Consequently, he never gets beyond the individual. He thinks society is made up of individuals, when it is really made up of groups. He supposes that the only virtues a man can have are those which help him as an isolated unit; the idea that a man may find self-expression in social expression, in coöperation, that there are virtues which are virtues because they enable one to work with others against a common evil,--this notion never occurs to him. He does not see that sympathy and mutual aid, for example, though they preserve some inferior individuals, yet secure that group-solidarity, and therefore group-survival, without which even the strong ones would perish.[273] He does not imagine that perhaps the barbarians who invaded Rome needed the gospel of a “gentle Jesus meek and mild” if anything at all was to remain of that same classical culture which he paints so lovingly.[274] He laughs at self-denial; and then invites you to devote yourself forever to some self-elected superman. This philosophy of aristocracy, of the necessity of slavery, of the absurdity of democracy,--of course it is exciting to all weak people who would like to have power,--and who have not read it all before in Plato. In this particular case the humor of the situation lies in the very powerful attack which Nietzsche makes on the irreligious religious humbug which has proved one of the chief instruments of mastery in the hands of the class whose power he is trying to strengthen. “I hope to be forgiven,” says Nietzsche, “for discovering that all moral philosophy hitherto has belonged to the soporific appliances.”[275] “Discovering”--as if the aristocracy had not known that all along! “Here is a naïve bookworm,” these “strong men” will say among themselves, “who has discovered what every one of us knows. He presumes to tell us how to increase our power, and he can find no better way of helping us than to expose in print the best secrets of our trade.”