478 HEREDITY AND SELECTION IN SOCIOLOGY 



" You would, if possible — and what ' if possible ' can be more absurd ? 

 — abolish suffering. And we ? It seems as if we desire it to be yet 

 harder and more intolerable than ever it was before. Comfort, as you 

 understand it, is not an aim. Viewed from oiu: standpoint, it is the end 

 of aU things, a condition of affairs which would render man contemptible, 

 and lead us to sigh for his total disappearance. It is in the school of 

 suffering, of great suffering — is this, then, unknown to you ? — it is under 

 the rule of this hard taskmaster, that humanity has realised aU its progress. 

 This tension of the soul which stiffens itself under the stress of suffering, 

 and learns to become strong ; this shudder which overtakes it in the 

 presence of a great catastrophe ; its ingenuity and courage in enduring, 

 in interpreting, in utilising misfortune — has not all this been acquired in 

 the school of suffering ? Has not the soul been shaped and modelled by 

 great suffering ? There is in man a creature and a creator ; there is in 

 man something which is matter, which is fragmentary, superfluous, un- 

 clean, chaotic ; but there is also in man something of the creator, of the 

 sculptor, of the hardness of the hammer, of the contemplation of the 

 artist, of the joy of the seventh day. Do you not imderstand this an- 

 tagonism ? And do you not understand that ycmr pity goes out to the 

 creature, to that which must be broken, moulded into shape, torn, burned, 

 passed through the flame, purified by the edge of the sword, to all that 

 which necessarily m/ast su-ffer, which is made to suffer 1 And our pity — 

 do you not understand to whom it goes out, inversely, when it endeavours 

 to shield itself against the results of your pity, as against the worst of 

 weaknesses and crimes ? Thus, we have pity against pity." ^ 



And let it not be imagined that tlie idea of conflict is restricted 

 to the employment of brute force. Certainly, we believe — and 

 we hold that history justifies our belief — that nations need war 

 and conflict, not only in order to efEect their expansion, but also 

 to maintain a high level of superiority. It is not a mere paradox 

 which Zarathustra uttered when he bade his listeners " love the 

 short peace better than the long," and when he exhorted them 

 to regard peace "as a preparation for new wars."^ National 

 welfare, like individual development, is subject to the same in- 

 exorable law of struggle, which must be undertaken in order to 

 efiect the survival of the fittest and to prevent the degradation 

 below a level once attained. But we here take the word " con- 

 flict " in its widest significance, as meaning not only the conflict 



1 P. Nietzsche, Werhe, vii. ISO, 181. Liepzig, 1896. 



2 Ibid., vi. 67. 



