298 Nietzsche
single world and rejected the elaborate two-world theory of Augustine
and Luther. In doing so, he opted against democratic life organized
according to the principle of welfare. For him, a wodd of that sort would
signal the triumph of the human herd animal. Above all, he sought to
preserve the difference between himself and the many others. His writ-
ing is one long avowal of this effort. It documents his lifelong attempt
to mold himself into a great individual.
If we are content to regard this highly personal philosophy and these
maneuvers of self-configuration with fascination and perhaps even
admiration, but are not willing to abandon the idea of democracy and
justice, it is likely that Nietzsche would have accused us of feeble com-
promise, indecisiveness, and epitomizing the ominous "blinking" of the
"last men."
Perhaps, however, he ought to have realized that he himself was call-
ing for ironic reserve on the part of his readers. "It is absolutely unnec-
essary, and not even desirable, for you to argue in my favor; on the
contrary, a dose of curiosity, as if you were looking at an alien plant with
ironic distance, would strike me as an incomparably more intelligent atti-
tude toward me" (Β 8,375f.; July 29,1888).
While he was working through his ideas for The Will to Power, Nietzsche
wrote Beyond Good and Evil (1885-86), the fifth book of The Gay Science
(October 1886), and On the Genealogy of Morals (summer 1887). Each of
these books was completed in a matter of weeks. All three sum up, high-
light, and develop ideas discussed in earlier works, and all incorporate
materials he had been considering for The Will to Power: We need to keep
in mind that Nietzsche, who spent much of his time traveling from place
to place, had boxes of books shipped to him, but did not always have his
own earlier works on hand and often found that his memory of what he
had written had faded. On February 13, 1887, for example, when the
second edition of The Gay Science was in production, he asked Peter Gast
to edit the galleys and added this comment: 'T am actually rather curious