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THE IDEAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY
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still possible to the weak and suffering; to implant solidarity as an instinct as against the instincts of fear and servility: to fight with accident, also with the accident of the 'great man.'"[1] These last words show, I may add, that Nietzsche is still not without his humanitarian side. He really wishes as wide a happiness as is possible, consistently with a great aim. We have already found him citing an ancient counsel, "When thou cultivatest the land, do it with a plow, so that the bird and the wolf who follow after may receive of thee and all creatures profit by thee," and calling it a "generous and charitable" one.[2] Zarathustra's instinct is to love "all that lives" (whatever danger may lie in doing so), and tears come to his eyes as he watches the setting sun pouring its golden light on the sea, so that even the poorest fisherman rows with golden oars.[3] Nietzsche would like every man to have a value, and if there are those who have none to their families or the community, he wants us to give them a value, to make them feel that somehow they are useful—for example, the sick man as a means of extending knowledge, the criminal as a scarecrow, the vicious as opportunities (for experiment?) and so on.[4] He wishes none thrown utterly to the void.

It is Nietzsche's attitude to that part of the third class whom we are accustomed to call the "workers" that is most misunderstood, and it may be well to give special attention to it. He is thought not only to despise them, but to favor despoiling them, keeping them miserable and poor. Now it is true that he does not wish them, any more than the employing class, to rule in society, but how far he is from wishing, or finding necessary, a squalid life for them, particularly in an age of mechanical inventions like the present one, will appear in passages I shall now quote or refer to. In the first place, he says that comfort is to be created for them, that to the lowest is to be given the expectation of happiness (Anwartschaft auf Glück).[5] Once he ventures on an extraordinary assertion:

  1. Ibid., § 895; cf. Werke, XIII, 120, § 265 ("keine Servilität!").
  2. Dawn of Day, § 202.
  3. Zarathustra, III, i; xii, § 3.
  4. Werke, XIII, 201, § 444. As to the criminal, degenerate, and evil, cf. Werke, XII, 368, § 718.
  5. Werke, XII, 411; Werke (pocket ed.), VII, 486, § 36.