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."[1] 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.[2] 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,
