It is my good fortune that after whole millennia of error and confusion I
have rediscovered the way that leads to a Yes and a No.
I teach the No to all that makes weak-that exhausts.
I teach the Yes to all that strengthens, that stores up strength, that
justifies the feeling of strength.
So far one has taught neither the one nor the other: virtue has been
taught, mortification of the self, pity, even the negation of life. All
these are the values of the exhausted.
Prolonged reflection on the physiology of exhaustion forced me to ask to
what extent the judgments of the exhausted had penetrated the world of
values.
My result was as surprising as possible, even for me who was at home in
many a strange world: I found that all of the supreme value judgments-all
that have come to dominate mankind, at least that part that has become
tame-can be derived from the judgments of the exhausted.
Under the holiest names I pulled up destructive tendencies; one has
called God what weakens, teaches weakness, infects with weakness.-I found
that the "good man" is one of the forms in which decadence affirms
itself.
That virtue of which Schopenhauer still taught that it is the supreme,
the only virtue, and the basis of all virtues - precisely pity I recognized as
more dangerous than any vice. To cross as a matter of principle selection in
the species and its purification of refuse - that has so far been called
virtue par excellence.-
One should respect fatality-that fatality that says to the weak: perish!-
One has called it God-that one resisted fatality, that one corrupted
mankind and made it rot.-One should not use the name of God in vain.-
The race is corrupted-not by its vices but by its ignorance; it is
corrupted because it did not recognize exhaustion as exhaustion: mistakes
about physiological states are the source of all ills.-
Virtue is our greatest misunderstanding.
Problem: How did the exhausted come to make the laws about values? Put
differently: How did those come to power who are the last.,-How did the
instinct of the human animal come to stand on its head?-
