# Nietzsche the thinker/Chapter XXIX

CHAPTER XXIX
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION. THE IDEAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY
I turn now to Nietzsche's construction in the social realm. There have been anticipations of the ideal he presents in Plato's "Republic," and practical approximations to it in aristocratically organized societies among the Hindus and Greeks and Romans; but in just the form it takes in Nietzsche's mind, it appears to be his own creation. In this chapter I shall indicate the broad basic outlines of his view, and in the next certain political applications of it, along with some of his anticipations of the future.
I
In a general way the theory may be characterized as the extreme antithesis of the democratic theory, especially of the democratic-socialist theory. Its fundamental idea is that of an order of rank (Rangordnung) as opposed to equality. "I am impelled in an age of universal suffrage, i.e., where everybody dares sit in judgment on everything, to propose an order of rank again." There are not merely differences, peculiarities, varying gifts, but higher and lower among men—some should rule, others be ruled. Every elevation of the human type has been hitherto the work of an aristocracy, and so it will always be—that is, of a society that believes in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of value among human beings and has need of slavery in some form or other. The idea of a Rangordnung is a general one,* and in the social realm has only a particular application. It holds throughout nature, and man's place in the cosmos is determined by the fact that he can more or less rule there—a very weak being, ​making himself master by his intelligence and bringing less intelligent forces under his yoke. For the basis of rank is power, and nothing else; the Rangordnung has fixed itself by the victory of the stronger. In man's body there are ruling forces and others which are subjected and turned into functions—and when mighty individuals appear in society and turn the mass into their instruments, it is something analogous. Behind these natural differences in power it is impossible to go. The only reasonable matter of inquiry is whether at any given time and place actual relations correspond with them. History is a kind of trying out of this question. "Who can command, who must obey—that is there tried out," and Nietzsche adds, "ah, with what long seeking and guessing and failure to guess and learning and re-experimenting!" Society itself is an experiment, and what is sought is those who can command. It is no contract which binds together the commanding and obeying elements, but something more primordial—each side in the end falls into the place belonging to it by nature. Nor is it necessarily harm for men to be subjected—sometimes Nietzsche uses language which suggests quite the reverse. Wherever, he says, there is a spring for many who are thirsty, one heart for many who long, one will for many fitted to be instruments, there a people arises. As stated in an earlier connection, there may be willingness to obey, to be used. Yet the first requirement of social existence is men who can command—who have the right to. "At the summit of states should stand the higher man; all other political forms are attempts to provide a substitute for his self-demonstrating authority." Attempts to provide such substitutes are common today. By adding together a sufficient number of men from the ranks it is thought that the leader or commander may be replaced—this is the origin in Nietzsche's estimation of the various sorts of representative government. But he does not think that arithmetic ​can solve the question—there are two different categories of men. He would have agreed with Emerson, when, in speaking of aristocracy, the latter says, "If they provoke anger in the least favored class, and the excluded majority revenge themselves on the excluding minority by the strong hand, and kill them, at once a new class finds itself at the top, as certainly as cream rises in a bowl of milk; and if the people should destroy class after class, until two men only were left, one of these would be the leader, and would be involuntarily served and copied by the other. You may keep this minority out of sight and out of mind, but it is tenacious of life and one of the estates of the realm." No one who has read the preceding chapters will imagine that in speaking of rulers Nietzsche has in mind simply men of physical force—they are not even that plus courage and will and many heroic qualities. It is above all intellectual greatness that marks the ruler; if he has not this, he may make trouble, even if he wishes to do well and practise justice. Minds that are not of the highest order should obey, rather than rule.
In two or three places Nietzsche presents his ideal of social organization in some detail. In the principal passage, he does so in connection with a discussion of the Hindu Law-book of Manu, but it is evidently his own conception he brings out, although this stands in close agreement with the presuppositions of that ancient book. After saying that the order of castes there revealed is only the sanction of a natural order, he goes on to the effect that in every healthy society, three physiological types appear, conditioning one another, yet separate from one another, each of which has its own hygiene, its own realm of activity, its own feeling of perfection and mastership. They are not absolutely marked off from one another, but one class is "predominantly" spiritual or intellectual, another has predominant muscular and temperamental strength, while the third are those who are not distinguished in either respect, being simply the average individuals who constitute "Manners," in Society and Solitude. Cf. Will to Power, § 784, on the eventual rise of a Rangordnung even in an individual order of things. ​the bulk of the society, the others being the exceptions. The first class, who as the most spiritual are the strongest, are the supreme ruling class; but they rule by weight of their ideas and because they body forth a relative perfection of the human type, not in less ways or by lesser means—not then because they will to, but because of what they are: they are not at liberty to take a second place. They give the supreme direction to social action, make the supreme law of the social constitution. The second class are their instruments for governing. They are the warders of justice, the guardians of order and security, the higher ranks of soldiers, above all the king as the highest formula of soldier, judge, and maintainer of the law. They take from the first class all that is gross and rude (grob) in the work of ruling—are their attendants, their right hand, their best pupils. The third class engage in manual labor, in business, in agriculture, in science (as distinguished from philosophy), in the ordinary forms of art—that is, any kind of work, which is special, professional, and more or less mechanical. They naturally incline in these directions, as the others do in theirs; not society, but their own kind of happiness makes them intelligent machines—they delight in mastership along their special line, though they may have slight comprehension of the ultimate significance of the work they do. The third class make the broad base on which the whole social structure rests, this being conceived pyramidically.
Three things are to be noted about this social classification: (1) While the first two classes represent the higher ranges of human life, the attaining of which is the supreme end to Nietzsche, they are marked off from each other—the theory of the first class being specially developed and being that part of his general view which Nietzsche had most at heart. (2) The lowest class—the great average mass—has in his eyes an important, yes indispensable place in the social structure: this in contrast with the attitude of depreciation and contempt often exclusively attributed to him. (3) There is an organic relation of all the classes—each being necessary to the other and to ​the whole: this as against the "social dualism" sometimes charged to him. I shall take up these points in order.
II
When Nietzsche argues, as against the more or less anarchic democracy and individualism of today, for the necessity of rule, he has not so much in mind rulers in the ordinary sense (kings, judges, legislators) as the supreme will and thought on which rule is based—that is, the first class mentioned, who are apart from and above the political mechanism itself. This is perhaps the most novel feature in Nietzsche's social scheme. Did not even Plato wish the philosopher to rule, to be on the throne? But Nietzsche's highest type of man views ruling as beneath him—it is the function of a lower class; he is above kings, though his thought is law for kings and he uses them as his instruments. In this, in a sense, most secular and irreligious of modern thinkers, there arises thus the idea of a spiritual power over against the temporal, and superior to it. The state is an instrument for ends beyond itself, and has restricted supremacy and domain. It may be best to give Nietzsche's own words here. "Beyond the ruling class loosed from all bonds, live the highest men: and in the rulers they have their instruments." "These lords of the earth are now to replace God, and to win for themselves the deep and unconditional trust of the ruled." They renounce aims of happiness and comfort; they give expectations of this sort to the lowest, but not to themselves. They have an eye to the whole range of social need, redeeming the miserable by the doctrine of "speedy death," and favoring religions and systems of ideas according as they are suited to this grade, or to that (je nach der Rangordnung). They are a kind of moral providence for men, and rule by their moral authority only—though none the less effectively.
And yet this relation to society does not exhaust their activity. Here Nietzsche developes, or rather starts upon, a still more venturesome line of thought. Its presupposition is a distinction between leaders of the flock and individuals, or ​rather persons, proper. The leader (whether he actually leads or simply gives the guiding thought) is after all a functionary of the flock and does not exist for his own sake. However different his responsibilities and duties are from those of ordinary members of the flock—and they are widely different—he is linked to it, and his supreme duty is to care for it and make himself its servant. In other words, the law for the whole is still the law for him—and to be a law to himself is out of the question. But to be an individual in the great sense, a person, one must take his law from himself and not from the needs of a social complex outside him. Though, as explained in Chapter XXVI, the person is born of society, trained by it, and never physically independent of it, he is in a way superior to it; he has a quantum of being uniquely his own, which urges, and indeed makes it imperative on him, to take the law of his action from the interests of that and not merely from those of society. The attitude may seem egoistic, indeed, the very height of egoism and a self-contradictory egoism at that—for individuals are commonly supposed to have their very being in their social relations; and yet there is a different way of looking at the matter. These autonomous individuals, more or less dissevered from society, may be conceived of as a new human level—the species rising to a new altitude in them. Society may not be the final form of humanity, but rather a preparatory stage, a kind of school. It was in some such way that Nietzsche felt. The self or ego of great individuals is to him no mere personal interest (in the common sense of that term), but a human interest—in such a quantum, humanity itself rises higher, i.e., out of its social, gregarious stage into one of sovereign persons, each of whom has a dominium as significant and sacred as that of any society.
The general character and manner of life of sovereign individuals has already been indicated (Chapters XXVI, XXVII); in the present connection I am only concerned to mark off the supreme examples of the type from the ruling class proper, ​with whom Nietzsche himself often verbally confounds them. I mean by this he often fails to guard himself, not making it plain whether by "higher men," "lords," "supermen," he means to one class or the other. His thought, however, becomes unmistakable in passages like the following: "Principal point of view: that we do not find the task of the higher species to consist in the guidance of the lower (as, e.g., Comte does). "The simplest type of organism is alone of a perfect character, all complicated ones are faulty, and innumerable ones of the higher sort go to pieces. Societies (Heerden) and states are the highest known to us—very imperfect organisms. At length arises, behind the state, human individual, the highest and most imperfect being, who as a rule goes to pieces and makes the structure from which he arises go to pieces. The whole task (Pensum) of the impulses that form societies and states is concentrated in his inner being. He can live alone, after his own laws—he is no lawgiver and does not wish to rule. His feeling of power turns inward." "It is not a question of going before (with this, one is at best shepherd, i.e., the supreme need of the flock), but of capacity for going on one's own account, for being different." "It is absolutely not the idea to take the latter [the superman type] as lords of the former [ordinary men]; the two species are rather to exist alongside one another—as far as possible separated, the one like the Epicurean Gods not concerning itself about the other." "The shepherd' (Hirt) in antithesis to the lord (Herr)—the former a means for the preservation of the flock, the latter the end for which the flock exist." Nitezsche thinks that consideration for individuals proper began in Greece, Asia knowing only princes and lawgivers. "Morality for individuals despite the community and its statutes begins with Socrates." "Probably never were so many different individuals put ​together in so small a space and allowed such emulation in perfecting their peculiarities [as there]."
As virtually stated already, to be independent in this way is something for few; average natures are likely to go to pieces in attempting it. It is a privilege of the strong; no one had better attempt it, unless he is compelled. Nietzsche suggests a variety of ways in which one can test oneself in advance. How great the demands are is shown by the challenges of Zarathustra to would-be higher men who come to him. Warning them that they must have a conscience different from the common one and that this will involve inner distress, he says, "But wilt thou go the way of thy distress, which is the way to thyself? If so, show me thy right and thy power to do so! Art thou a new power and a new right? A first motion? A self-revolving wheel? Canst thou also force stars to revolve around thee? Alas, there is so much loose longing (Lüsternheit) after high things.… There are so many great thoughts that act only like bellows, blowing one up and making one emptier. Free dost thou call thyself? Thy ruling thought do I wish to hear and not that thou hast escaped a yoke. Art thou one with the right to escape a yoke? There is many a man who threw away his last worth, when he threw away his servitude. Free from something? What is that to Zarathustra? But let thine eye tell me clear and straight: free for what? Canst thou give thyself thine evil and thy good, and hang up thy will over thee as a law? Canst thou be judge over thyself, and avenger of thy law?" Such are the prerequisites of sovereign individuals. Men of this type even practise asceticism, and find a pleasure in self-subjugation. They are the most reverend of men, which does not exclude their being also the most cheerful and amiable—indeed, they represent in a special sense happiness, beauty, goodness on the earth.
These supreme specimens of our kind are to Nietzsche the ultima ratio of society. It is not man, mankind, that is important, but such as they. Mankind is experimental material, ​with an immense surplusage of failure, a field of ruins. A people is nature's roundabout way of getting six or seven great men. So little equality is there between men that a single individual may on occasion justify the existence of whole millenniums—one full, rich, great, whole man may complement innumerable fractional men. "Not man, but superman is the goal." And when the higher type appear, they have feelings about themselves that would be abnormal in ordinary men—they revere themselves, and this not because of any actions they may perform that prove them great, but because of what they are. Nietzsche is aware that the attitude of reverence for oneself is a perilous one, but allowing for the possibility of aberration in individual cases, he thinks that it may be truly taken, and that then aberration consists in giving it up. It is by this token that a true aristocracy is known. An aristocracy, he says, when it reaches any perfection, looks upon itself not as a function, but as the meaning and highest justification of royalty or the commonwealth, something then for which the governing and lower classes may well labor and sacrifice, something to which with perfect seemliness they may give extraordinary privileges and power. Nothing is more contrary to our democratic conceptions, and yet in no connection is Nietzsche more unflinching. To him it is degeneration, corruption (something he defines as anarchy in the instincts lying at the foundation of life), when, for example, an aristocracy like that of France at the beginning of the Revolution throws away its privileges and sacrifices itself to extravagances of its moral feeling—though in this particular case, the corruption had been going on for centuries, leading the nobles as it had to give up step by step their lordly prerogatives and to lower themselves to a function of royalty (finally, indeed, to a mere ornament and decoration of it). A sound aristocracy cannot act in this way, and looks at itself as already indicated. Its ground feeling is that society does not exist for its own sake, but as a foundation and scaffolding, on which a higher species of being may arise—like those climbing plants in Java, the Sipo Matador, which clamber about an oak tree, and at last, high ​above it, but supported by it, spread out to the sun their crown and display their happiness. Strange and offensive as this sounds to us, it is only in keeping with the tragic view of the constitution of the world, which Nietzsche, following Schopenhauer, had held from almost the beginning of his career. Our ordinary ideas (at least our democratic ideas) of right and justice are not the pattern after which the world is made, nor are they the standard in accordance with which society must be constituted, if it is to yield the consummate fruit which Nietzsche desired. Harm and sacrifice are necessities as deep as the finiteness of the world and of its composite forces—if the world were infinite, all might be different. Higher things live off lower things, because it is the only way in which they can live at all—there is no infinite storehouse of power on which the higher can directly draw.
Nietzsche uses the word "castes," but we must not think of unbreakable lines of social cleavage. His earlier view of movement up and down the social scale is not gainsaid. Rather have we already found him in this last period calling peasant blood the best there is in Germany (i.e., having most promise of real aristocracy), and saying that the critical question is not whence one comes, but whither one goes. He even takes a certain satisfaction in the democratic leveling process that has been going on, for now that the struggle between classes is over, an order of rank based on individual merit can arise. How men may come up from lower walks in life, he finds illustrated notably in the history of religions. It is true that training or breeding (Züchtung) is necessary, and that there must be suitable material to start with, but this material is not confined within the limits of any one historic class—a real aristocracy ever takes new elements into itself. Just how an aristocracy can maintain itself on a shifting, more or less individualistic basis like this is not explained, and Professor Ziegler thinks that Nietzsche is inconsistent, now progressive and now ​reactionary; but his ideal, whatever may be the practical difficulties of turning it into a working program, is plain—a superior, and more or less self-perpetuating class of men on the one hand, and on the other, free entrance to it and descent from it.
III
And now as to the place and function of the third class—the great working mass. Nietzsche sometimes speaks contemptuously of the average man, but he does so relatively, not absolutely, and perhaps the language would never have been used save in reaction against the excessive laudation of the common man and his virtues which is characteristic of a democratic age. However this may be, he betrays here and there full appreciation of the services of the common man, and sometimes gives set expression to it—enough so to lead us to suspect that, if he had lived to complete the work on which he was bent in his later years, he would have supplemented his doctrine of the higher man, which was doubtless his main concern, with some adequate exposition of the place and functions of the average worker in society. He particularly says that this third class, equally with the first and second, has its field of labor and its peculiar feeling of perfection and mastership. Work well done, of whatever kind, always has his admiration. A good hand-worker or scholar who has pride in his art and looks out on life with easy contentment is a pleasing sight to him, while he finds it pitiable when a shoemaker or schoolmaster gives us to understand with a suffering mien that he really was born for something better. "There is absolutely nothing better than the good! and that means having some kind of proficiency and creating from it virtù in the Italian Renaissance sense." Industry, order, moderation, settled convictions—these bring the average man to his type of "perfection." Repeatedly does Nietzsche warn against contempt for him. "Let us not undervalue the prerogatives (Vorrechte) of the average" [he had just been saying that every class had its prerogative]. "It ​would be absolutely unworthy a deeper mind to consider mediocrity in itself an objection. It is the first indispensable requirement in order that there may be exceptions: a high culture is conditioned by it." "Hatred against mediocrity is unworthy a philosopher: it almost raises the question as to his 'right to philosophy.' Just because he is the exception, he has to protect the rule and to give all average people good heart." Nietzsche even uses the word "duty" in this connection: "when an exceptional man treats one of the average type with tenderer hands than he does himself and his own kind, this is not mere courtesy of the heart—it is simply his duty." His appreciation goes to what are commonly regarded as the lower as well as to the upper strata of this third social class—indeed, he once hazards the conjecture that more relative superiority of taste and tact for reverence may be found "among the lower ranks of the people, especially among peasants, than among the newspaper-reading half-world of intellect, the educated."
In one way the interests of the great working mass come first, in his judgment. The group is prior to the independent individual in point of time (as we have already seen), and also, in a sense, of importance. The labors of the mass who make up its bulk are the sine qua non for the higher man—it is from their "surplus labor" that be lives—but he is not a sine qua non for them, and in certain circumstances he may be a luxury, a waste. To secure their existence and well-being is then the first social requirement.
In this connection I may mention a curious set of reflections to which Nietzsche is led. We have already seen his attitude to modern—I might say, Christian—civilization. It has turned normal or at least ancient valuations upside down—has exalted the low and pulled down the high, has made the common man of supreme importance and waged war against whatever is rare, independent, privileged, powerful (save as it serves the common man). "We do not want you apart, superior, in a sphere of your own, we want you to serve us"—such is the ​democratic (more fundamentally speaking, Christian, more fundamentally still, social or herd) instinct. For there is a tendency throughout history (and quite independently of Christianity) of this sort. The weak, so far as they are clever—and none may be cleverer—instinctively combine to make themselves masters of the strong; if the strong man is not their shepherd, they have no use for him. This is an incident in the struggle for existence to which the school of Darwin has not ordinarily paid much attention. Instead of there being merely a tendency to the survival of the strong in the unhindered struggle for existence, there is so far a tendency to the survival of the weak, according to the laws of natural selection itself. It might even be contended that there is objective warrant in this way for the idea of the Jewish prophets that God (the supreme power in nature) was on the side of the humble and poor. Nietzsche faced the paradox. Nature's ways were no model to him, still he had to pay attention to them—his motto, amor fati, itself obliged him to. Commenting on the fact that the strong are weak, when organized herd-instincts, superior numbers are against them, he says that there is perhaps nothing in the world more interesting than this unwished-for spectacle. He has reflections like the following: Is this victory of the weak perhaps only a retarding of the tempo in the total movement of life, a protective measure against something still worse? May it not be a greater guarantee of life, in the long run? Suppose that the strong became master in every respect, even in fixing valuations, think of the consequences. If the weak looked on sickness, suffering, sacrifice as the strong do, they would despise themselves—would seek to slink out of sight and extinguish themselves. Would that be desirable? Should we really like a world in which qualities developed by the weak, fineness, considerateness, spirituality, suppleness, were lacking? If not, we cannot set down the victory of the mass and their valuations as antibiological. We must rather seek to explain it as somehow in life's interest, as ​part of the method for maintaining the human type-possibly without it man would no longer exist. The growth of a species' power may be less guaranteed by the preponderance of its favored offspring, its strong ones, than by the preponderance of the average and lower types—the latter having greater fruitfulness and permanence, while with the former danger increases. Must we admit perhaps that the raising of the type is fateful for the species? History often shows us strong races decimating one another. At least we must own that these higher individuals are expensive. We really stand before a problem of economy. Never does Nietzsche question that great individuals are the ultima ratio of society, that it would be better for the race to produce them and disappear, than not to produce them and live on indefinitely; and yet he saw that, at a given moment race-permanence might be more important than anything else, since thereby a large number of great individuals would ultimately be made possible.
Accordingly we have a kind of apology in Nietzsche's latest writings for the present supremacy of the mass and their valuations—at least the temporary supremacy. "Temporary preponderance of the social valuations, conceivable and useful: it is a question of producing a substructure, on which a stronger race will be possible at last." "Everywhere, where the average qualities, on which the continuance of a species depends, are of prime moment, being a person would be a waste, a luxury, and wishing for persons has absolutely no sense." "The process of making man smaller which is going on under democratic inspiration must long be the sole aim, since a broad foundation has first to be laid, on which a stronger type of man can stand." The point is "to increase the sum of force, despite the temporary decline of the individual: to establish a new level; to find a method for storing up forces, so as to keep small results instead of wasting them; meanwhile to subjugate devastating nature and make it a tool of the future economy; to preserve the weak, since an immense amount of small work has to be done; to preserve a sentiment, by which existence is ​still possible to the weak and suffering; to implant solidarity as an instinct as against the instincts of fear and servility: to fight with accident, also with the accident of the 'great man.'" These last words show, I may add, that Nietzsche is still not without his humanitarian side. He really wishes as wide a happiness as is possible, consistently with a great aim. We have already found him citing an ancient counsel, "When thou cultivatest the land, do it with a plow, so that the bird and the wolf who follow after may receive of thee and all creatures profit by thee," and calling it a "generous and charitable" one. Zarathustra's instinct is to love "all that lives" (whatever danger may lie in doing so), and tears come to his eyes as he watches the setting sun pouring its golden light on the sea, so that even the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars. Nietzsche would like every man to have a value, and if there are those who have none to their families or the community, he wants us to give them a value, to make them feel that somehow they are useful—for example, the sick man as a means of extending knowledge, the criminal as a scarecrow, the vicious as opportunities (for experiment?) and so on. He wishes none thrown utterly to the void.
It is Nietzsche's attitude to that part of the third class whom we are accustomed to call the "workers" that is most misunderstood, and it may be well to give special attention to it. He is thought not only to despise them, but to favor despoiling them, keeping them miserable and poor. Now it is true that he does not wish them, any more than the employing class, to rule in society, but how far he is from wishing, or finding necessary, a squalid life for them, particularly in an age of mechanical inventions like the present one, will appear in passages I shall now quote or refer to. In the first place, he says that comfort is to be created for them, that to the lowest is to be given the expectation of happiness (Anwartschaft auf Glück). Once he ventures on an extraordinary assertion:
​"The laborers should (sollen) some day live as the bourgeois now do." It is a forecast that can have sense only as great social changes are supposed to have taken place, notably as mechanical inventions have been allowed to work a result that they have never had under our régime of laisser faire, as John Stuart Mill long ago confessed. He drops the significant remark that there is hard coarse work that some men must be on hand to do, so long as machines cannot do it in their stead, and he observes that the tendency of civilization is to produce the machines: "ever less physical force is necessary: wisely we let machines work, man becoming stronger and more spiritual." It may be supposed too that the struggles of the laborers themselves will have contributed to the result, and within limits Nietzsche can hardly have failed to justify such struggles—at least so long as the present régime of laisser faire lasts; he speaks once of revolt as the nobility of the slave. He has this to say about exploitation: "What is it that we find revolting, when an individual man exploits others for his own purposes? The presupposition is that he is not of sufficient value. If, however, we suppose him to be valuable enough (e.g., as a prince), the exploitation is endured and gives a kind of happiness (cf. "submission to God"). We protect ourselves against exploitation by lower beings than we ourselves are. So I protect myself against the present-day state, culture and so forth." Still more strongly: "When an inferior man takes his foolish existence, his cattle-like stupid happiness as an end, he makes the onlooker indignant; and when he goes so far as to oppress and use up other men for ends of his own, he should be struck dead like a poisonous fly." After such passages we can hardly imagine Nietzsche sanctioning industrial exploitation as it often exists today, or ​condemning of necessity so modest a thing as a "strike." At the same time he has an ideal for the laborer that may seem an extravagance—at least it is not one frequently illustrated to him by his employer, though in a different and better civilization it might hold for employer and workingman alike. At present he finds men in civilized lands much the same in one respect: they work for the sake of the reward. An occupation is a means to them, not an end, so that they are not fine in choosing one, provided it yields a rich return: individuals are rare who must do just one kind of work and would rather perish than labor at something in which they have no pleasure. He indicates his ideal in the following: "Laborers [and he would have said the same, I think, of all the subdivisions of his third class, employers and professional men included] should learn to feel like soldiers. An honorarium, a salary, but no pay! No proportion between payment and work performed! But each kind of individual to be so placed, that he can render the highest that is within his reach."
And this suggestion of higher than egoistic ideals for the working classes goes along with the scheme of an ordered society in general. What Herbert Spencer called the "coming slavery" is in some respects what Nietzsche regarded as the normal state for the third social class. As unreasonable as it would be for single members of man's physical organism to seek their own aggrandizement, to be bent on being their own masters and becoming something for themselves, so pari passu for the lower orders of society. They are necessary, they should prosper, but they should not rule. Ruling belongs to the higher spheres in the individual organism, and to the first and second of Nietzsche's classes in society. It is absolutely necessary that the highest intelligence give direction to economic activity. Here is the reason for his opposition to democracy in any form. ​Universal suffrage means the rule of lower kinds of men—it is a system by which they become law for the higher. It was introduced as a makeshift, a temporary measure, and Nietzsche hopes that it will not be allowed to strike deeper root. It belongs to an intervening period between the decay of old ruling powers and the advent of new ones more adequate to their task. Nietzsche would not even have the people armed—the use of physical force should be strictly under higher control. Nor would he have them "educated"—as this word is often understood. If the requirements and refined tastes of higher culture penetrate the working class, they will not be able to do their work without proportionally, and more than proportionally, suffering. As I understand him, he does not mean that they shall have no intellectual opportunities—indeed, he wishes them to become "the most intelligent and pliant instrument possible" for social ends, and how is this possible without training of some kind? But the education they receive need not be of the sort, nor conducted in the spirit common in democratic countries, where young people are liable to have ambitions excited for almost any career except one for which they are really fitted. Finding out what an individual has capacity for is difficult—it is perhaps the educational problem in many cases, and I discover nothing in Nietzsche's teaching, which is inconsistent with liberal experimentation in that direction. Perhaps our ordinary schools—aside from communicating certain elementary forms of knowledge—would be better taken as experiment-stations than anything else.
What has doubtless contributed to the misunderstanding of Nietzsche's attitude to the working class is his way of referring to them as slaves. Some imagine that he wished to turn them into slaves. It would be nearer the truth to say that he finds them so already, and is simply not unwilling, as many are, to use the plain offensive term. A slave to him is any one who is not his own end, but does the will of another. I have already commented on his broad use of the term. He speaks even of "princes, business-men, officials, farmers, soldiers" as slaves, ​his thought being that they are all social functionaries, i.e., serve something outside them, rather than themselves. He calls the French Revolution the "last great slave-insurrection" [the beginning of it], and the French Revolution was the uprising of the bourgeois rather than the working class. In the intellectual world itself, he finds slaves and masters. The scholar, the purely scientific and objective man, who simply mirrors things and events, is a valuable tool, but a tool all the same, "a bit of a slave," though of a sublimated kind—and belongs in the hands of the masters in the intellectual realm, the philosophers. Nietzsche even carries the distinction into the realm of morality. "He who cannot make himself an end, or in general project ends of himself, gives honor to an unegoistie morality—instinctively": he serves others, takes as his rules common rules—that is, is so far a slave, though "the ideal slave." What we particularly think of when we speak of a "good man" today is a combination of qualities fitting to the slave. "Modest, industrious, benevolent, frugal—so you wish man, the good man, to be! But such an one appears to me only the ideal slave, the slave of the future." One might say then that if workingmen are slaves, they are in what would ordinarily be called good company. There is of course always a shade of contempt in Nietzsche's use of the term, but it is from a very lofty standpoint—one to which only those are "free" who have their reason for being in themselves and represent the summits of humanity, the rest doing their best as they "serve" them, above all, as they will to serve them, and in so willing rob their servitude of half or all its baseness. For in one way Nietzsche saw nothing reproachful in slavery, even of ​a literal sort. In an early fragment he remarks that neither primitive Christianity nor the ancient Germans regarded it in this light. He draws a picture of the mediæval bondsman (Hörigen) standing in a variety of strong and delicate relations both of law and custom to the man above him, and says rather that he looks reproachfully on us!
Another contributory factor to the misunderstanding is the failure to note the distinction between the workers or third class generally and the diseased and decadent, the severe language against the latter which Nietzsche sometimes uses being taken to cover all who do not belong to the higher types. So Professor Dorner appears to construe Nietzsche. But it is a misconstruction, though one for which Nietzsche is partly responsible, as he sometimes fails to make himself clear. Each of his social classes has its own sphere of life and activity, and its own type of mastery. The third class is not as strong as the upper classes, but it is not weak in any such sense as would make its elimination desirable. Again and again does Nietzsche distinguish between the mass, the average, as such, and the failures, the decadents. Indeed, decadence is not something peculiar to the lower strata of society; the decadence of old-time aristocracies is one of the conspicuous facts of modern times. And even decadence, whenever and wherever it arises, Nietzsche would treat with as little inhumanity as possible—as we have already seen. But the average normal workers in society are another quantity altogether; they are the broad foundation of the whole social edifice—there could be no crown or apex were they not in their place and doing their indispensable work.
IV
And now as to the organic relations of the three classes, and the charge of "social dualism." Undoubtedly Nietzsche sometimes uses strong language in the latter direction (he rarely ​states more than one side of a truth at a time, an exception being the classic § 57 of The Antichristian), and yet, if we attend carefully, we can make out a really organic view, at least an approach to one, however unusual in character.
The difficulties arise as we consider what is said, first, of the lower class; second, of the higher classes.
(1) Dr. Dolson thinks that there is with him no suggestion of a social ideal, adding, "the weak can hardly be said to have an end." Professor R. H. Grützmacher, a Leipzig theologian, speaks of his "social, more correctly speaking, unsocial thoughts. One of the best ideas of our day, the social, has not dawned on him." The well-known Königsberg philosopher and theologian, Professor Dorner, finds his conception contradictory in that while on the one hand masters and slaves are determined for one another, on the other they are hostile to one another. So M. Faguet speaks of his creating an "abyss" between the two classes, digging a ditch between them; and Professor Höffding uses the phrase "social dualism," though he admits that Nietzsche ultimately transcended such a view, or rather "took it back." That there is ground for this criticism is indisputable; the only question is, how much ground, and what is the real final conclusion to be drawn?
First, is it true that in Nietzsche's view the weak can hardly be said to have an end—that the master class and great individuals alone have a reason for being? As I read him, this is a fundamental misconception. Great men are the goal, but they can only be reached by a long-continuing social process—one might say world-process—and all the steps and incidents in it acquire significance and justification when taken in connection with the great result. The meaninglessness of things in themselves, i.e., apart from a purpose to which they may be put, was what distressed Nietzsche—a meaningless world was abhorrent to him. Yet disenchanted of the God-idea as he had ​early come to be, he was face to face with such a possibility, and it was one reason for his pessimism. But ever the question surged, could not things be given a meaning—might not the world and human society be so ordered and arranged that things, all things, would move towards an end, and a great, semi-divine one? From this point of view the more or less chaotic character that cleaves to things ceased to be an objection to him—it became an occasion for the master-hand and mind of man. Amor fati was his motto, but his deeper feeling was ever amor dei (or rather deorum). We do not fathom him till we reach this undercurrent of his thought and aspiration. Let me give some indications of it. "Principal doctrine: In our power lies the turning (Zurechtlegung) of suffering into blessing, of poison into a nourishment." "We must take upon ourselves all the suffering that has been borne by men and animals, and affirm it, and have an aim in which it acquires reason." Rational significance could thus be lent even to animal existence, but it was the human world for which, above all, Nietzsche was concerned. He represents the ugliest, forlornest man declaring after a day with Zarathustra, "It is worth living on the earth. One day, one festival with Zarathustra teaches me to love the earth." "The danger of return to animality exists. We give a posthumous justification to all the dead and a meaning to their life, when we create the superman out of the material bequeathed to us by them (aus diesem Stoff), and give to all the past a goal." The higher aim is represented as one in which all may unite. "We will create a being, we will all have part in it, love it, we will all be heavy with child (schwanger) with it—and honor and revere ourselves on this account. We must have an aim, for whose sake we are all dear to one another." Nothing less than an entire humanity, so far as it can be turned into an organism working to this end, may thus be justified: laborers, farmers, scholars, teachers, women as truly as men, state officials and princes, homines ​religiosi too—every class and every individual capable of functioning. When then Dr. Dolson says, "the weak can hardly be said to have an end," she can only mean "be their own end." Yet when, I ask, was it taken for granted—at least before these democratic and subtly egoistic days, inaugurated in no small measure by Rousseau and Kant—that a man might not have an end outside himself and be dignified rather than lowered by it? How do most of us human creatures get worth anyway, save by serving something beyond us—some cause, some institution, some permanent interest, the commonwealth, the church, the law—throwing in our mite to the greater result and first gaining self-respect as we do so? If we really take ourselves as ends, what becomes of most of us? Nietzsche thinks that many throw away their last worth when they throw away their servitude. No, the "weak" (i.e., the relatively weak, as contrasted with those great and significant enough to be their own ends), all these functionaries of society from the lowest laborer up, most decidedly have an end—and that is to fit into, and become worthy members of a social organism aiming in the transcendent direction already described. Nietzsche speaks expressly of the classes as "reciprocally conditioning each other," and time and again of the third class as the indispensable prerequisite of the first.
But something more may be said. In a way, the lower class does best for itself when it functions in the way described. Though in a sense it is a sacrificed class, and Nietzsche so speaks of it, the sense is one which the average member of the class would hardly know how to appreciate—for he feels of most consequence as a social functionary, and would scarcely know what to do, if left to himself. Nietzsche emphasizes the fact that his distinction of the classes has natural foundations. Just as the physical body has enjoyment when it is well ruled (by the higher will-centers), so in society. The strong are as indispensable for the weak as the weak are for the strong, and obeying is a self-preservative function as truly as commanding. There may have to be a trial of strength to know who is stronger and who weaker—sometimes the conflict may have ​sharp outward form (as when the Aryan races came down on the European aborigines). At other times no actual trial may be necessary, the results being taken for granted in advance. But even after violence, relations of interdependence may result all the same, and the two parts of the social body fit together with a natural, almost chemical affinity. Much of the misunderstanding of Nietzsche, owing to his use of the language of conquest to describe the relation of the ruler to the subject-classes, is due to a failure to perceive that conquest may issue eventually in an amicable relation in which advantages exist on both sides. Sometimes, too, he describes the ruler as a felt benefactor from the start, one "to whom the weak and suffering and oppressed and even animals gladly turn and naturally belong." He conceives of Napoleon, not as an oppressor of the mass, but rather as a relief, a benefit to them. From a similar point of view he advances the idea that the European masses, who are now being mixed, averaged, democratized, will some day need a strong man, a "tyrant," as they need their daily bread. In short, ruling benefits the ruled; social organization is not only served by the weak, it serves them. Hence to say, as Dr. Dolson does, that the weak in Nietzsche's eyes are "nothing but material upon which the strong may exercise their power," that he bids the great man restrain his sympathetic and social feelings so far as he can, even destroying them utterly, if possible, as unworthy of him, is hardly an adequate account of the matter. In the end, then, there is no "social dualism," and it is a question whether there ever was; there is of course a difference, even a certain antagonism, between the classes, but not to such an extent as to hinder co-operation in the social body—the difference might even be said to be to a certain extent a condition of co-operation.
The difficulties are greater when we approach the matter from the side of the higher classes. Here what Nietzsche says really puzzles us. I have in mind now not the ruler class proper, though it is what Nietzsche says of these that has given ​rise to most of the criticism. Whatever their exploitation of the subject-class, however rigorously they may rule them, they are conceived of as ultimately benefiting them, as being as indispensable to them as a shepherd is to his flock (this as against the anarchistic, or, for that matter, democratic view). The difficulty is with the class above them, and with them only as to one side of their being. For so far as they are the philosophers and lawgivers of society, they are organically related to it and themselves social functionaries, though of a most sublimated sort. The difficulty is so far as they are conceived of as independent individuals. For from just this point of view, they do not, in any ordinary sense, serve society at all, though society serves them most materially, since without it they could not live. Here then is a one-sided, not a mutual relation—an apparent violation of the organic idea. Indeed, they exist apart from society (save as physically, economically, bound to it)—that is, they have their own spheres of interest, their own occupations—each one indeed more or less his own, for they represent the extremes of individuality, as contrasted with sociality. In this age we exalt sociality—the tendency is transforming economics and ethics, and more or less reshaping psychology itself; even theology, formerly a doctrine "of the One and Only" is affected, society being considered as not only (as the elder James taught) the redeemed form of man, but the more or less necessary form of all life. Yet here is a thinker for whom the most significant line of cleavage between men is as to how social and how solitary they are—and he gives the solitary type the higher place! By no means does he forget the original sociality of man, or underrate the educating influence of social life, or overlook the secular processes by which individuals are at last made possible. Sir John Seeley spoke in a notable passage of isolation as the opposite of humanity, and Nietzsche would not have contested it as history, or in most cases as fact now; his thought is simply that society may now and then yield a result beyond itself, that the very education it gives the individual may work that way, that from being trained to obey he can learn to command, and from ​commanding others can learn to command himself, and that such ripe, self-legislating individuals may well have spheres of life and interest strictly their own.
The difficulty is in making out how individuals so separated from society can be organically related to it. For Nietzsche carries the thought of independence very far. He distinguishes one who belongs to his higher self from one who belongs to his office or his family or to society. He counts as individual activity neither the activity of a merchant, nor that of the official, nor that of the scholar, nor that of the statesman. To him the teacher is not yet an individual, and is indeed in danger of losing his proper self: "he who is thoroughly a teacher takes all things seriously only in relation to his pupils—indeed, even himself." Nothing is rarer than a personal action. Personal life is something independent of social effects. When Buckle attacked the theory that "great men" are the levers and causes of great movements, he misconceived them, for the "higher nature" of the great man is in his different being, in his incommunicableness, in the distance involved in his rank (Rangdistanz)—not in any effects that go out from him, not even if the earth shook. His worth lies so little in his utility, that it would exist just the same if there were no one to whom he could be useful—and it is not impossible that he might have a harmful influence, others perishing of envy of him. Indeed, to estimate the value of a man by his use to others, his cost or his injury to them, has as much and as little sense as to estimate a work of art by the effects it produces. Morality itself (as has been noted in another connection) does not affect this value of a man—does not touch the question; and whether we preach the ruling morality or criticise it, such preoccupation shows that we belong essentially to the flock (rather than to ourselves), even if, as its highest necessity, a ​shepherd. "We must give men courage for a new and great form of contempt—of the rich, for example, of officials and so forth: every unpersonal form of life must rank as common and despicable." "My thought: ends are lacking and these must be individual. We see the universal driving: everybody is sacrificed and serves as instrument. Let one go through the streets and ask if it is not pure 'slaves' whom one meets. To what end? For what purpose?"
Undoubtedly the difficulty of reconciling all this with an organic view is considerable; Nietzsche's "great individuals" seem separate from society rather than a part of it. And yet he speaks of the three classes as "mutually conditioning each other" (sich gegenseitig bedingende)—and this strictly individual manner of existence is the most characteristic aspect of the first class.
Perhaps a way out is in conceiving the organic in a some. what different manner from the ordinary. As commonly understood, an organism is something in which all the parts are in turn means and ends. But might there not be an organism in which certain parts only are ends, and the rest means to them? Is the common conception perhaps an unconscious reflection of our prevailing social ideals—a democratic idiosyncrasy? and may an aristocratic conception (if we please to term it so) be just as biological and scientific? However this may be, it is plain what Nietzsche's view is. Great individuals alone are, to his mind, ends proper, and they cannot possibly be turned into means to ends beneath them; others are equally means and cannot possibly be conceived as ends, though existence and happy functioning may well, indeed must, be assured to them. If the higher kind of men can be said at all to serve the common run of us, it is not in a material way, but in giving a possible justification to us, a possible meaning to our existence. With them in view or in prospect, taking our place in a social process which tends to produce them, we can lift up our heads, if ever depression and doubt come to us as to whether our life is worth while,—and perhaps there could be no greater service in the world to us than this.
​I may add that the difficulty is also lessened, if, without varying the essential thought, we resort to slightly different language. Nietzsche speaks of "the social type" and the "solitary type" as "both necessary"; and "necessary" can only mean essential to a whole of which both are parts. We may quarrel with him for speaking of solitary individuals as a social class, may find it a contradictio in adjecto; but it may also be that the surface contradiction takes us straight into his deeper meaning. For the solitary individuals are still human: nay, to Nietzsche, they are the crown and culmination of humanity. Yet if so, society and humanity are not exactly co-extensive conceptions—there may be an unsocial type of humanity, i.e., society is only a particular form of humanity, not its substance. Well, this was just what Nietzsche held—and Professor Simmel, with his customary acuteness and profound grasp of whatever subject he takes up, has particularly noted it. Society is the "redeemed form" of the lower man, but the higher man is, in one aspect of his being, beyond it—he makes and is his own law, he is not a part or function, but a whole by himself. The great individual is humanity itself at its topmost reach. In one way, every individual may be regarded as humanity, i.e., not merely as an atom, one of a chain, but as the whole stock and process back of him as it constitutes itself at a given moment (as Nietzsche puts it, as "the whole chain," "the whole line of man up to himself"); but the higher individual is humanity risen to a new level, the total life "takes a step further with him "—and it is a secondary matter whether others, society, profit by him or lose. When, then, Nietzsche says that both types, the social and solitary, are necessary, we may say that he means necessary to humanity, not society—or if to society, then so far as the rarer, higher type is needed to give a final justification to society.
The two types, as stated, fit together and yet they are very different and they fit together just because they are different. ​Each has its own law of being; what is safe for one is perilous for the other—the social man is liable to degenerate when he tries to be an independent individual, and the higher man descends when he becomes a mere social functionary. "The flock feeling shall rule in the flock, but not beyond; the leaders need their own valuations, and the independent ones theirs." And not only the moral, but the religious sentiment may shape itself differently in the two classes, and this be well. A religion like Christianity, with its emphasis on unselfishness and pity, may, if it avoid excesses, be valuable to the flock, though to others it may be inadequate, or, if taken absolutely, false and pernicious and something to be fought—as matter of fact, the higher classes, so far as they have not been themselves debilitated by Christianity, have in favoring it usually done so pour encourager les autres. All along the line, the differences between the classes are in the total interest to be accentuated rather than diminished. To attempt to bring the types together is as great a mistake as it would be to seek to abolish the distinctions of the sexes. Fundamental biological needs determine sex differentiation—if there were not more or less antithesis and antagonism, there would not be attraction; and the greater purposes of life determine the differentiation of classes. Nothing is more undesirable in Nietzsche's eyes than "hermaphroditism," or the Tschandala (his term not for the lowest class, as is often supposed, but, following ancient Hindu usage, for the result of a mixing of the classes—he would have agreed perfectly with Mrs. Carlyle's saying that the "mixing up of things is the great bad"). To develope the distinctly typical and make the gap deeper—that is the true course. Even the extreme leveling and mechanizing of men going on under the modern democratic and industrial movement may have meaning and ​utility from this point of view; the huge, equalized, mechanized mass will create a surplus of force hitherto unknown and at once make possible and call for a new complemental race, to utilize the heaped-up force in new human adventures and give the mass a justification. Ever is some kind of organic relation between the different parts of humanity uppermost in Nietzsche's mind, some as necessary means, others as equally necessary ends.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 854. Rangordnung appears as the express antithesis of equality and equal rights in Beyond Good and Evil, § 30.
* ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 257.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 855; cf. § 1024; Werke, XIII, 170, § 393.
* ↑ Cf. Will to Power, § 660.
* ↑ Zarathustra, III, xii, § 25. Undoubtedly Nietzsche speaks at other times as if subjection meant harm. He has different points of view at different times, and it is hard to reconcile them—but see pp. 447-8, also p. 287, of this volume.
* ↑ P. 287.
* ↑ Werke, XIV, 66, § 131.
* ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 199.
* ↑ footnote
* ↑ Will to Power, § 984.
* ↑ The Antichristian, § 57.
* ↑ Earlier Nietzsche had distinguished the manual laborer from the scientific specialist as a "fourth estate" ("David Strauss etc.," sect. 8), but he now puts them together in the same class.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 998.
* ↑ Werke (pocket ed.), VII, 486, § 36; cf. Will to Power, § 132.
* ↑ See particularly a passage like Werke, XIII, 119-21.
* ↑ Cf. the language of Simmel and Tienes quoted at the beginning of note 1 to Chapter XXIV.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 901; cf. close of § 898.
* ↑ Werke XII 113 § 225.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 358; cf. § 1009; also Twilight etc., i, § 37.
* ↑ Werke, XIV, 262, § 4.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 902. Here "Herr" has a meaning almost antithetical to that which it has in the preceding quotation. In Zarathustra, prologue, § 9, Zarathustra is represented as wishing not to be a shepherd of the flock, but to draw many away from the flock—i.e., to make independent individuals.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 232, § 186.
* ↑ Ibid., XIV, 111, § 236. Cf., as to the general emulative spirit of Greek civilization, Zarathustra, I, xv.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 901.
* ↑ Zarathustra, I, xvii.
* ↑ The Antichristian, § 57.
* ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 126.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 997.
* ↑ Ibid., § 1001.
* ↑ Cf. Human etc., § 439.
* ↑ Werke, XIII, 347, § 859; cf. note c to Chapter XXVII.
* ↑ Zarathustra, III, xii, § 12.
* ↑ Werke (pocket ed.), VII, 485-6, § 36.
* ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 61.
* ↑ Werke, XIV, 226, § 457.
* ↑ Op. cit., pp. 143-4; cf. note d to Chapter XXVII.
* ↑ The Antichristian, § 57.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 75.
* ↑ Ibid., § 901.
* ↑ The Antichristian, § 57.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 893.
* ↑ The Antichristian, § 57.
* ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 263.
* ↑ P. 216; cf. Werke, XIII, 110-4.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 886.
* ↑ Nietzsche finds the "cruelty of nature" not where it is commonly supposed to be: "she is cruel to her fortunate children (Glückskinder) , she spares and protects les humbles" (ibid., § 685).
* ↑ Ibid., § 685.
* ↑ Ibid., § 401.
* ↑ Ibid., § 864.
* ↑ Ibid., § 685.
* ↑ Ibid., § 864.
* ↑ Ibid., § 903; cf. Dorner, op. cit., p. 186.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 886.
* ↑ Ibid., § 890.
* ↑ Ibid., § 895; cf. Werke, XIII, 120, § 265 ("keine Servilität!").
* ↑ Dawn of Day, § 202.
* ↑ Zarathustra, III, i; xii, § 3.
* ↑ Werke, XIII, 201, § 444. As to the criminal, degenerate, and evil, cf. Werke, XII, 368, § 718.
* ↑ Werke, XII, 411; Werke (pocket ed.), VII, 486, § 36.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 764.
* ↑ Werke, XT, 143 (the italics are mine).
* ↑ Ibid., XIV, 97, § 207. He even says that in the next [our] centurymankind will have won, by the conquest of nature, more power than it can use, and suggests, among other changes, that economic relations may then be ordered without the usual anxiety about life and death (ibid., XI, 376-7, § 572).
* ↑ Zarathustra, I, x.
* ↑ Werke, XIV, 61, § 118.
* ↑ Ibid., XIV, 61-2, § 119.
* ↑ As matter of fact he contemplates the possibility that an oppressed and enslaved population might rise and rule and lay the foundations of a new culture (Werke, XIV, 69-70). I do not remember any development of this thought, though perhaps Werke, XIII, 212-3, § 497, has something similar in view. It is a different thought from that of the migration of the workingmen contemplated in Dawn of Day, § 206 (see ante, p. 135).
* ↑ Joyful Science, § 42.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 763.
* ↑ Werke, XII, 204, § 435.
* ↑ Will to Power, §§ 861-2.
* ↑ Werke, XI, 143.
* ↑ Werke, XIII, 349, § 864.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 660.
* ↑ So I interpret Will to Power, § 754.
* ↑ Pp. 72, 127, 249-50.
* ↑ Werke, XII, 205, § 439.
* ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 46.
* ↑ Ibid., § 207; cf. Will to Power, § 358.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 358.
* ↑ Ibid., § 356. Nietzsche finds slavery everywhere visible, even though unconfessed, and adds that it is not to be extirpated, being necessary; we have only to see that there are those worthy to receive its benefits, so that this vast mass of politico-commercial forces is not used up in vain (Werke, XII, 203, § 433; cf. Human, etc., § 585).
* ↑ Either society, or the higher man, who is the ultima ratio of society, may be the object of the service; though Nietzsche is of the opinion that when the higher man is not in evidence, or at least in prospect, life, and the service, too, are on little more than an animal level.
* ↑ Werke, IX, 153-4.
* ↑ Op. cit., p. 149.
* ↑ For example, in Will to Power, §§ 401, 461.
* ↑ Observe the implications of the classifications in Will to Power, §§ 274, 400, 685.
* ↑ Op. cit., p. 98.
* ↑ Nietzsche. Ein akademisches Publikum, p. 118.
* ↑ Op. cit., p. 149.
* ↑ Op. cit., pp. 332, 334.
* ↑ Op. cit., p. 175.
* ↑ Extreme expressions of contempt for the common mass are to be found in' Joyful Science, § 377; Zarathustra, II, vi; Beyond Good and Evil, § 30; Will to Power, § 761.
* ↑ Werke, XIV, 226, §§ 26, 25.
* ↑ Zarathustra, IV, xix.
* ↑ Werke, XII, 360, § 667; cf. § 678 ("The past in us to be overcome: the impulses to be newly combined and all to be directed together to one goal—very difficult").
* ↑ Ibid., XII, 362, § 687.
* ↑ The Antichristian, § 57.
* ↑ Werke, XIV, 81, § 161; XIII, 170, § 393.
* ↑ Cf. the striking metaphor used in Werke, IX, 155.
* ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 293.
* ↑ Ibid., § 199.
* ↑ Ibid., § 242.
* ↑ Op. cit., pp. 98-9.
* ↑ Henry James, Society the Redeemed Form of Man (Boston, 1879).
* ↑ Will to Power, § 886.
* ↑ Werke, XT, 216, § 145.
* ↑ Human, etc., § 283.
* ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 63.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 886.
* ↑ Ibid., § 876.
* ↑ Ibid., § 877. It may be a part of the very greatness of a man that others cannot draw advantage from him (cf. what is said of Goethe, Twilight etc., ix, § 50).
* ↑ Will to Power, § 878.
* ↑ Ibid., § 879. See p. 326 and other citations there.
* ↑ Werke, XII, 122, § 240.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 269.
* ↑ Will to Power, § 886.
* ↑ Op. cit., pp. 206-11; Simmel thinks that Goethe made (in effect) similar distinctions.
* ↑ I am not sure whether I get Nietzsche's exact shade of meaning here—let the student consult the passages, Will to Power, § 687 (cf. §§ 682, 678, 785); Twilight etc., ix, § 33; also Simmel's exposition, just cited.
* ↑ Cf. Will to Power, §§ 901, 904, 886.
* ↑ Ibid., § 287.
* ↑ Nietzsche says distinctly that his aim is not to annihilate the Christian ideal, but to put an end to its tyranny (Will to Power, § 361; cf. § 132, and Werke, XIV, 66-7, § 132); cf. G. Chatterton-Hill's discriminations, op. cit., p. 136. See still further as to the uses of religion for the common man. Beyond Good and Evil, § 61; Werke, XIII, 300, §§ 736-7.
* ↑ Will to Power, §§ 216, 373 (cf. Halévy, op. cit., p. 373; Faguet, op. cit., pp. 248-9).
* ↑ Will to Power, § 866.