spirit of ressentiment He contended that behind the
moral distinction between good and evil lurked the older distinction
between "noble and base." The weak and those in need of protection
accused those who were dangerously strong of being "evil." The weak,
in turn, were considered "bad" in the eyes of the strong, in the sense of
being ordinary and menial. The entire moral universe originated in these
perspectivist attributions and assessments. Those who have been disad-
vantaged in life can protect themselves against the predominance of the
strong only by banding together and revaluating values in such a way as
to redefine the virtues of the strong—relendessness, pride, boldness,
extravagance, idleness, and so forth—as vices. By the same token, they
can declare that the typical consequences of their weaknesses—humility,
pity, diligence, and obedience—are actually virtues: "The slave revolt in
morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives rise
to values: the ressentiment of beings who, once they are denied the real
reaction of taking action, compensate for it only in the form of imagi-
nary revenge" (5,270; GM First Essay § 10). Establishing their morality
is the "imaginary revenge," which succeeds when the strong have no
choice but to judge themselves from the perspective of the weak. The