HKB
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Often appears with: venice · rank, class, and social order · fate, destiny, and necessity · custom and the manners of a people · courage and cowardice · aristocratic morality · ancient greek polis
Usually: argument (1) · curiosity (1)
“Variations, whether they be deviations (into the higher, finer, and rarer), or deteriorations and monstrosities, appear suddenly on the scene in the greatest exuberance and splendour; the individual dares to be individual and detach himself.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil · observation
He compares aristocratic states like ancient Greek city-states and Venice to selective breeding: constant hardship yields a stable warrior type, but when conditions improve, variations and “mediocre” survival ethics spread.
it is the slave, too, who immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before these opinions, as though he had not called them forth.--And to repeat it again: vanity is an atavism. 262. A SPECIES originates, and a type becomes established and strong in the long struggle with essentially constant UNFAVOURABLE conditions. On the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species which receive super-a…