Preoccupations concerning one's self and one's eternal salvation are not expressive either of a rich or of a self-confident nature, for the latter lets all questions of eternal bliss go to the devil,--it is not interested in such matters of happiness it is all power, deeds, desires; it imposes itself upon things; it even violates things. The Christian is a romantic hypochondriac who does not stand firmly on his legs. Whenever hedonistic views come to the front, one can always presuppose the existence of pain and a certain ill-constitutedness. 782. "The growing autonomy of the individual"--Parisian philosophers like M. Fouillée talk of such things: they would do well to study the _race moutonnière_ for a moment; for they belong to it. For Heaven's sake open your eyes, ye sociologists who deal with the future! The individual grew strong under quite opposite conditions: ye describe the extremest weakening and impoverishment of man; ye actually want this weakness and impoverishment, and ye apply the whole lying machinery of the old ideal in order to achieve your end. Ye are so constituted that ye actually regard your gregarious wants as an ideal! Here we are in the presence of an absolute lack of psychological honesty. 783. The two traits which characterise the modern European are apparently antagonistic _individualism and the demand for equal rights_: this I am at last beginning to understand. The individual is an extremely vulnerable piece of vanity: this vanity, when it is conscious of its high degree of susceptibility to pain, demands that every one should be made equal; that the individual should only stand _inter pares_. But in this way a social race is depicted in which, as a matter of fact, gifts and powers are on the whole equally distributed. The pride which would have loneliness and but few appreciators is quite beyond comprehension: really "great" successes are only attained through the masses--indeed, we scarcely understand yet that a mob success is in reality only a small success; because _pulchrum est paucorum hominum._ No morality will countenance order of rank among men, and the jurists know nothing of a communal conscience. The principle of individualism rejects _really great_ men, and demands the most delicate vision for, and the speediest discovery of, a talent among people who are almost equal; and inasmuch as every one has some modicum of talent in such late and civilised cultures (and can, therefore, expect to receive his share of honour), there is a more general buttering-up of modest merits to-day than there has ever been. This gives the age the appearance of _unlimited justice._ Its want of justice is to be found not in its unbounded hatred of tyrants and demagogues, even in the arts; but in its detestation of noble natures who scorn the praise of the many. The demand for equal rights (that is to say, the privilege of sitting in judgment on everything and everybody) is anti-aristocratic.