Unmistakably this is a straightout application of the "pragmatic" criterion of truth. Nietzsche's unconfessed and cautious imitators, who call themselves pragmatists, are not bold enough to follow their own logic from the cognitive sphere to the moral. They stop short of the natural conclusion to which their own premises lead. Morality is necessarily predicated upon specific notions of truth. So if Truth is an alterable and shifting concept, must not morality likewise be variable? The pragmatist might just as well come out at once into the broad light and frankly say: "Laws do not interest me in the abstract, or for the sake of their general beneficence; they interest me only in so far as they affect me. Therefore I will make, interpret, and abolish them to suit myself." To Nietzsche the "quest of truth" is a palpable evasion. Truth is merely a means for the enhancement of my subjective satisfaction. It makes not a whit of difference whether an opinion or a judgment satisfies this or that scholastic definition. I call true and good that which furthers my welfare and intensifies my joy in living; and,--to vindicate my self-gratification as a form, indeed the highest, of "social service,"--the desirable thing is that which matters for the improvement of the human stock and thereby speeds the advent of the Superman. "Oh," exclaims Zarathustra, "that ye would understand my word: Be sure to do whatever ye like,--but first of all be such as _can will_! Be sure to love your neighbor as yourself,--but first of all be such as _love themselves_,--as love themselves with great love, with contempt. Thus speaketh Zarathustra, the ungodly." By way of throwing some light upon this phase of Nietzsche's moral philosophy, it may be added that ever since 1876 he was an assiduous student of Herbert Spencer, with whose theory of social evolution he was first made acquainted by his friend, Paul Rée, who in two works of his own, "Psychologic Observations," (1875), and "On the Origin of Moral Sentiments," (1877), had elaborated upon the Spencerian theory about the genealogy of morals.