A life of one’s own that shall yet serve the life of all—there is the consummation devoutly to be wished! In these days we hear much about decadence and the decadent. What does that mean? At bottom, the decadent seeks to escape the diremption of the modern man between the individual and the social, by affirming the former and negating the latter. The individual, the social cell, detaches itself from the whole organization, from the social body, without considering that he thereby dooms himself to death. The cell can just as little exist without the organism, as the organism without the cell. Decadence is the last word which anti-social individualism has to say to our time. The history of this individualism is the judgment of this individualism. The man who fundamentally detaches himself from society cuts the arteries of life. Still the man must be his own man, and not another, even that he may give a service of his own to society, as a cell must be its own cell and not another if it is to construct and constitute the organism of which it is so small a part. Besides, man is not entirely like a cell. He is in an important sense a supersocial being, as the cell is not super-organic. So we may as well go on with our discussion of the Nietzschean uniqueness and _own-ness_ of personality. Personality is both super-individual and supersocial. We have its truth in value-judgment and not simply in existence-judgment. Somewhere in the old forgotten gospels there is a grim stirring word: Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is broad and the road is wide that leads to destruction, and many enter that way. But the road that leads to life is both narrow and close, and there are few who find it.