example, had its ideal—that of the kingdom of heaven. Into that heavenly order (whether to be consummated on this earth or not) were to be gathered the good, the just, the loving, the merciful, the pure—they from the Christian standpoint were the wheat of the harvests of the world, they were to be garnered up in the coming order for ever. It is a dream that still has power to charm the heart. But what of those of a different moral character—the chaff or waste of the world, or, to use still other images, the trees that bore no fruit, the salt that had no savor? Was this kind of material, this waste and wreckage of human life, to be tenderly regarded all the same, to be nursed, pitied, allowed to continue and perpetuate its kind? Hardly: we know rather that the chaff was to be burnt up with unquenchable fire, the trees hewn down, the salt cast out and trodden under foot. I use the consequence not in the slightest as an objection to Christianity. There is the same logic implicit in any affirmation of a great end of life—and something kindred is involved in our most commonplace practical purposes. If we have any good thing in mind, we reject what does not correspond to it. If we set out an orchard, we leave to one side trees that come maimed or broken from the nursery. If we send our apples to market, we exclude those below a certain grade. Well, Nietzsche had an ideal, an ultima ratio of human life. It was a wholly earthly (diesseitige) ideal, and yet it was of humanity rising to what may relatively be called superhuman heights, of men who should be half like Gods—not merely good, but much more, beings to be feared, revered as well as loved. They should be the consummate fruit of humanity's tree, and, if all could not be such men or supermen themselves, they could at least facilitate them, work for them, fit themselves into a scheme of social existence that would tend that way. Nietzsche conceives that humanity might actually be turned into an organism working to this end—no longer then a disconnected, sprawling mass of atoms (smaller or larger) as at present, but a related, interdependent, organic whole—a whole with an aim, this aim. And so arises his principle of selection, and canon for pity. What will fit into an organism of this sort is worth preserving, what will not is not worth preserving. Equal regard for all material is impossible.
