Man ... arrived at the great generalisation "everything has its price, _all_ can be paid for," the oldest and most naïve moral canon of _justice_ the beginning of all "kindness," of all "equity," of all "goodwill," of all "objectivity" in the world. 80 The self-destruction of Justice! we know the pretty name it calls itself--_Grace!_ it remains, as is obvious, the privilege of the strongest, better still, their super-law. 83-84 The aggressive man has at all times enjoyed the stronger, bolder, more aristocratic, and also _freer_ outlook, the _better_ conscience. On the other hand, we already surmise who it really is that has on his conscience the invention of the "bad conscience,"--the resentful man! 86 To talk of intrinsic right and intrinsic wrong is absolutely nonsensical; intrinsically, an injury, an oppression, an exploitation, an annihilation can be nothing wrong, inasmuch as life is _essentially_ (that is, in its cardinal functions) something which functions by injuring, oppressing, exploiting, and annihilating, and is absolutely inconceivable without such a character. 88 Evildoers have throughout thousands of years felt when overtaken by punishment _exactly like Spinoza,_ on the subject of their "offence": "here is something which went wrong contrary to my anticipation, _not_ I ought not to have done this."--They submitted themselves to punishment, just as one submits one's self to a disease, to a misfortune, or to death, with that stubborn and resigned fatalism which gives the Russians, for instance, even nowadays, the advantage over us Westerners, in the handling of life. If at that period there was a critique of action, the criterion was prudence: the real _effect_ of punishment is unquestionably chiefly to be found in a sharpening of the sense of prudence, in a lengthening of the memory, in a will to adopt more of a policy of caution, suspicion, and secrecy; in the recognition that there are many things which are unquestionably beyond one's capacity; in a kind of improvement in self-criticism. The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires: so it is that punishment _tames_ man, but does not make him "better"--it would be more correct even to go so far as to assert the contrary. 99