What paltriness and beggarliness does it not take to accept
gifts year in and year out without service in return . . . ? ' ^
Nietzsche also pours scorn on the gospel of pity and on
the ' pitiful,' in the sense that he disapproves of any senti-
mental encouragement of the ' bungled and the botched,'
regarding it as a kind of charity which ' turns the world into a
hospital, so that everybody may be everybody else's nurse.'*

1 (pCKavBpuTrla occurs in Esdras and Maccabees in the sense of kindness
of superiors to inferiors, especially as shown by monarchs.
^ The Ego and His Own, Eng. tran. p. 413.
3 Quoted by Wolf, Philosophy of Nietzsche, p. 100. Compare also ' If



THE METAPHYSIC OF COMMUNITY 223

This protest of Nietzsche's is quite justified as against
the philanthropy which merely succours the poor, the
sick and diseased, the insane, and makes no attempt to
do away with the avoidable causes of these Uls ; which
does not seek to instil into others the truly ethical love that
would make impossible all forms of excess and injustice.
A thoroughly ' loving ' society in this latter sense would
be temperate, wise, mutually considerate and just.
