lightenment" now is to make not only priests, but princes and statesmen so sensible of the untruth of their conduct that it becomes conscious falsehood—to strip them of their good conscience.[1] "Also in the things of the mind I wish war and oppositions: and more war than ever, more oppositions than ever."[2]
But it is as to ways and means for accomplishing the new social order that Nietzsche is uncertain and vacillating. I have already spoken of this in considering his view of the conditions most favorable to the emergence of the superman; I shall now only go a little further into detail. Though the avoidance of war is theoretically possible and would in his eyes be desirable,[3] his preponderant opinion is that the higher race will arise and be trained in times of social disturbance and commotion—such times making them indeed necessary. Labor or socialistic crises seem to be principally in his mind—though ordinary wars may serve the purpose. The critical thing is that circumstances be of such a nature that the new organizing forces must either prevail or go under—only in this way will they be tested and bring out all their force, and only as they show overmastering force will the future (the right kind of future) be guaranteed.[4] Relatively to the old, sick, moribund culture they will be "barbarians"—not barbarians coming up from the slums and below, such as our capitalistic society now fears, but barbarians coming from above, of whom Prometheus was an instance, fresh, unspoiled conquering natures who look for material on which to impress themselves.[5] It is men of this type—completer men, completer animals—who have always been the instruments for lifting the human level and establishing a higher culture, however fearful and violent they may have been in the first stages of the process (instances being the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans)[6]—and they will be needed again. In answering the question, "Where are the barbarians of the twentieth century?" he says, "they will appear and consolidate themselves after
