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The history of the influence of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness to which the entire century has attained in its worthiest individuals and periods. 121

As long as the utility which determines moral estimates is only gregarious utility, as long as the preservation of the community is only kept in view, and the immoral is sought precisely and exclusively in what seems dangerous to the maintenance of the community, there can be no "morality of love to one's neighbour." 123

"Love of our neighbour," is always a secondary matter,[Pg 192] partly conventional and arbitrarily manifested in relation to our fear of our neighbour. 123

Everything that elevates the individual above the herd, and is a source of fear to the neighbour, is henceforth called evil; the tolerant, unassuming, self-adapting, self-equalising disposition, the mediocrity of desires, attains to moral distinction and honour. 125

The democratic movement is the inheritance of the Christian movement. 127

We, who regard the democratic movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organisation, but as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as involving his mediocrising and depreciation: where have we to fix our hopes? In new philosophers—there is no other alternative: in minds strong and original enough to initiate opposite estimates of value, to transvalue and invert "eternal valuations"; in forerunners, in men of the future, who in the present shall fix the constraints and fasten the knots which will compel millenniums to take new paths. To teach men the future of humanity as his will, as depending on human will, and to make preparation for vast hazardous enterprises and collective attempts in rearing and educating, in order thereby to put an end to the frightful rule of folly and chance which has hitherto gone by the name of "history" (the folly of the "greatest number" is only its last form)—for that purpose a new type of philosophers and commanders will some time or other be needed, at the very idea of which everything that has existed in the way of occult, terrible, and benevolent beings might look pale and dwarfed. 128-129

The universal degeneracy of mankind to the level of the "man of the future"—as idealised by the socialistic[Pg 193] fools and shallow-pates—this degeneracy and dwarfing of man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to a man of "free society"), this brutalising of man into a pigmy with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly possible! He who has thought out this possibility to its ultimate conclusion knows another loathing unknown to the rest of mankind—and perhaps also a new mission!130-131

Supposing ... that in the picture of the philosophers of the future, some trait suggests the question whether they must not perhaps be sceptics in the last-mentioned sense, something in them would only be designated thereby—and not they themselves. With equal right they might call themselves critics; and assuredly they will be men of experiments.... They will be sterner (and perhaps not always towards themselves only) ... they will not deal with the "truth" in order that it may "please" them, or "elevate" and "inspire" them—they will rather have little faith in "truth" bringing with it such revels for the feelings. They will smile, those rigorous spirits, when any one says in their presence: "that thought elevates me, why should it not be true?" or; "that artist enlarges me, why should he not be great?" Perhaps they will not only have a smile, but a genuine disgust for all that is thus rapturous, idealistic, feminine and hermaphroditic; and if any one could look into their inmost heart, he would not easily find therein the intention to reconcile "Christian sentiments" with "antique taste," or even with "modern parliamentarism" (the kind of reconciliation necessarily found even amongst philosophers in our very uncertain and consequently very conciliatory century). Critical discipline, and every habit that conduces to purity and rigour in intellectual matters,[Pg 194] will not only be demanded from themselves by these philosophers of the future; they may even make a display thereof as their special adornment—nevertheless they will not want to be called critics on that account. It will seem to them no small indignity to philosophy to have it decreed, as is so welcome nowadays, that "philosophy itself is criticism and critical science—and nothing else whatever!" 149-151

The real philosophers ... are commanders and law-givers; they say: "Thus shall it be." They determine first the Whither and the Why of mankind, and thereby set aside the previous labour of all philosophical workers, and all subjugators of the past—they grasp at the future with a creative hand, and whatever is and was, becomes for them thereby a means, an instrument, and a hammer. Their "knowing" is creating, their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is—Will to Tower. ... 152

At present ... when throughout Europe the herding animal alone attains to honours, and dispenses honours, when "equality of right" can too readily be transformed into equality in wrong: I mean to say into general war against everything rare, strange, and privileged, against the higher man, the higher soul, the higher duty, the higher responsibility, the creative plenipotence and lordliness—at present it belongs to the conception of "greatness" to be noble, to wish to be apart, to be capable of being different, to stand alone, to have to live by personal initiative; and the philosopher will betray something of his own ideal when he asserts: "He shall be the greatest who can be the most solitary, the most concealed, the most divergent, the man beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, and of superabundance of will;[Pg 195] precisely this shall be called greatness: as diversified as can be entire, as ample as can be full." 154-155

Morality as attitude is opposed to our taste nowadays. This is also an advance, as it was an advance in our fathers that religion as an attitude finally became opposed to their taste.... 161

The practice of judging and condemning morally is the favourite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so.... 162

Whoever has really offered sacrifice knows that he wanted and obtained something for it—perhaps something from himself for something from himself; that he relinquished here in order to have more there, perhaps in general to be more, or even feel himself "more." 164

Wherever sympathy (fellow-suffering) is preached nowadays ... let the psychologist have his ears open: through all the vanity, through all the noise which is natural to these preachers (as to all preachers), he will hear a hoarse, groaning, genuine note of self-contempt. 165