isolates. It is related to passion, and not very accessible to reason; it spoils the character, the head, and the senses—always, of course, subject to the medium standard of men; it provokes hostility towards order, and towards the lies which are concealed beneath all order, all institutions, and all reality—when seen in the light of its pernicious influence upon others, it is the worst of vices.
I recognise virtue in that: (1) it does not insist upon being recognised; (2) it does not presuppose the existence of virtue everywhere, but precisely something else; (3) it does not suffer from the absence of virtue, but regards it rather as a relation of perspective which throws virtue into relief: it does not proclaim itself; (4) it makes no propaganda; (5) it allows no one to pose as judge because it is always a personal virtue; (6) it does precisely what is generally forbidden: virtue as I understand it is the actual vetitum within all gregarious legislation; (7) in short, I recognise virtue in that it is in the Renaissance style—virtù—free from all moralic acid....
318.
In the first place7 Messrs. Virtue-mongers, you have no superiority over us; we should like to make you take modesty a little more to heart: it is wretched personal interests and prudence which suggest your virtue to you. And if you had more strength and courage in your bodies you would not lower yourselves thus to the level of virtuous nonentities. You make what you can of yourselves: partly what you are obliged to make,—that is to say, what your circumstances force you to make,—partly what suits your pleasure and seems useful to you. But if you do only what is in keeping with your inclinations, or what necessity exacts from you,59 or what is useful to you, you ought neither to praise yourselves nor let others praise you!... One is a thoroughly puny kind of man when one is only virtuous: nothing should mislead you in this regard! Men who have to be considered at all, were never such donkeys of virtue: their inmost instinct, that which determined their quantum of power, did not find its reckoning thus: whereas with your minimum amount of power nothing can seem more full of wisdom to you than virtue. But the multitude are on your side: and because you tyrannise over us, we shall fight you....
319.
A virtuous man is of a lower species because, in the first place, he has no "personality," but acquires his value by conforming with a certain human scheme which has been once and for ever fixed. He has no independent value: he may be compared; he has his equals, he must not be an individual.
Reckoning up the qualities of the good man, why is it they appear pleasant to us? Because they urge us neither to war, to mistrust, to caution, to the accumulating of forces, nor to severity: our laziness, our good nature, and our levity, have a good time. This, our feeling of well-being, is what we project into the good man in the form of a quality, in the form of a valuable possession.
320.
Under certain circumstances, virtue is merely a venerable form of stupidity: who could blame you for it? And this form of virtue has not been outlived even to-day. A sort of honest peasant-simplicity, which is possible, however, in all classes of society, and which one cannot meet with anything else than a respectful smile, still thinks to-day that everything is in good hands—that is to say, in "God's hands": and when it supports this proposition with that same modest assurance as that with which it would assert that two and two are four, we others naturally refrain from contradiction.
Why disturb this pure foolery? Why darken it with our cares concerning man, people, goals, the future? Even if we wished to do so, we shouldn't succeed. In all things these people see the reflection of their own venerable stupidity and goodness (in them the old God—deus myops— still lives); we others see something else in everything: our problematic nature, our contradictions, our deeper, more painful, and more suspicious wisdom.
321.
He who finds a particular virtue an easy matter, ultimately laughs at it. Seriousness cannot be maintained once virtue is attained. As soon as a man has reached virtue, he jumps out of it—whither? Into devilry.
Meanwhile, how intelligent all our evil tendencies and impulses have become! What an amount of inquisitiveness torments them! They are all fishhooks of knowledge!
322.
The idea is to associate vice with something so terrible that at last one is obliged to run away from it in order to be rid of its associations. This is the well-known case of Tannhäuser. Tannhäuser, brought to his wits' end by Wagnerian music, cannot endure life any longer even in the company of Mrs. Venus: suddenly virtue begins to have a charm for him; a Thuringian virgin goes up in price, and what is even worse still, he shows a liking for Wolfram von Eschenbach's melody....
323.
The Patrons of Virtue.—Lust of property, lust of power, laziness, simplicity, fear; all these things are interested in virtue; that is why it stands so securely.
324.
Virtue is no longer believed in; its powers of attraction are dead; what is needed is some one who will once more bring it into the market in the form of an outlandish kind of adventure and of dissipation. It exacts too much extravagance and narrow-mindedness from its believers to allow of conscience not being against it to-day. Certainly, for people, without either consciences or scruples, this may constitute its new charm: it is now what it has never been before—a vice.
325.
Virtue is still the most expensive vice: let it remain so!
326.
Virtues are as dangerous as vices, in so far as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and laws coming from outside, and not as qualities one develops one's self. The latter is the only right way; they should be the most personal means of defence and most individual needs—the determining factors of precisely our existence and growth, which we recognise and acknowledge independently of the question whether others grow with us with the help of the same or of different principles. This view of the danger of the virtue which is understood as impersonal and objective also holds good of modesty: through modesty many of the choicest intellects perish. The morality of modesty is the worst possible softening influence for those souls for which it is pre-eminently necessary that they become hard betimes.
327.
The domain of morality must be reduced and limited step by step; the names of the instincts which are really active in this sphere must be drawn into the light of day and honoured, after have lain all this time in the concealment of hypocritical names of virtue. Out of respect for one's "honesty," which makes itself heard ever more and more imperiously, one ought to unlearn the shame which makes one deny and "explain away" all natural instincts. The extent to which one can dispense with virtue is the measure of one's strength; and a height may be imagined where the notion "virtue" is understood in such a way as to be reminiscent of virtù—the virtue of the Renaissance—free from moralic acid. But for the moment—how remote this ideal seems!
The reduction of the domain of morality is a sign of its progress. Wherever, hitherto, thought has not been guided by causality, thinking has taken a moral turn.
328.
After all, what have I achieved? Let us not close our eyes to this wonderful result: I have lent new charms to virtue—it now affects one in the same way as something forbidden. It has our most subtle honesty against it, it is salted in the "cum grano salis" of the scientific pang of conscience. It savours of antiquity and of old fashion, and thus it is at last beginning to draw refined people and
