Note 220 — Front matter (continued 5)

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, chap. II. A century earlier Godwin had written in his Political Justice (Book VII, chap. VIII): "Men are weak at present because they have always been told they are weak and must not be trusted with themselves. Take them out of their shackles, bid them enquire, reason, and judge, and you will soon find them very different beings. Tell them that they have passions, are occasionally hasty, intemperate, and injurious, but that they must be trusted with themselves. Tell them that the mountains of parchment in which they have been hitherto entrenched, are fit only to impose upon ages of superstition and ignorance, that henceforth we will have no dependence but upon their spontaneous justice; that, if their passions be gigantic, they must rise with gigantic energy to subdue them; that if their decrees be iniquitous, the iniquity shall be all their own."