The more people grasped to what extent the present form of society was in such a state of transition as sooner or later to be no longer able to exist for its own sake, but only as a means in the hands of a stronger race, the more this task would have to be brought forward.
The increasing belittlement of man is precisely the impelling power which leads one to think of the cultivation of a stronger race: a race which would have a surplus precisely there where the dwarfed species was weak and growing weaker (will, responsibility, self-reliance, the ability to postulate aims for one's self).
The means would be those which history teaches: isolation by means of preservative interests which would be the reverse of those generally accepted; exercise in transvalued valuations; distance as pathos; a clean conscience in what to-day is most despised and most prohibited.
The levelling of the mankind of Europe is the great process which should not be arrested; it should even be accelerated. The necessity of cleaving gulfs, of distance, of the order of rank, is therefore imperative; but not the necessity of retarding the process above mentioned.
This levelled-down species requires justification as soon as it is attained: its justification is that it exists for the service of a higher and sovereign race which stands upon it and can only be elevated upon its shoulders to the task which it is destined to perform. Not only a ruling race whose task would be consummated in ruling alone: but a race with vital spheres of its own, with an overflow of energy for beauty, bravery, culture, and manners, even for the most abstract thought; a yea-saying race which would be able to allow itself every kind of great luxury—strong enough to be able to dispense with the tyranny of the imperatives of virtue, rich enough to be in no need of economy or pedantry; beyond good and evil; a forcing-house for rare and exceptional plants.
899.
Our psychologists, whose glance dwells involuntarily upon the symptoms of decadence, lead us to mistrust intellect ever more and more. People persist in seeing only the weakening, pampering, and sickening effects of intellect, but there are now going to appear:—
| New barbarians | Cynics | The union of intellectual |
| Experimentalists | superiority with well-being | |
| Conquerors | and an overflow of strength. |
900.