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438 part of the method for maintaining the human type-possibly without it man would no longer exist. The growth of a species' power may be less guaranteed by the preponderance of its favored offspring, its strong ones, than by the preponderance of the average and lower types—the latter having greater fruitfulness and permanence, while with the former danger increases. Must we admit perhaps that the raising of the type is fateful for the species? History often shows us strong races decimating one another. At least we must own that these higher individuals are expensive. We really stand before a problem of economy. Never does Nietzsche question that great individuals are the ultima ratio of society, that it would be better for the race to produce them and disappear, than not to produce them and live on indefinitely; and yet he saw that, at a given moment race-permanence might be more important than anything else, since thereby a large number of great individuals would ultimately be made possible.

Accordingly we have a kind of apology in Nietzsche's latest writings for the present supremacy of the mass and their valuations—at least the temporary supremacy. "Temporary preponderance of the social valuations, conceivable and useful: it is a question of producing a substructure, on which a stronger race will be possible at last." "Everywhere, where the average qualities, on which the continuance of a species depends, are of prime moment, being a person would be a waste, a luxury, and wishing for persons has absolutely no sense." "The process of making man smaller which is going on under democratic inspiration must long be the sole aim, since a broad foundation has first to be laid, on which a stronger type of man can stand." The point is "to increase the sum of force, despite the temporary decline of the individual: to establish a new level; to find a method for storing up forces, so as to keep small results instead of wasting them; meanwhile to subjugate devastating nature and make it a tool of the future economy; to preserve the weak, since an immense amount of small work has to be done; to preserve a sentiment, by which existence is