Now, when a given state becomes appreciably more efficient than the states about it, it invariably sets about enslaving them. Thus larger and larger states are formed, but always there is a ruling master-class and a serving slave-class. "This," says Nietzsche, "is the origin of the state on earth, despite the fantastic theory which would found it upon some general agreement among its members. He who can command, he who is a master by nature, he who, in deed and gesture, behaves violently--what need has he for agreements? Such beings come as fate comes, without reason or pretext.... Their work is the instinctive creation of forms: they are the most unconscious of all artists; wherever they appear, something new is at once created--a governmental organism which lives; in which the individual parts and functions are differentiated and brought into correlation, and in which nothing at all is tolerable unless some utility with respect to the whole is implanted in it. They are innocent of guilt, of responsibility, of charity--these born rulers. They are ruled by that terrible art-egotism which knows itself to be justified by its work, as the mother knows herself to be justified by her child." Nietzsche points out that, even after nations have attained some degree of permanence and have introduced ethical concepts into their relations with one another, they still give evidence of that same primary will to power which is responsible, at bottom, for every act of the individual man. "The masses, in any nation," he says, "are ready to sacrifice their lives, their goods and chattels, their consciences and their virtue, to obtain that highest of pleasures: the feeling that they rule, either in reality or in imagination, over others. On these occasions they make virtues of their instinctive yearnings, and so they enable an ambitious or wisely provident prince to rush into a war with the good conscience of his people as his excuse. The great conquerors have always had the language of virtue on their lips: they have always had crowds of people around them who felt exalted and would not listen to any but the most exalted sentiments.... When man feels the sense of power, he feels and calls himself good, and at the same time those who have to endure the weight of his power call him evil. Such is the curious mutability of moral judgments!... Hesiod, in his fable of the world's ages, twice pictured the age of the Homeric heroes and made two out of one. To those whose ancestors were under the iron heel of the Homeric despots, it appeared evil; while to the grandchildren of these despots it appeared good. Hence the poet had no alternative but to do as he did: his audience was composed of the descendants of both classes."[10]