Is the survival of the fittest like Nietzsche's will to power?

Is the survival of the fittest like Nietzsche's will to power? Frederick Dolan : Not at all. The mere ability to adapt to circumstances, to persist, is almost what the will to power is not.

Nietzsche defines the will to power (see The Antichrist) as the drive to experience the feeling of overcoming a resistance: to seek out challenges to one’s fitness, resistances that promise to be beyond your ability to overcome. In facing a challenge like that, you may discover or acquire hitherto unknown abilities, which afford new opportunities to satisfy your drive to overcome resistances.

Survival by itself isn’t sufficient for Nietzsche; it’s necessary to flourish. Charles Brown: No Darwinian “survival of the fittest “ is really “survival of the fertile”. Those who reproduce more pass on more genes to future generations, and their genotype “survives”. The Will to power process doesn’t involve passing on one’s genotype.

The Will to Power sounds more like the First law of nature : the instincts of self-preservation. An individual animal organism ( not just human) has instincts to eat, not get eaten , sleep, not fall out of a tree, etc.