Slavery, let us understand it well, is the necessary price of culture; the free work, or art, of some involves the compulsory labor of others. As in the organism so in society: the higher function is possible only through the subjection of the lower functions. A high civilization is a pyramid; it can stand only on a broad base, its first prerequisite is a strongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity. In order that there may be a broad, deep, and fruitful soil for the development of art, the enormous majority must, in the service of a minority, be slavishly subjected. At their cost, through the surplus of their labor, that privileged class is to be relieved from the struggle for existence, in order to create and to satisfy a new world of want. The misery of the toilers must still increase in order to make the production of a world of art possible to a small number of Olympian men.[254] 11 _Aristocracy_ The greatest folly of the strong is to let the weak make them ashamed to exploit, to let the weak suggest to them, “It is a shame to be happy--there is too much misery!” Let us therefore reaffirm the right of the happy to existence, the right of bells with a full tone over bells that are cracked and discordant. Not that exploitation as such is desirable; it is good only where it supports and develops an aristocracy of higher men who are themselves developing still higher men. This philosophy aims not at an individualistic morality but at a new order of rank. In this age of universal suffrage, in this age in which everybody is allowed to sit in judgment upon everything and everybody, one feels compelled to reëstablish the order of rank. The higher men must be protected from contamination and suffocation by the lower. The richest and most complex forms perish so easily! Only the lowest succeed in maintaining their apparent imperishableness.[255]