Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary baseness and work itself upward to future supremacy. And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart, ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all the semi-animal poverty of their souls. 81 "Knowledge for its own sake"--that is the last snare laid by morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more. 85 He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it. 86 Sympathy for all--would be harshness and tyranny for _thee,_ my good neighbour! 88 To be ashamed of one's immorality is a step on the ladder at the end of which one is ashamed also of one's morality. 89 A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the animalisation of God. 90 Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of to-day--burning us. 91 There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. 91 The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates and maligns it. 91 The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptise our badness as the best in us. 92 It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author--and that he did not learn it better. 93 Even concubinage has been corrupted--by marriage. 93 A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men--Yes, and then to get round them. 94 From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth. 95 Our vanity would like what we do best to pass precisely for what is most difficult to us.--Concerning the origin of many systems of morals. 96 When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I may say so, is "the barren animal." 96 That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good--the atavism of an old ideal. 97 What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. 98 Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology. 98