knows something of the parents, it is admissible to draw a conclusion about the child:  any kind of offensive incontinence, any kind of sordid envy, or of clumsy self-vaunting—­the three things which together have constituted the genuine plebeian type in all times—­such must pass over to the child, as surely as bad blood; and with the help of the best education and culture one will only succeed in deceiving with regard to such heredity.—­And what else does education and culture try to do nowadays!  In our very democratic, or rather, very plebeian age, “education” and “culture” Must be essentially the art of deceiving—­deceiving with regard to origin, with regard to the inherited plebeianism in body and soul.  An educator who nowadays preached truthfulness above everything else, and called out constantly to his pupils:  “Be true!  Be natural!  Show yourselves as you are!”—­even such a virtuous and sincere ass would learn in a short time to have recourse to the FURCA of Horace, naturam EXPELLERE:  with what results?  “Plebeianism” USQUE RECURRET. [Footnote:  Horace’s “Epistles,” I. x. 24.]

265.  At the risk of displeasing innocent ears, I submit that egoism belongs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean the unalterable belief that to a being such as “we,” other beings must naturally be in subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves.  The noble soul accepts the fact of his egoism without question, and also without consciousness of harshness, constraint, or arbitrariness therein, but rather as something that may have its basis in the primary law of things:—­if he sought a designation for it he would say:  “It is justice itself.”  He acknowledges under certain circumstances, which made him hesitate at first, that there are other equally privileged ones; as soon as he has settled this question of rank, he moves among those equals and equally privileged ones with the same assurance, as regards modesty and delicate respect, which he enjoys in intercourse with himself—­in accordance with an innate heavenly mechanism which all the stars understand.  It is an additional instance of his egoism, this artfulness and self-limitation in intercourse with his equals—­every star is a similar egoist; he honours himself in them, and in the rights which he concedes to them, he has no doubt that the exchange of honours and rights, as the essence of all intercourse, belongs also to the natural condition of things.  The noble soul gives as he takes, prompted by the passionate and sensitive instinct of requital, which is at the root of his nature.  The notion of “favour” has, inter Pares, neither significance nor good repute; there may be a sublime way of letting gifts as it were light upon one from above, and of drinking them thirstily like dew-drops; but for those arts and displays the noble soul has no aptitude.  His egoism hinders him here:  in general, he looks “aloft” unwillingly—­he looks either forward, horizontally and deliberately, or downwards—­he knows that he is on A height.