rest of the community serve them—the ideal may be good for them, and for all of us so far as vulgar egoism lurks in us. But in any other sense, it rests to Nietzsche's mind on a deep misunderstanding.[1] The community, the mass or collectivity, is not really higher than the individual. It is higher than the ordinary individual, more important than the ordinary individual (with quantitative standards, many are more important than one); but the great individual is more important than it—for with him mankind attains a new level of being. The most human aim is not to provide for the comfort and happiness of the mass, but to raise the type—to welcome, then, exceptions to the average, to facilitate their existence instead of putting obstacles and mistrust in their way. For there is no other method of progress than the old one of variation and selection; only (and here Nietzsche departs from the Darwinian school) it is we who must do the selecting henceforth—giving to the rarer, finer, higher, stronger specimens the advantage, even taking them as leaders, instead of chilling and defeating them as alas! we may, and often do (there is always, Nietzsche thinks, a half-conscious, underground conspiracy of the little against the great, of the average against the exception).[2] The proudest, most human act of the mass would be to array itself in loyalty to what is above it (mere mutual helping and safeguarding are not a peculiarly human thing—all animal societies in some measure practice it). Robert Browning's Paracelsus says,
"Make no more giants, God,
But elevate the race at once! We ask
To put forth just our strength, our human strength,
All starting fairly, all equipped alike,
Gifted alike, all eagle-eyed, true-hearted."
But what a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous! What a childlike view of the method of progress in the world, which is always by some starting better than others, by unlike gifts, by giants leading the way where smaller men dare not go, by slow, gradual, painful advance, instead of "at once" or by an Omnipotent Hand. The hope of humanity, the reason for cherishing humanity, the ultimate raison d'être for the great toiling
