[260] "Wandering through the many subtler and coarser moralities which have so far been prevalent on earth, or still are prevalent, I found certain features recurred regularly together, and were closely associated -- until I finally discovered two basic types and one basic difference.
There are master-morality and slave-morality -- I add immediately that in all the higher and more mixed cultures there are also appear attempts at mediation between these two moralities; and yet more often the interpenetration and mutual misunderstanding of both, and at times, they occur directly alongside each other -- even in the same human being, within a single soul. The moral discrimination of values has originated either among a ruling group whose consciousness of its difference from the ruled group was accompanied by delight - or among the ruled, the slaves and dependents of every degree.
In the first case, when the ruling group determines what is 'good,' the exalted, proud states of the soul are experienced as conferring distinction and determining the order of rank. The noble human being separates from himself those in whom the opposite of such exalted, proud states finds expression: he despises them. It should be noted immediately that in this first type of morality the opposition of 'good' and 'bad' means approximately the same as 'noble' and 'contemptible.' (The opposition of 'good' and 'evil' has a different origin.) One feels contempt for the cowardly, the anxious, the petty, those intent on narrow utility; also for the suspicious with their unfree glances, those who humble themselves, the doglike people who allow themselves to be maltreated, the begging flatterers, above all the liars: it is part of the fundamental faith of all aristocrats that the common people lie. 'We truthful ones' - thus the nobility of ancient Greece referred to itself.
It is obvious that moral designations were everywhere first applied to human beings and only later, derivatively, to actions. Therefore it is a gross mistake when historians of morality start from such questions as: why was the compassionate act praised? The noble type of man experiences itself as determining values; it does not need approval; it judges, 'what is harmful to me is harmful in itself'; it knows itself to be that which first accords honor to things; it is value-creating. Everything it knows as part of itself it honors: such as morality is self-glorification. In the foreground there is the feeling of fullness, of power that seeks to overflow, the happiness of high tension, the consciousness of wealth that would give and bestow: the noble human being, too, helps the unfortunate, but not, or almost not, from pity, but prompted more by an urge begotten by excess of power. The noble human being honors himself as one who is powerful, also as one who has power over himself, who knows how to speak and be silent, who delights in being severe and hard with himself and respects all severity and hardness. 'A hard heart Wotan put into my breast,' says an old Scandinavian saga: a fitting poetic expression, seeing that it comes from the soul of a proud Viking. Such a type of man is actually proud of the fact that he is not made for pity, and the hero of the saga therefore adds as a warning: 'If the heart is not hear in youth it will never harden.' Noble and courageous human beings who think that way are furthest removed from that morality which finds distinction of morality precisely in pity, or in acting for others, or in desinteressement; faith in oneself, pride in oneself, a findamental hostility and irony against 'selflessness' belong just as definitely to noble morality as does a slight disdain and caution regarding compassionate feelings and a ''warm heart.'
It is the powerful who understand how to honor; this is their art, their realm of invention. The profound reverence for age and tradition - all law rests on this double reverence - the faith and prejudice in favor of ancestors and disfavor of those yet to come are typical of the morality of the powerful; and when the men of 'modern ideas,' conversely, believe almost instinctively in 'progress' and 'the future' and more and more lack respect for age, this in itself would sufficiently betray the ignoble origin of these 'ideas.'
A morality of the ruling group, however, is most alien and embarassing to the present taste in the severity of its principle and that one has duties to one's peers; that against beings of a lower rank, against everything alien, one may behave as one pleases or 'as the heart desires,' and in any case 'beyond good and evil' - here pity and like feelings may find their place. The capacity for, and the duty of, long gratitude and long revenge - both only among one's peers - refinement in repaying, the sophisticated concept of friendship, a certain necessity for having enemies (as it were, as drainage ditches for the affects of envy, quarrelsomeness, exuberance - at bottom, in order to be capable of being good friends): all these are typical characteristics of noble morality which, as suggested, is not the morality of 'modern ideas' and therefore is hard to empathize with today, also hard to dig up and uncover.
It is different with the second type of morality, slave morality. Suppose the violated, oppressed, suffering, unfree, who are uncertain of themselves and weary, moralize: what will their moral valuations have in common? Probably pessimistic suspicion about the whole condition of man will find expression, perhaps a condemnation of man along with his condition. The slave's eye is not favorable to the virtues of the powerful: he is skeptical and suspicious, subtly suspicious, of all the 'good' that is honored there - he would like to persuade himself that even their happiness is not genuine. Conversely, those qualities are brought out and flooded with light which serve to ease existence for those who suffer: here pity, the complaisant and obliging hand, the warm heart, patience, industry, humility, and friendliness are honored - for here these are the most useful qualities and almost the only means for enduring the pressure of existence. Slave morality is essentially and morality of utility.
Here is the place for the origing of that famous opposition of 'good' and 'evil': into evil one's feelings project power and dangerousness, a certain terribleness, subtlety, and strength that does not permit contempt to develop. According to slave morality, those who are 'evil' thus inspire fear; according to master morality it is precisely these who are "good' that inspire, and wish to inspire, fear, while the 'bad' are felt to be contemptible.
The opposition reaches its climax when, as a logical consequence of slave morality, a touch of disdain is associated also with the 'good' of this morality - this may be slight and benevolent - because the good human being has to be undangerous in the slaves' way of thinking: he is good-natured, easy to deceive, a little stupid perhaps, un bonhomme. Wherever slave morality becomes preponderant, language tends to bring the words 'good' and 'stupid' closer together."
Part Nine - What is Noble
From - Beyond Good and Evil
- Friedrich Nietzsche
