man and man, class and class, the multiplicity of types, the will to be one’s self, and to distinguish one’s self—that, in fact, which I call the _pathos of distance_ is proper to all _strong_ ages. The force of tension,—nay, the tension itself, between extremes grows slighter every day,—the extremes themselves are tending to become obliterated to the point of becoming identical. All our political theories and state constitutions, not by any means excepting “The German Empire,” are the logical consequences, the necessary consequences of decline; the unconscious effect of _decadence_ has begun to dominate even the ideals of the various sciences. My objection to the whole of English and French sociology still continues to be this, that it knows only the _decadent form_ of society from experience, and with perfectly childlike innocence takes the instincts of decline as the norm, the standard, of sociological valuations. _Descending_ life, the decay of all organising power—that is to say, of all that power which separates, cleaves gulfs, and establishes rank above and below, formulated itself in modern sociology as _the_ ideal. Our socialists are decadents: but Herbert Spencer was also a _decadent,_—he saw something to be desired in the triumph of altruism!... 38 _My Concept of Freedom._—Sometimes the value of a thing does not lie in that which it helps us to achieve, but in the amount we have to pay for it,—what it _costs_ us. For instance, liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal, the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions! One knows, of course, what they bring about: they undermine the Will to Power, they are the levelling of mountain and valley exalted to a morality, they make people small, cowardly and pleasure-loving,—by means of them the gregarious animal invariably triumphs. Liberalism, or, in plain English, the _transformation of mankind into cattle._ The same institutions, so long as they are fought for, produce quite other results; then indeed they promote the cause of freedom quite powerfully. Regarded more closely, it is war which produces these results, war in favour of liberal institutions, which, as war, allows the illiberal instincts to subsist. For war trains men to be free. What in sooth is freedom? Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. It is to preserve the distance which separates us from other men. To grow more indifferent to hardship, to severity, to privation, and even to life itself. To be ready to sacrifice men for one’s cause, one’s self included. Freedom denotes that the virile instincts which rejoice in war and in victory, prevail over other instincts; for instance, over the instincts of “happiness.” The man who has won his freedom, and how much more so, therefore, the spirit that has won its freedom, tramples ruthlessly upon that