side by side, and often mixed and entangled together, a magnificent, manifold, virgin-forest-like up-growth and up-striving, a kind of tropical tempo in the rivalry of growth, and an extraordinary decay and self-destruction, owing to the savagely opposing and seemingly exploding egoisms, which strive with one another “for sun and light,” and can no longer assign any limit, restraint, or forbearance for themselves by means of the hitherto existing morality.  It was this morality itself which piled up the strength so enormously, which bent the bow in so threatening a manner:—­it is now “out of date,” it is getting “out of date.”  The dangerous and disquieting point has been reached when the greater, more manifold, more comprehensive life is lived beyond the old morality; the “individual” stands out, and is obliged to have recourse to his own law-giving, his own arts and artifices for self-preservation, self-elevation, and self-deliverance.  Nothing but new “Whys,” nothing but new “Hows,” no common formulas any longer, misunderstanding and disregard in league with each other, decay, deterioration, and the loftiest desires frightfully entangled, the genius of the race overflowing from all the cornucopias of good and bad, a portentous simultaneousness of Spring and Autumn, full of new charms and mysteries peculiar to the fresh, still inexhausted, still unwearied corruption.  Danger is again present, the mother of morality, great danger; this time shifted into the individual, into the neighbour and friend, into the street, into their own child, into their own heart, into all the most personal and secret recesses of their desires and volitions.  What will the moral philosophers who appear at this time have to preach?  They discover, these sharp onlookers and loafers, that the end is quickly approaching, that everything around them decays and produces decay, that nothing will endure until the day after tomorrow, except one species of man, the incurably mediocre.  The mediocre alone have a prospect of continuing and propagating themselves—­they will be the men of the future, the sole survivors; “be like them! become mediocre!” is now the only morality which has still a significance, which still obtains a hearing.—­But it is difficult to preach this morality of mediocrity! it can never avow what it is and what it desires! it has to talk of moderation and dignity and duty and brotherly love—­it will have difficulty in concealing its irony!

263.  There is an instinct for rank, which more than anything else is already the sign of a high rank; there is a delight in the nuances of reverence which leads one to infer noble origin and habits.  The refinement, goodness, and loftiness of a soul are put to a perilous test when something passes by that is of the highest rank, but is not yet protected by the awe of authority from obtrusive touches and incivilities:  something