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292 like ours, and if we insist on following them absolutely we in effect posit another order of things than this we know—something which Schopenhauer did, at the same time turning his back on this world and feeling that the height of ethics was in renouncing it. For here, save within narrow limits, life lives off life—as the plant off the inorganic world, so the animal off the plant, and higher animal off the lower animal (or the plant). There is no way of avoiding this—the law of sacrifice is ingrained into the constitution of things. The necessity extends even to the relations of men with one another. That some may develope to their full stature, others must be content with less than theirs. At the basis of ancient culture, as already noted, were slaves, and slaves equally exist today, the only question being whether there is a culture compensating for the enormous sacrifices which they—our working, business, professional classes—make. The law of sacrifice may be freely accepted, but it cannot be changed; Nietzsche thinks that it has been accepted in the past and might conceivably be again. And perhaps (I may add on my own account), if our working and business and professional classes could see above and beyond them, and as a result of the freedom they make possible, an Æschylus, a Sophocles, a Phidias, an Aristotle, in short a drama, a sculpture, an architecture, a noble civic and intellectual life, like that of the ancient Greeks, they might be less unwilling to bring their sacrifice than they are—I say "perhaps" and "might," because the indications are at present that they think more of themselves than of anything else, and only care to "get out of life" (as the saying is) all that they possibly can.