1 Beyond Good and Evil
the knowledge of his conviction how unexhausted man still
is for the greatest possibilities, and how often in the past
the type man has stood in presence of mysterious decisions
and new paths:—he knows still better from his painfulest
recollections on what wretched obstacles promising devel-
opments of the highest rank have hitherto usually gone to
pieces, broken down, sunk, and become contemptible. The
UNIVERSAL DEGENERACY OF MANKIND to the level
of the ‘man of the future’—as idealized by the socialistic
fools and shallow-pates—this degeneracy and dwarfing of
man to an absolutely gregarious animal (or as they call it, to
a man of ‘free society’), this brutalizing of man into a pigmy
with equal rights and claims, is undoubtedly POSSIBLE!
He who has thought out this possibility to its ultimate con-
clusion knows ANOTHER loathing unknown to the rest of
mankind—and perhaps also a new MISSION!