GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

THEORY OF FASCISM 639
ships, aeroplanes and 'cannons are more beautiful things
still."
Successful Force as the Sole Test of Superiority*
We have seen that war enhances the superiority of superior
individuals and restores to vigour men who have grown
slack. But what war does for superior individuals it can
also do for superior races. Evolution proceeds by means of
the struggle for survival. As the struggle grows more intense,
the process of evolution is accelerated. War, then, acts
as- a kind of forcirig house for evolution, providing for
superior races those conditions in which their superiority
can be made manifest, and so enhancing their superiority
and fulfilling the evolutionary purpose. Nietzsche was much
attracted to the so-called science of eugenics. He believed
that it was possible scientifically to breed superior
individuals and races, and just as he exhorted the individual
to be "not considerate of thy neighbour/' so he enjoined
upon the superior race the precept that "suffering is the
source of greatness". If this doctrine is true, a race has only
to consider itself to be superior on ethnological grounds to
other races, and it will find both incentive and justifi-
cation for war in order that it may demonstrate its superior
qualities on the battlefield, being assured that fighting not
only ensures the triumph of the superior,
but ennobles
the superior whom it enables to triumph.
There is a further reason why the outcome of the kind
of ethic I have been describing should be war. If everybody
were to accept Fichte's and Nietzsche's doctrines, every-
body would think that he was "noble" and "superior".
Although these doctrines are far from being universally
held, many do in fact entertain in regard to themselves
the kind ofopinion which, on Nietzsche's view, is admirable.
How are these many claimants to the title of nobility to
select themselves? How are the "superior" to demonstrate
their superiority, except by the test of war?
In thfe absence of any moral standard, power can be the
only criterion of worth. But there is no way of showing