a literal sort. In an early fragment he remarks that neither primitive Christianity nor the ancient Germans regarded it in this light. He draws a picture of the mediæval bondsman (Hörigen) standing in a variety of strong and delicate relations both of law and custom to the man above him, and says rather that he looks reproachfully on us![1]o
Another contributory factor to the misunderstanding is the failure to note the distinction between the workers or third class generally and the diseased and decadent, the severe language against the latter which Nietzsche sometimes uses being taken to cover all who do not belong to the higher types. So Professor Dorner appears to construe Nietzsche.[2] But it is a misconstruction, though one for which Nietzsche is partly responsible, as he sometimes fails to make himself clear.[3] Each of his social classes has its own sphere of life and activity, and its own type of mastery. The third class is not as strong as the upper classes, but it is not weak in any such sense as would make its elimination desirable. Again and again does Nietzsche distinguish between the mass, the average, as such, and the failures, the decadents.[4] Indeed, decadence is not something peculiar to the lower strata of society; the decadence of old-time aristocracies is one of the conspicuous facts of modern times. And even decadence, whenever and wherever it arises, Nietzsche would treat with as little inhumanity as possible—as we have already seen. But the average normal workers in society are another quantity altogether; they are the broad foundation of the whole social edifice—there could be no crown or apex were they not in their place and doing their indispensable work. p
IV
And now as to the organic relations of the three classes, and the charge of "social dualism." Undoubtedly Nietzsche sometimes uses strong language in the latter direction (he rarely
