Essay I, Good and Evil, Good and Bad Summary and Analysis

Nietzsche thanks the English psychologists, whom he also calls philosophers, for their attempts to write a history of the beginning of morality. Their lives are more interesting than the books they write. They present the shameful part of man's life to expose the power of inertia it cannot overcome. He wonders if these psychologists are motivated by unconscious instincts to make less of humans, pessimistic jealousy, mistrust idealists or hatred of Christianity. Alternatively, he suggests they simply have a taste for the bizarre, paradoxical, mystical and illogical or simply some of each to season their work. The author compares them to old frogs hopping around in a swamp but says they are brave and proud men expressing the truth even if it is repulsive, unchristian and immoral...