come to a state of war in society; at least the costs of maintaining peace are becoming enormous, the folly of the exploiting classes being so great and so persistent.[1] He deems a social revolution not unlikely.[2]
The educated classes in general are not without responsibility for the situation. If we complain of lack of discipline among the masses, the reproach falls back heavily on them; the masses are just as good and just as bad as the educated are; they set the tone, and elevate and corrupt the mass as they elevate or corrupt themselves.[3] A part of the trouble, too, lies in the lack of personal relation between employers and employed. We pay any one we know and respect, who does us a service, whether he be physician, artist, or hand-worker, as high as we can, perhaps beyond our means; but an unknown person we pay as little as practicable—the human element or relation disappears.[4] Manners, breeding are also a factor. It is strange, Nietzsche says, that subjection to powerful, fear-inspiring, even frightful persons, to tyrants and military commanders, is not so painfully felt, as subjection to unknown and uninteresting persons such as the great men of industry are: the laborer sees in his employer usually only a cunning dog of a man, who drains him and speculates on his needs, and whose name, shape, and reputation are utterly indifferent to him. Manufacturers and great leaders of business have apparently lacked quite too much thus far all those forms and signs of a higher race, which first make persons interesting; had there been the distinction of the born noble in their look and bearing, perhaps socialism would never have developed among the masses. For these at bottom are ready for any kind of slavery, provided that the man who stands over them continually legitimates himself as one born to command—by distinction of manner! The commonest man feels that such distinction is not to be improvised and that in it he honors the fruit of a long past—but the absence of it and the notorious manufacturer-vulgarity with red fat hands bring him to the thought that only accident and luck have elevated one man above another—and so he says to himself, "Let us try accident and luck! We will throw the dice!"—and socialism
