raising the question whether a permanent society is ipso facto a supreme good; whether shorter life and decay, with a flowering time, are not preferable to however long life on a monotonous level. Is China, he asks [of course, as he knew it thirty or more years ago], a desirable form of human existence upon the earth? We are perhaps here in presence of ultimate alternatives, i.e., have to choose between two ultimate social ideals. Along with the desire to eternalize a state, there is instinctively bred, he thinks, a fear of great individuals, and customs and institutions naturally arise which are unpropitious to them; hence the Chinese proverb, before quoted, "The great man is a public misfortune."[1] But for himself he does not hesitate: if the perpetuity of a state must be purchased at such a price, the game is not worth the candle—better that societies should come to an end than that the higher types should not appear.[2] And yet great men, though worth having at whatever cost on their own account,[3] are generally viewed by Nietzsche, as already stated, as the possible beginnings of new and greater societies. They are the variations on which the hope of the future hangs. If it is not merely man as we see him that we have in mind, but a higher type of man and the greatest possible variety of such types, then it is just to these individuals that we must give particular attention, encouraging them, giving them room, not measuring them by ordinary standards, and willing rather to be hurt by them than to prevent their arising, knowing that, whatever immediate harm they do, humanity's possibilities of further development are bound up with them. d
IV
The ruling tendency of our time is against Nietzsche. The highest thing now is to be a servant of the common life; the community is set above the individual—even the greatest. e This may be a wholesome reaction against the vulgar egoism of our wealth-seekers and political adventurers who want to make the
- ↑ Werke, XII, 114, § 227; 119, § 232.
- ↑ Sometimes there are compensations of this character for political decline, a people in such circumstances getting again its mind, which had been practically lost in the struggles for power, and culture owing its best to the new situation (Human, etc., § 465).
- ↑ Cf. Will to Power, § 996; Beyond Good and Evil, § 276.
