Beyond Good and Evil eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 233 pages of information about Beyond Good and Evil.

Beyond Good and Evil eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 233 pages of information about Beyond Good and Evil.

260.  In a tour through the many finer and coarser moralities which have hitherto prevailed or still prevail on the earth, I found certain traits recurring regularly together, and connected with one another, until finally two primary types revealed themselves to me, and a radical distinction was brought to light.  There is master-morality and slave-morality,—­I would at once add, however, that in all higher and mixed civilizations, there are also attempts at the reconciliation of the two moralities, but one finds still oftener the confusion and mutual misunderstanding of them, indeed sometimes their close juxtaposition—­even in the same man, within one soul.  The distinctions of moral values have either originated in a ruling caste, pleasantly conscious of being different from the ruled—­or among the ruled class, the slaves and dependents of all sorts.  In the first case, when it is the rulers who determine the conception “good,” it is the exalted, proud disposition which is regarded as the distinguishing feature, and that which determines the order of rank.  The noble type of man separates from himself the beings in whom the opposite of this exalted, proud disposition displays itself he despises them.  Let it at once be noted that in this first kind of morality the antithesis “good” and “bad” means practically the same as “noble” and “despicable",—­the antithesis “good” and “Evil” is of a different origin.  The cowardly, the timid, the insignificant, and those thinking merely of narrow utility are despised; moreover, also, the distrustful, with their constrained glances, the self-abasing, the dog-like kind of men who let themselves be abused, the mendicant flatterers, and above all the liars:—­it is a fundamental belief of all aristocrats that the common people are untruthful.  “We truthful ones”—­the nobility in ancient Greece called themselves.  It is obvious that everywhere the designations of moral value were at first applied to men; and were only derivatively and at a later period applied to actions; it is a gross mistake, therefore, when historians of morals start with questions like, “Why have sympathetic actions been praised?” The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment:  “What is injurious to me is injurious in itself;” he knows that it is he himself only who confers honour on things; he is a creator of values.  He honours whatever he recognizes in himself:  such morality equals self-glorification.  In the foreground there is the feeling of plenitude, of power, which seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of a wealth which would fain give and bestow:—­the noble man also helps the unfortunate, but not—­or scarcely—­out of pity, but rather from an impulse generated by the super-abundance of power.  The noble man honours in himself the powerful one, him also who has power

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Beyond Good and Evil from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.