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general moral view set forth in the preceding pages implies an ideal of social organization—indeed, the two things are so closely connected that Nietzsche's ideal has already been adumbrated and I shall have only now to make it somewhat more articulate.

By way of preface I may summarize his criticism of existing society.

In a broad, general way, the present is to him a time of disorganization and degeneration. Strong, ruling forces—the condition of organization and of advancing life—do not appear. The old aristocracies are themselves corrupted; they have spoiled the image of the ruler for us —that is, have robbed it of the dignity and grace it once had in men's eyes. The contrary idea is that of freedom, and under its influence, with whatever compensatory features, a vast amount of commonness and vulgar egoism has been let loose on the world. There are two moments in the secular process of society: (1) the ever-growing conquest of larger but weaker social groups by smaller but stronger ones; (2) the ever-greater conquest of the stronger [within a group] by the mass, and in consequence the advent of democracy, with anarchy of the elements as a final result. We are in the second stage of the process now. The institutions in which and by which society has lived and been strong in the past are slowly dissolving. Men call it progress, and if progress