Page 153 - beyond-good-and-evil

to stay: for here truth has to stifle her yawns so much when
she is obliged to answer. And after all, truth is a woman; one
must not use force with her.

221. ‘It sometimes happens,’ said a moralistic pedant and
trifle- retailer, ‘that I honour and respect an unselfish man:
not, however, because he is unselfish, but because I think
he has a right to be useful to another man at his own ex-
pense. In short, the question is always who HE is, and who
THE OTHER is. For instance, in a person created and des-
tined for command, self- denial and modest retirement,
instead of being virtues, would be the waste of virtues: so
it seems to me. Every system of unegoistic morality which
takes itself unconditionally and appeals to every one, not
only sins against good taste, but is also an incentive to sins
of omission, an ADDITIONAL seduction under the mask
of philanthropy—and precisely a seduction and injury to
the higher, rarer, and more privileged types of men. Mor-
al systems must be compelled first of all to bow before the
GRADATIONS OF RANK; their presumption must be
driven home to their conscience—until they thoroughly
understand at last that it is IMMORAL to say that ‘what
is right for one is proper for another.’’—So said my mor-
alistic pedant and bonhomme. Did he perhaps deserve to
be laughed at when he thus exhorted systems of morals to
practise morality? But one should not be too much in the
right if one wishes to have the laughers on ONE’S OWN
side; a grain of wrong pertains even to good taste.

1 Beyond Good and Evil