When a vigorous nature has not an inclination towards cruelty, and is not always preoccupied with itself, it involuntarily strives after gentleness--this is its distinctive characteristic. Weak natures, on the other hand, have a tendency towards harsh judgments.... 236 Kindness has been best developed by the long dissimulation which endeavoured to appear as kindness: wherever great power existed the necessity for dissimulation of this nature was recognised--it inspires security and confidence, and multiplies the actual sum of our physical power. Falsehood, if not actually the mother, is at all events the nurse of kindness. In the same way, honesty has been brought to maturity by the need for a semblance of honesty and integrity: in hereditary aristocracies. The persistent exercise of such a dissimulation ends by bringing about the actual nature of the thing itself: the dissimulation in the long run suppresses itself, and organs and instincts are the unexpected fruits in this garden of hypocrisy. 242 Neither necessity nor desire, but the love of power, is the demon of mankind. You may give men everything possible--health, food, shelter, enjoyment--but they are and remain unhappy and capricious, for the demon waits and waits; and must be satisfied. 243 It is probable that there are no pure races, but only races which have become purified, and even these are extremely rare. 253 How many married men have some morning awakened to the fact that their young wife is dull, although she thinks quite the contrary! not to speak of those wives whose flesh is willing but whose intellect is weak! 255 Could there be anything more repugnant than the sentimentality which is shown to plants and animals--and this on the part of a creature who from the very beginning has made such ravages among them as their most ferocious enemy--and who ends by even claiming affectionate feelings from his weakened and mutilated victims! Before this kind of "nature" man must above all be serious, if he is any sort of a thinking being. 258 Among cowards it is thought bad form to say anything against bravery, for any expression of this kind would give rise to some contempt; and unfeeling people are irritated when anything is said against pity. 259 It is the most sensual men who find it necessary to avoid women and to torture their bodies. 261 A young man can be most surely corrupted when he is taught to value the like-minded more highly than the differently minded. 262 The general knowledge of mankind has been furthered to a greater extent by fear than by love. 267 The sum-total of those internal movements which come naturally to men, and which they can consequently set in motion readily and gracefully, is called the soul--men are looked upon as void of soul when they let it be seen that their inward emotions are difficult and painful to them. 268