iation. Further explanation is needed.

At another time, Nietzsche asks whether we ought not to respect the
right, which after all belongs to the multitude, to direct itself
according to an ideal--there are of course many ideals--and according to
the ideal which is its own. Ought we to refuse to the masses the right
to search out truth for themselves, the right to believe that they have
found it when they come upon a faith that seems to them vital, a faith
that is to them as their very life? The masses are the foundation on
which all humanity rests, the basis of all culture. Deprived of them,
what would become of the masters? It is to their interest that the
masses should be happy. Let us be patient; let us grant to our insurgent
slaves, our masters for the moment, the enjoyment of illusions which
seem favourable to them.

So Nietzsche argues, but more often, for he returns on various occasions
to this idea, led thereto by his customary aristocratic leanings, he
speaks of democracy as of a form of decadence, as a necessary prelude to
an aristocracy of the future. "A high civilisation can only be built
upon a wide expanse of territory, upon a healthy and firmly consolidated
mediocrity." [So he wrote in 1887. Ten years earlier he held that
slavery had been the necessary condition of the high civilisation of
Greece and Rome.] The only end, therefore, which at present,
provisionally of course but still for a long time to come, we have to
expect, must be the decadence of mankind--general decadence to a level
mediocrity, for it is necessary to have a wide foundation on which a
race of strong men can be reared. "The decadence of the European is the
great process which we cannot hinder, which we ought rather to
accelerate. It is the active cause at work which gives us hope of
seeing the rise of a stronger race, a race which will possess in
abundance those same qualities which are lacking to the degenerate
vanishing species, strength of will, responsibility, self-reliance, the
power of concentration...."

But how, out of this mediocrity of the crowd, a mediocrity which, as
Nietzsche says, is always increasing, by what process natural or
artificial can a new and superior race be created? Nietzsche seems to be
recalling the theory, very disrespectful and very devoid of filial
piety, by which Renan sought to explain his own genius. "A long line of
obscure ancestors," he says, "has economised for me a store of
intellectual energy