axation,
the use of alcohol and vaccination, the treatment of influenza, the
prevention of hydrophobia, upon municipal trading, the teaching of
Greek, upon what is permissible in art, satisfactory in literature, and
hopeful in science.

The bulk of such opinions must necessarily be without rational
basis, since many of them are concerned with problems admitted by
the expert to be still unsolved, while as to the rest it is clear that the
training and experience of no average man can qualify him to have
any opinion on them at all.[1]

[Footnote 1: Trotter: _Instincts of the Herd_, p. 36.]

In action as well as opinion dogmatism and unbridled self-assertion
may be the dominant characteristics of a personality.
The man who has a strong will and little social sympathy
will be ruthlessly insistent on the attainment of his own
ends. This type of self has indeed been set up as an ideal by
such philosophers as Nietzsche and Max Stirner, who urged
that the really great man should express his own personality
irrespective of the weaklings whom he might crush in his
comet-like career. Thus writes Nietzsche in one of his
characteristic passages:

The _Superman_ I have at heart; _that_ is the first and only thing to
me--and _not_ man: not the neighbor, not the poorest, not the sorriest,
not the best....

In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me hope....
In that ye have despaired, there is much to honor. For ye have
not learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned petty policy.

For to-day have the petty people become master; they all preach
submission, and humility, and policy, and diligence, and consideration,
and the long _et cetera_ of petty virtues.

These masters of to-day--surpass them, O my brethren--these
petty people: they are the Superman's greatest danger![2]

[Footnote 2: _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ (Macmillan edition), pp. 351-52.]

It need scarcely be noted that even if the genius or Superman
were justified, as this philosophy insists, on ruthlessly
asserting his priority, it is a dangerous procedure to identify
one's ambitions with one's desserts. As already noted, a
flamboyant assurance of one's own importance is sometimes a
ludicrous symptom of the reverse.

The more legitimate manifestation of strong individualism
in action or opinion is in the case of deeply conscientious
natures, who will not compromise by a hair's breadth from
what they conceive to be the right. The fanatic is seldo