not binding upon all. The hostile, destructive spirit (the Böse), not love and pity only, has work to do in the world.
Second, we are able to judge the popular ethical notion that the aim of morality is the general welfare, or, as it is sometimes put, the preservation and furthering of the interests of mankind. Preserving, says Nietzsche, but in what, along what line? Furthering, but toward what? Is it the longest possible duration of mankind that is in mind or its greatest possible deanimalization?—for these things may contradict one another. To Nietzsche, I need not say, a line of ascending life is better, even though it comes to an end, than life continuing on the same level, even though it be indefinitely prolonged.[1] "General welfare" is equally ambiguous; or, if it means that the welfare of the mass is the goal to be aimed at as opposed to the evolution of higher types, which may have to be at the expense of the mass, then "general welfare" is a false and anti-evolutionary principle.[2] Indeed, remembering how man has risen from the animal and higher races from lower, only as superior members of a species got an advantage over the rest and bred more successfully their kind (a higher species thus in time resulting), Nietzsche says that the principle, "the good of the majority is to be preferred to that of individuals," is enough to take mankind in the course of time back to the lowest animality, for it is the reverse principle, "individuals are of more importance than the mass," that has elevated it.[3]
Third, we have a measurement of healthy and sickly—health taken as covering body and spirit (things perhaps ultimately not so very different). Whatever Schopenhauer and Christian saints may say from their standpoint, to Nietzsche those who turn away from life and exalt virtues antithetical to life are sick, and they rank lower, are less desirable members of the species, on this account. It is the sound and strong who keep alive our confidence in life—and their right to be, the prerogative of the bell with full tone, is a thousandfold greater than the right of the discordant and broken; the latter under-
