The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
868.
General aspect of the future European: the latter regarded as the most intelligent servile animal, very industrious, at bottom very modest, inquisitive to excess, multifarious, pampered, weak of will,--a chaos of cosmopolitan passions and intelligences. How would it be possible for a stronger race to be bred from him?--Such a race as would have a classical taste? The classical taste: this is the will to simplicity, to accentuation, and to happiness made visible, the will to the terrible, and the courage for psychological _nakedness_ (simplification is the outcome of the will to accentuate; allowing happiness as well as nakedness to become visible is a consequence of the will to the terrible ...). In order to fight one's way out of that chaos, and up to this form, a certain _disciplinary constraint_ is necessary: a man should have to choose between either going to the dogs or _prevailing._ A ruling race can only arise amid terrible and violent conditions. Problem: where are the _barbarians_ of the twentieth century? Obviously they will only show themselves and consolidate themselves after enormous socialistic crises. They will consist of those elements which are capable of the _greatest hardness towards themselves,_ and which can guarantee the _most enduring will-power._
The mightiest and most dangerous passions of man, by means of which he most easily goes to rack and ruin, have been so fundamentally banned that mighty men themselves have either become impossible or else must regard themselves as _evil,_ "harmful and prohibited." The losses are heavy, but up to the present they have been necessary. Now, however, that a whole host of counter-forces has been reared, by means of the temporary suppression of these passions (the passion for dominion, the love of change and deception), their liberation has once more become possible: they will no longer possess their old savagery. We can now allow ourselves this tame sort of barbarism: look at our artists and our statesmen!
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.