242

Now, let's call what we're looking for as the distinguishing mark of Europeans "civilization," or "humanizing," or "progress"; let's use a political formula and call it simply, without praise or blame, Europe's democratic movement. Behind all the moral and political foregrounds indicated with such labels, an immense physiological process is completing itself, something whose momentum is constantly growing - the process by which the Europeans are becoming more similar to each other, the growing detachment from the conditions under which arise races linked to a climate and class, their increasing independence from every distinct milieu which for centuries wanted to inscribe itself on body and soul with the same demands - thus, the slow emergence of an essentially supra-national and nomadic type of man, who, physiologically speaking, possesses as his characteristic mark a maximum of the art and power of adaptation. This process of the developing European, which can be held back by great relapses in tempo, but which for that very reason perhaps acquires and augments its vehemence and depth, the furious storm and stress of "national feeling" still raging today, belongs here, along with that anarchism which is just emerging - this process will probably rush ahead to conclusions which its naive proponents and advocates, the apostles of "modern ideas," are least likely to expect. The same new conditions which will, on average, create a situation in which men are homogenous and mediocre - useful, hard-working, practical in many tasks, clever men from an animal herd - are to the highest degree suitable for giving rise to exceptional men with the most dangerous and most attractive qualities. For while that power to adapt, which keeps testing constantly changing conditions and begins a new task with every generation, almost with every decade, by no means makes possible the power of the type, while the collective impression of such future Europeans probably will be one of many kinds of extremely useful chattering workers with little will power, men who will need a master, someone to give orders, as much as they need their daily bread, and while the democratizing of Europe thus moves towards the creation of a new type prepared for slavery in the most subtle sense, the strong man, in single and exceptional cases, will have to turn out stronger and richer than he has perhaps ever been before now - thanks to the absence of prejudice in his education, thanks to the immense multiplicity of practice, art, and mask. What I wanted to say is this: the democraticizing of Europe is at the same time an involuntary way of organizing for the breeding of tyrants - understanding that word in every sense, including the most spiritual.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
Part VIII - Aphorism # 242

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