People call him good who always wishes to be first, but they also call him good who does not wish to be ahead of anybody in anything. 2 We possess a powerful store of moral _feelings,_ but we have no goal for them all. They mutually contradict each other: they have their origin in different tables of values. There is a wonderful amount of moral power, but there is no longer any goal towards which all this power can be directed. 3 All goals have been annihilated, mankind must give themselves a fresh goal. It is an error to suppose that they had one: they gave themselves all the goals they ever had. But the prerequisites of all previous goals have been annihilated. Science traces the course of things but points to no goal: what it does give consists of the fundamental facts upon which the new goal must be based. 4 The profound sterility of the nineteenth century. I have not encountered a single man who really had a new ideal to bring forward. The character of German music kept me hoping longest, but in vain. A stronger type in which all our powers are synthetically correlated—this constitutes my faith. Apparently everything is decadence. We should so direct this movement of decline that it may provide the strongest with a new form of existence. 5 The dissolution of morality, in its practical consequences, leads to the atomistic individual, and further to the subdivision of the individual into a quantity of parts—absolute liquefaction. That is why a goal is now more than ever necessary; and love, but a new love. 6 I say: “As long as your morality hung over me I breathed like one asphyxiated. That is why I throttled this snake. I wished to live, consequently it had to die.” 7 As long as people are still _forced to_ act, that is to say as long as commands are given, synthesis (the suppression of the moral man) will not be realised To be unable to be otherwise: instincts and commanding reason extending beyond any immediate object: the ability to enjoy one’s own nature in action. 8 None of them wish to bear the burden of the commander; but they will perform the most strenuous task if only thou commandest them. 9 We must overcome the past in ourselves: we must combine the instincts afresh and direct the whole together to one goal:—an extremely difficult undertaking! It is not only the evil instincts which have to be overcome,—the so-called good instincts must be conquered also and consecrated anew! 10 No leaps must be made in virtue! But everyone must be given a different path! Not leading to the highest development of each! Yet everyone may be a bridge and an example for others. 11 To help, to pity, to submit and to renounce personal attacks with a good will,—these things may make even insignificant and superficial men tolerable to the eye: such men must not be contradicted in their belief that this good will is “virtue in itself.” 12 Man makes a deed valuable: but how might a deed make man valuable? 13