Egoism! But no one has yet asked: _what_ is the _ego_ like? Everybody is rather inclined to see all _egos_ alike. This is the result of the slave theory, of _universal suffrage,_ and of "equality." 365. The behaviour of a higher man is the result of a very complex set of motives: any word such as "pity" _betrays_ nothing of this complexity. The most important factor is the feeling, "who am I? who is the other relative to me?"--Thus the valuing spirit is continually active. 366. To think that the history of all moral phenomena may be simplified, as Schopenhauer thought,--that is to say, that _pity_ is to be found at the root of every moral impulse that has ever existed hitherto,--is to be guilty of a degree of nonsense and ingenuousness worthy only of a thinker who is devoid of all historical instincts and who has miraculously succeeded in evading the strong schooling in history which the Germans, from Herder to Hegel, have undergone. 367. _My "pity."_--This is a feeling for which I can find no adequate term: I feel it when I am in the presence of any waste of precious capabilities, as, for instance, when I contemplate Luther: what power and what tasteless problems fit for back-woodsmen! (At a time when the brave and light-hearted scepticism of a Montaigne was already possible in France!) Or when I see some one standing below where he might have stood, thanks to the development of a set of perfectly senseless accidents. Or even when, with the thought of man's destiny in my mind, I contemplate with horror and contempt the whole system of modern European politics, which is creating the circumstances and weaving the fabric of the _whole_ future of mankind. Yes, to what could not "mankind" attain, if----! This is my "pity"; despite the fact that no sufferer yet exists with whom I sympathise in this way. 368. Pity is a waste of feeling, a moral parasite which is injurious to the health, "it cannot possibly be our duty to increase the evil in the world." If one does good merely out of pity, it is one's self and not one's neighbour that one is succouring. Pity does not depend upon maxims, but upon emotions. The suffering we see infects us; pity is an infection. 369. There is no such thing as egoism which keeps within its bounds and does not exceed them--consequently, the "allowable," the "morally indifferent" egoism of which some people speak, does not exist at all. "One is continually promoting the interests of one's '_ego_' at the cost of other people "; "Living consists in living at the cost of others"--he who has not grasped this fact, has not taken the first step towards truth to himself. 370. The "subject" is a piece of fiction: the _ego_ of which every one speaks when he blames egoism, does not exist at all. 371. Our "ego"--which is _not_ one with the unitary controlling force of our beings!--is really only an imagined synthesis; therefore there can _be_ no "_egoistic_" _actions_. 372.