s, yea, fanatical opponents of true
culture, _i.e._ all those who hold fast to the aristocratic nature of
the mind; for, at bottom, they regard as their goal the emancipation
of the masses from the mastery of the great few; they seek to
overthrow the most sacred hierarchy in the kingdom of the
intellect--the servitude of the masses, their submissive obedience,
their instinct of loyalty to the rule of genius.

"I have long accustomed myself to look with caution upon those who are
ardent in the cause of the so-called 'education of the people' in the
common meaning of the phrase; since for the most part they desire for
themselves, consciously or unconsciously, absolutely unlimited
freedom, which must inevitably degenerate into something resembling
the saturnalia of barbaric times, and which the sacred hierarchy of
nature will never grant them. They were born to serve and to obey; and
every moment in which their limping or crawling or broken-winded
thoughts are at work shows us clearly out of which clay nature moulded
them, and what trade mark she branded thereon. The education of the
masses cannot, therefore, be our aim; but rather the education of a
few picked men for great and lasting works. We well know that a just
posterity judges the collective intellectual state of a time only by
those few great and lonely figures of the period, and gives its
decision in accordance with the manner in which they are recognised,
encouraged, and honoured, or, on the other hand, in which they are
snubbed, elbowed aside, and kept down. What is called the 'education
of the masses' cannot be accomplished except with difficulty; and even
if a system of universal compulsory education be applied, they can
only be reached outwardly: those individual lower levels where,
generally speaking, the masses come into contact with culture, where
the people nourishes its religious instinct, where it poetises its
mythological images, where it keeps up its faith in its customs,
privileges, native soil, and language--all these levels can scarcely
be reached by direct means, and in any case only by violent
demolition. And, in serious matters of this kind, to hasten forward
the progress of the education of the people means simply the
postponement of this violent demolition, and the maintenance of that
wholesome unconsciousness, that sound sleep, of the people, without
which counter-action and remedy no culture, with the exhausting strain
and excitement of it