classification of higher and lower, which appears in a social group, is typical of a phenomenon that is universal in nature—at least in organic nature. "We may consider all that has to be done to preserve the organism as a 'moral demand': there is a 'thou oughtst' for the single organs which comes to them from the commanding organ."[1]
IV
We are accordingly led straightway to what Nietzsche considers the very problematical notion of equality. He takes it broadly—perhaps too broadly—and appears to have no objection to it in and for itself. We may seek equality, he says, either by bringing others down to our level, or by raising ourselves and all up to a higher level.[2] He has, too, as we have already seen, a sense of the intimate unity of human nature and is instinctively offended at the thought of using others merely as means to our own ends.[3] He admits that it was the noblest spirits who were led astray by the ideas of the French Revolution, in which "equality" played so large a part (though he makes an exception in the case of Goethe).[4] And yet in the actual constitution of things there is more inequality than equality—and not merely artificial inequality owing to outer conditions, but natural inequality. The mark of a good man for Schopenhauer was "that he less than the rest makes a difference between himself and others";[5] but if differences exist, what boots it? Must the good man be a little blind—an idealist, or an artist? A tendency of goodness to stupidity (Dummheit) has been already noticed. It is sometimes said that to God all men are equal, and Carlyle spoke of Islam as a "perfect equalizer of men";[6] but so from a high mountain the tallest men are pygmies like the rest—there is no distinguishing vision from so far off. f Nietzsche does not question that it may be expedient to treat men as equal under certain circumstances or that there are conditions in which differences
