philosophical theories, and thenceforward we find a struggle between a more realistic and a purely subjective tendency. In addition to this he was horrified at pessimism, not only as he found it in Schopenhauer, but likewise as he found it in Richard Wagner. He then assailed his own old deities. During the whole of the remaining period in which he was still able to do anything he labored towards the discovery of an adequate, decisive expression of his opposition to every form of pessimism, to every form of depreciation of life, to all levelling processes. He particularly challenges the theories of morality which have been prevalent hitherto and insisted on "an inversion of all values." The most characteristic statements of this polemic are found in Jenseits von Gut und Böse (1886) and in the Geneaologie der Moral (1887). Here he develops the ideas advanced in the essays of his youth more rigidly, and the fundamental theory becomes a radical aristocratism, which leads to a social dualism. The goal of history is not in the infinitely distant future, but it is realized in the world's great men. The great mass of mankind is nothing more than an instrument, obstacle or copy. A higher, ruling caste is necessary, which exists for its own sake,— which is an end in itself, not at the same time an instrument. Corruption begins just as soon as the aristocracy no longer believe in their right to live, to rule and to treat the great masses as their laboring cyclops. Aristocracy must show the value of life by the mere fact of their existence. It is impossible to develop the highest virtues among the great masses. They are only capable of religion and civic morality. But, as history proves, the great masses have repeatedly been able to claim that their morality is the highest. The true estimate of life, as the sense of energy
