above it, but supported by it, spread out to the sun their crown and display their happiness. i Strange and offensive as this sounds to us, it is only in keeping with the tragic view of the constitution of the world, which Nietzsche, following Schopenhauer, had held from almost the beginning of his career. Our ordinary ideas (at least our democratic ideas) of right and justice are not the pattern after which the world is made, nor are they the standard in accordance with which society must be constituted, if it is to yield the consummate fruit which Nietzsche desired. Harm and sacrifice are necessities as deep as the finiteness of the world and of its composite forces—if the world were infinite, all might be different. Higher things live off lower things, because it is the only way in which they can live at all—there is no infinite storehouse of power on which the higher can directly draw.
Nietzsche uses the word "castes," but we must not think of unbreakable lines of social cleavage. His earlier view of movement up and down the social scale is not gainsaid.[1] Rather have we already found him in this last period calling peasant blood the best there is in Germany (i.e., having most promise of real aristocracy),[2] and saying that the critical question is not whence one comes, but whither one goes.[3] He even takes a certain satisfaction in the democratic leveling process that has been going on, for now that the struggle between classes is over, an order of rank based on individual merit can arise.[4] How men may come up from lower walks in life, he finds illustrated notably in the history of religions.[5] It is true that training or breeding (Züchtung) is necessary, and that there must be suitable material to start with, but this material is not confined within the limits of any one historic class—a real aristocracy ever takes new elements into itself.[6] Just how an aristocracy can maintain itself on a shifting, more or less individualistic basis like this is not explained, and Professor Ziegler thinks that Nietzsche is inconsistent, now progressive and now
