Now I will not say whether such a romantic and Byronic life is worth living in itself; there may be creatures whose only happiness is to be like that, although I suspect that Byron and Nietzsche, Lohengrin and Zarathustra, had not mastered the art of Socrates, and did not know what they wanted. In any case, such a Dionysiac career would be good only as the humblest human existence may be so; its excellence would lie in its harmony with the nature of him who follows it, not in its bombast, inflation, or superhumanity. Nietzsche was far from ungenerous or unsympathetic towards the people. He wished them (somewhat contemptuously) to be happy, whilst he and his superman remained poetically wretched; he even said sometimes that in their own sphere they might be perfect, and added--with that sincerity which, in him, redeems so many follies--that nothing could be better than such perfection. But if this admission is to be taken seriously, the superman would be no better than the good slave. The whole principle of the higher snobbery would be abandoned, and Nietzsche in the end would only lead us back to Epictetus. No, the higher snob will reply, the perfect superman may be no better than the perfect slave, but he is _higher_. What does this word mean? For the zealous evolutionist it seems to mean later, more complicated, requiring a longer incubation and a more special environment. Therefore what is higher is more expensive, and has a more precarious existence than what is lower; so the lady is higher than the woman, fine art is higher than useful art, and the height of the fashion in fine art is the highest point in it. The higher is the more inclusive, requiring everything else to produce it, and itself producing nothing, or something higher still. Of course the higher is not merely the better; because the standard of excellence itself changes as we proceed, and according to the standard of the lower morality the higher state which abolishes it will be worse. An orchid may not be more beautiful than a lily, but it is higher; philosophy may not be truer than science, nor true at all, but it is higher, because so much more comprehensive; faith may not be more trustworthy than reason, but it is higher; insatiable will may not be more beneficent than contentment in oneself and respect for others, but it is higher; war is higher, though more painful, than peace; perpetual motion is not more reasonable than movement towards an end, and stilts are not more convenient than shoes, but they are higher. In everything the higher, when not the better, means what folly or vanity cannot bear to abandon. Higher is a word by which we defend the indefensible; it is a declaration of impenitence on the part of unreason, a cry to create prejudice in favour of all that tyrannizes over mankind. It is the watchword of the higher snob. The first to use it was Satan, when he declared that he was not satisfied to be anything but the highest; whereas the highest thinks it no