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.This ismisleading; if he ever did seriously contemplate (or at least imply) the pos-sibility of creating a new biological species by means of selective breeding,then this is not representative of his position as a whole.For a start, as wehave seen, evolution is for Nietzsche primarily a process of progressiveindividuation that is as much moral as it is biological in character: theÜbermensch is by definition a solitary figure who has left the herd behindhim at an earlier stage of his development.A species of such superiorbeings would be a contradiction in terms.What is more, the majorityof serious, respected eugenicists men like Wilhelm Schallmayer, OttoAmmon, Alfred Ploetz and Fritz Lenz, rather than the more fanciful ofthe idle dreamers writing in organs such as the Politisch-anthropologischeRevue were not, contrary to popular belief, interested in creating asuperhuman species.41 As we shall see in the next chapter, they were, likeNietzsche, more interested in negative , rather than positive , eugenics;or what, in Germany, became known as racial hygiene.This becomesclear if we consider the rest of the passage quoted above.Here, Nietzschepleads for the ennoblement of prostitution; concubinage with preven-tion of conception is a necessary measure to discharge the excess sexualenergy of those who are excluded from marriage, i.e.the unfit.In short,41Gunter Mann, Biologie und der Neue Mensch , in Gunter Mann and Rolf Winau(eds.), Medizin, Naturwissenschaft, Technik und das zweite Kaiserreich (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1977), pp.174f.For a discussion of some of these thinkers,see Hedwig Conrad-Martius, Utopien der Menschenzüchtung.Der Sozialdarwinismus undseine Folgen (Munich: Kösel, 1955); Weindling, Health, Race and German Politics. Nietzsche and the nervous age 137legalised or state-regulated prostitution is a means of maintaining sexual,and thus racial, hygiene; it should not be the sacrifice which is made toladies or to the Jewish purse but, rather, the improvement of the race(V 1, 5[38]).Elsewhere, Nietzsche proposes (like the Gestalt-psychologist42and sexual reformer Christian von Ehrenfels and the eugenicist Vacherde Lapouge after him), both polygamy and polyandry as a way of en-suring that the best members of a society produce as many offspring aspossible: Individual exceptional men ought to have the opportunity toreproduce with a number of women; and individual women, with partic-ularly favourable conditions, also ought not to be bound to the fortuneof a single man (V 2, 11[179]).Nietzsche proposes a number of state-sanctioned measures to promote sexual and racial hygiene, which onewriter later praised as a very timely programme and which indeed differlittle from the policies devised by future generations of eugenicists:43On the future of marriage:an additional tax on inheritances, etc.also additional military service for bach-elors of a certain age upwards and increasing (within the community)benefits of all kinds for fathers who bring large numbers of boys into the world:possibly a plural votea medical certificate preceding every marriage and signed by the leaders of thecommunity: wherein several definite questions must be answered by the engagedcouple ( family history as remedy for prostitution (or as its ennoblement): short-term marriages, le-galised (for a period of years, months, days), with guarantees for the childrenevery marriage accounted for and sanctioned by a certain number of commu-nity representatives: as a matter of concern for the community (VIII 3, 16[35]).Thus far, then, we have seen how Nietzsche s use of the concept ofdegeneration reflects nineteenth-century anxieties, many of which heshared.His biologism, his concern for the epidemic spread of a variety ofsocial pathologies, his employment of the motif of racial degeneration andweakness of will all point to a profoundly fin-de-siècle attitude towardscontemporary social, political and cultural upheavals.Nietzsche also con-strued degeneration respectively as either a process of feminisation ormasculinisation, in response to a growing unease about the blurring ofthe natural boundaries between the sexes.Finally, he views sex as thepotential site of numerous degenerative processes if severed from its pri-mary and biological function of reproduction
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