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
over himself, who knows how to speak and how to keep silence, who
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