into a higher race at the expense of the rest.[1] Sacrifice would thus become part of a deliberate program. Undoubtedly to most the thought is repulsive. We may sacrifice ourselves, but how can we exact sacrifice from others! How can we willingly contemplate men suffering, living stunted lives, or dying prematurely—all for an end beyond themselves? But suppose they consented to the sacrifice. Suppose that with some dim sense of a greatness to come they were willing to be used up, and to disappear when they could no longer serve! That were a possibility not ordinarily reckoned with. Indeed, our prevailing methods of thought today tend to keep it out of mind. We want to alleviate men's lot. Our altars are to pity. The idea is abroad that no one should suffer or be sacrificed. All have rights to what pleasure and enjoyment can be got out of life, we say—and they, the great mass, are beginning to say so too. Unconsciously we play into their latent instincts of self-assertion, their egoism—not now the egoism that gives, but the egoism that takes and that takes all it can get. Where do we hear nowadays that men might willingly deny themselves or even disappear for a glory possible to mankind! There may be such voices, but I do not hear them. The result is that all classes, "high" and "low" (to use the conventional terms), are pervaded by the same greed for near and personal goods. But Nietzsche credits better things of men, of the "low" as well as the "high," even of those who are no longer of any use in life—all might be guided by the thought of a great end beyond them, willingly enduring hardship and even consenting to end their lives when it is better not to live.[2]
III
And now I come to that part of my subject about which perhaps more nonsense has been uttered than about any other aspect of this debatable thinker—his view of pity. The current idea is that Nietzsche was a sort of monster. "Close the hospitals, let the weak perish and tend the strong"—this is sup-
