rgues that reform must come "from above and not from
below," and that "the movement for regeneration can come from above and
not from below."

I ask nothing better, but I ask also how is it going to be done?
Inasmuch as everything depends upon the people, who, what, can influence
the people except the people itself? Everything depends on the people,
by what then can it be moved except by a force that is innate. We are
here confronted--we are talking to a philosopher and can make use of
scientific terms--with a {Kinetes akinetos} with a motive force
which causes but does not receive motives.

A principle has disappeared, a prejudice if you like to call it so, the
prejudice in favour of competence. We no longer think that the man who
understands how to do a thing ought to be doing that thing, or ought to
be chosen to do it. Hence, not only is everything mismanaged, but it
seems impossible by any device to handle the matter effectually. We see
no solution.

Nietzsche really has a horror of democracy; only like all energetic
pessimists, who are not mere triflers, he used to say from time to time:
"There are pessimists who are resigned and cowardly. We do not wish to
be like them." When he would not take this view he persuaded himself to
look at democracy through rose-coloured spectacles.

At times, looking at the matter from an aesthetic point of view, he used
to say: "Intercourse with the people is as indispensable and refreshing
as the contemplation of vigorous and healthy vegetation," and although
this is in flagrant contradiction to all he has elsewhere said of the
"bestial flock" and the "inhabitants of the swamp," the thought has a
certain amount of sense in it. It signifies that instinct is a force,
and that every force must be interesting to study; and further that, as
such, it contains an active virtue, a principle of life, a nucleus of
growth.

This, though vaguely expressed, is very possible. After all the crowd
is only powerful by reason of numbers, and because it has been decided
that numbers shall decide. It is an expedient; but an expedient cannot
impart force to a thing that had it not before. Motive power,
initiative, belongs to the man who has a plan, who makes his combination
to achieve it, who perseveres and is patient and does not relinquish
pursuit. If he is eliminated and reduced to impotence or to a minimum of
usefulness, one does not see how the crowd, without him, can obtain its
power of init