is movement and movement to an end, progress it is—but, to Nietzsche, progressive decline. Democracy he calls "a form of decline (Verfallsform) of the state.[1] However justifiable, or at least excusable, as a temporary measure it may be, it represents a form of unbelief—unbelief in great men and a select society: "we are all equal," it says.[2] The sentiment of hostility to whatever rules or wills to rule, which underlies it, Nietzsche calls "misarchism"—admitting that it is a bad word for a bad thing.[3] The individual wants to be free, but as most are constituted, "freedom" is a misfortune for them. European democracy is to a certain extent a liberation of powers, but to a far greater extent a liberation of weaknesses and other ignoble things.[4] The demand for independence, for free development, for laisser aller is most hotly made by those for whom no control could be too strict.[5] "A more common kind of men are getting the upper hand (in place of the noblesse, or the priests): first the business people, then the workers."[6] These classes, whom Nietzsche puts together as "Pöbel,""Gesindel," are the "lords of today": for there need be no illusions—though they may talk only of freedom, they really want to rule.[7] They have their place, even a necessary place, in society, but they are a lower type of men, and when they wish to order everything for their own benefit, their selfishness is only less revolting than that of degenerates, who say "all for myself."[8] Nietzsche refers in Zarathustra to the "too many," the "much too many," and it is commonly assumed (in accordance with the usual manner of discourse in England and America) that he has in mind the vast working populations of our time; but he is really thinking of the lower sorts of men in general, and it happens (perhaps does not merely "happen") that those whom he specially mentions are the rich and would-be rich, clamberers for power, journalists and the educated class.[9] "They
- ↑ Twilight etc., ix, § 39; cf. Beyond Good and Evil, § 203; Human, etc., § 472.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 752.
- ↑ Genealogy etc., II, § 12.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 762.
- ↑ Twilight etc., ix, § 41.
- ↑ Werke, XI, 374, § 570.
- ↑ Zarathustra, IV, xiii, § 3; Beyond Good and Evil, § 225.
- ↑ Zarathustra, I, xxii, § 1.
- ↑ Ibid., I, xxii, § 12. Cf. further, as to the "much too many," I, ix; II, vi.
