official of the state is without feeling of guilt when he hangs a man (kills), or puts him in prison (enslaves), or takes his money in taxation (robs), or as a policeman or detective deceives and traps him (lies),[1]—though all these things done on his own account would be immoral. The fact that he acts for the group, in the interest of the group, takes away shame. There is a double standard, but no contradiction; as a group-organ, he shares the innocence of the group. It is so with the soldier, so with the head of the state—they cannot be judged as is the private citizen. Nietzsche remarks that the antagonism of duties, comes to a head in the shepherd of the flock—he must be both friendly, peaceable, protecting, i.e., to those within its circle, and hostile, warlike, merciless, i.e., to those without.[2] In this connection I may mention his interesting suggestion (in keeping with his general view of the priority of social to individual life), that some of the feelings which we commonly call individual or even egoistic are not really so, but are social and have been socially trained. For instance, one hates more, more violently, more innocently as a patriot than as an individual; one sacrifices more quickly for one's family or for a church or a party than for oneself; the strongest feeling which many have is honor, and honor is a social standard, meaning at bottom what is honored.[3] So-called egoistic impulses are often really impulses to social formations. Here is a person who is covetous and heaps up property (the impulse of the family); here is another who has markedly the sex-impulse (something which serves the race), and still another who is vain (emphasizes the community by estimating himself according to its measurements). We speak of the egoism of the conqueror, the statesman, and so on—they do think only of themselves, but of "themselves" so far as the ego is developed by an impulse which at the same time builds or fashions a group (cf. the egoism of mothers, of teachers).[4] It may be that the individual, apart from some kind of group-function and training, is a very limited quantity.
And now I come to a kind of paradox in Nietzsche's analysis. Societies, as we have seen, set up, whether con-
