Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/477

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POLITICAL VIEWS AND ANTICIPATIONS
461

of emotions and ideas—is ever a strong race to emerge, a race of the classic type?[1] Moreover, with all his esteem for antiquity, he found no exact models for us there, only suggestions, beginnings (Ansätze).[2] We have higher standards than the old world; fidelity, magnanimity, jealousy for one's good name (die Scham des guten Rufes) belong, as the result of our mediæval inheritance, to our conception of what is noble.[3] The future aristocracy cannot follow Greek nobles, who on occasion would shamelessly break their word; although the heirs and bounden heirs of all that has been superior in the past, they will be "the firstlings of a new nobility, the like of which no age has seen or dreamt."[4]

And yet Nietzsche accepts things as he finds them, and as we have already seen, believes that in the long run, democracy, socialism, and the relative decadence accompanying them will be utilized by, and only make more necessary, the strong men of the future.[5] The modern movement has to run its course—we may check, dam it, and thereby make it more vehement and sudden: more we cannot do.[6] In the meantime and as the prime thing, there must be a war of ideas. Higher men must declare war against the mass. Everywhere the average are combining to make themselves master; we must make reprisals and bring all these goings on (which began in Europe with Christianity) to light and to judgment.[7] "If things went according to my will, it would be time to declare war on European morality and all that has grown out of it: we must demolish Europe's existing order of peoples and states. The Christian-democratic way of thinking favors the flock-animal and tends to make man smaller, it weakens the great impulses (such as the Böse), it hates control, hard discipline, great responsibilities, great ventures. It is the most commonplace who carry off the profit, and put their measures of value through."[8] The task of "en-

  1. Will to Power, § 868.
  2. I am compelled to rely on Richter here (op. cit., p. 260, citing Werke, XV, 1st ed., 484).
  3. Dawn of Day, § 199; cf. § 165.
  4. Joyful Science, § 337.
  5. Cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 222; Will to Power, §§ 132, 954-5, 960.
  6. Twilight etc., ix, § 43.
  7. Will to Power, § 361.
  8. Werke, XIV, 226, § 456.