tion. All of which is equivalent to saying that men of independent force and character, individuals capable of self-direction, tend to appear. This is Nietzsche's second point of view. The material for persons might be said to exist always, but actually they only arise under such favorable historical conditions as these. b First, social stability; then an aim is possible in new and higher directions.[1] When the greatest danger for all is over, individual trees can grow with their own special conditions of existence.[2] Horticulturists and breeders of animals know that with superabundance of nourishment and a surplus of care and protection, there is an increased tendency to variations and Nietzsche thinks that it is the same with man. When there are no longer enemies to guard against, when the means of life and enjoyment abound, the old strict discipline relaxes, the mores that helped to store surplus power become more or less "out of date," and deviations from the average type appear such as had not been known before—deviations in two directions, indeed, towards what is higher, finer, rarer, and also towards what is lower, or even monstrous. If we observe Venice after it had attained assured supremacy, or an ancient Greek polis like Athens in the fifth century B.C., or the end of the Republican period in Rome,[3] We find an essentially similar outcome, namely, an astonishing array of marked individualities, some holding themselves together well, others going to pieces.[4] It is the harvest time of a people, the raison d'être (in Nietzsche's eyes) of the ages of strict discipline that have gone before. Relatively to the old iron-bound order, it in a time of anarchy, and, many would say, of corruption (ripeness and corruption, we must remember, are not remote from one another in the temporal order of things); but it is also a time when the great moral natures appear, not men of the old type who simply obey, but men of power—those who in the old order would have ruled, but now turn their force inward and rule themselves (men like Heraclitus, Plato).[5]
