with whom Nietzsche himself often verbally confounds them. I mean by this he often fails to guard himself, not making it plain whether by "higher men," "lords," "supermen," he means to one class or the other. His thought, however, becomes unmistakable in passages like the following: "Principal point of view: that we do not find the task of the higher species to consist in the guidance of the lower (as, e.g., Comte does).[1] "The simplest type of organism is alone of a perfect character, all complicated ones are faulty, and innumerable ones of the higher sort go to pieces. Societies (Heerden) and states are the highest known to us—very imperfect organisms. At length arises, behind the state, human individual, the highest and most imperfect being, who as a rule goes to pieces and makes the structure from which he arises go to pieces. The whole task (Pensum) of the impulses that form societies and states is concentrated in his inner being. He can live alone, after his own laws—he is no lawgiver and does not wish to rule. His feeling of power turns inward."[2] "It is not a question of going before (with this, one is at best shepherd, i.e., the supreme need of the flock), but of capacity for going on one's own account, for being different."[3] "It is absolutely not the idea to take the latter [the superman type] as lords of the former [ordinary men]; the two species are rather to exist alongside one another—as far as possible separated, the one like the Epicurean Gods not concerning itself about the other."[4] "The shepherd' (Hirt) in antithesis to the lord (Herr)—the former a means for the preservation of the flock, the latter the end for which the flock exist."[5] Nitezsche thinks that consideration for individuals proper began in Greece, Asia knowing only princes and lawgivers. "Morality for individuals despite the community and its statutes begins with Socrates."[6] "Probably never were so many different individuals put to-
- ↑ Will to Power, § 901; cf. close of § 898.
- ↑ Werke XII 113 § 225.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 358; cf. § 1009; also Twilight etc., i, § 37.
- ↑ Werke, XIV, 262, § 4.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 902. Here "Herr" has a meaning almost antithetical to that which it has in the preceding quotation. In Zarathustra, prologue, § 9, Zarathustra is represented as wishing not to be a shepherd of the flock, but to draw many away from the flock—i.e., to make independent individuals.
- ↑ Werke, XI, 232, § 186.
