so there is always the lurking suggestion of a contrast to the ordinary tainted world.[1]b But the moral types which Nietzsche considers at length are those of the ruler and subject classes.c As he read history, this social cleavage is the most striking one—the one that has left the deepest marks. The cleavage does not exist in democratic communities, and if the world had started and developed democratically, "master-morality" and "slave-morality" would have no meaning.
It should be said at the outset that "master" and "slave" are not used by Nietzsche merely in the economic sense to which we in America are most accustomed, but, as has been hinted in an earlier connection,[2] broadly. The economic slave who is captured in war or purchased and put to drudgery in the fields or in the household is one kind of slave, but that which makes him a slave is subjection to the will of another—and virtually every one who takes his orders from another, and has to, gets this designation at Nietzsche's hands.d The master (Herr), on the other hand, is one who gives orders. And inasmuch as early political societies were commonly made up of leaders and the led, rulers and the ruled, the function of the latter being as much to follow and obey as that of the former was to lead and command, the language "master and slave," in application to them, is strictly appropriate. Particularly does it apply when one society conquers another, which seems to have been the way in which large political aggregates were formed in early times. Nietzsche once goes so far as to say that classes (Stände) always originate in differences of descent and race.[3] But this appears to be a needlessly strong statement. "Slave morality" and "the morality of the mass" are practically synonymous to him, and the "mass" in contrast with the rulers or leaders belonged to every social group—the two are constantly contrasted and their virtues and duties contra-distinguished by him.e Sometimes he even uses "group-morality" (Heerden-Moral) as identical with "slave-morality," meaning of course that the "slaves" are the greater part of the group, just as we often speak of the "people," when we
