The absolute dominion of moral valuations _over_ all others: nobody doubted that God could not be evil and could do no harm--that is to say, perfection was understood merely as _moral_ perfection. 291. How false is the supposition that an action must depend upon what has preceded it in consciousness! And morality has been measured in the light of this supposition, as also criminality.... The value of an action must be judged by its results, say the utilitarians: to measure it according to its origin involves the impossibility of _knowing_ that origin. But do we know its results? Five stages ahead, perhaps. Who can tell what an action provokes and sets in motion? As a stimulus? As the spark which fires a powder-magazine? Utilitarians are simpletons.... And finally, they would first of all have to know _what_ is useful; here also their sight can travel only over five stages or so.... They have no notion of the great economy which cannot dispense with evil. We do not know the origin or the results: has an action, then, any value? We have yet the action itself to consider: the states of consciousness that accompany it, the yea or nay which follows upon its performance: does the value of an action lie in the subjective states which accompany it? (In that case, the value of music would be measured according to the pleasure or displeasure which it occasions in us ... which it gives to the _composer._ ...) Obviously feelings of value must accompany it, a sensation of power, restraint, or impotence--for instance, freedom or lightsomeness. Or, putting the question differently: could the value of an action be reduced to physiological terms? could it be the expression of completely free or constrained life?--Maybe its _biological_ value is expressed in this way.... If, then, an action can be judged neither in the light of its origin, nor its results, nor its accompaniments in consciousness, then its value must be _x_ unknown.... 292. It amounts to a _denaturalisation of morality,_ to _separate_ an action from a man; to direct hatred or contempt against "sin"; to believe that there are actions which are good or bad in themselves. The _re-establishment of_ "_Nature_": an action in itself is quite devoid of value; the whole question is this: who performed it? One and the same "crime" may, in one case, be the greatest privilege, in the other infamy. As a matter of fact, it is the selfishness of the judges which interprets an action (in regard to its author) according as to whether it was useful or harmful to themselves (or in relation to its degree of likeness or unlikeness to them). 293. The concept "reprehensible action" presents us with some difficulties. Nothing in all that happens can be reprehensible in itself: _one would not dare to eliminate it completely_; for everything is so bound up with everything else, that to exclude one part would mean to exclude the whole.