Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
IV: How Virtue Is Made to Dominate§304 Concerning the ideal of the moralist. In this treatise we wish to speak of the great politics of virtue. We wrote it for the use of all those who are interested, not so much in the process of becoming virtuous as in that of making others virtuous, in how virtue is made to dominate. I even intend to prove that in order to desire this one thing — the dominion of virtue — the other must be systematically avoided; that is to say, one must renounce all hopes of becoming virtuous. This sacrifice is great: but such an end is perhaps a sufficient reward for such a sacrifice. And even greater sacrifices! Some of the most famous moralists have risked as much. For these, indeed, had already recognised and anticipated the truth which is to be revealed for the first time in this treatise: that the dominion of virtue is absolutely attainable only by the use of the same means which are employed in the attainment of any other dominion, in any case not by means of virtue itself—.
As I have already said, this treatise deals with the politics of virtue: it postulates an ideal of these politics; it describes it as it ought to be, if anything at all can be perfect on this earth. Now, no philosopher can be in any doubt as to what the type of perfection is in politics; it is, of course, Machiavellianism. But Machiavellianism which is pur, sans melange cru, vert, dans toute sa force, dans toute son apret, is superhuman, divine, transcendental, it can never be achieved by man, at best approximated. Even in this narrower kind of politics, in the politics of virtue, the ideal never seems to have been realised. Plato too, only bordered upon it. Granted that one has eyes for concealed things, one can discover, even in the most guileless and most conscious moralists (and this is indeed the name of these moral politicians and of the founders of all newer moral forces), traces showing that they too paid their tribute to human weakness. They all aspired to virtue on their own account at least in their moments of weariness; and this is the leading and most capital error on the part of any moralist whose duty it is to be an immoralist in practice. That he must not exactly appear to be the latter is another matter. Or rather it is not another matter: systematic self-denial of this kind (or, expressed morally: dissimulation) belongs to and is part and parcel of, the moralist’s canon and of his self-imposed duties: without it he can never attain to his particular kind of perfection. Freedom from morality and from truth when enjoyed for that purpose which rewards every sacrifice: for the sake of making morality dominate — that is the canon. Moralists are in need of the attitudes of virtue as also of the attitudes of truth; their error begins when they yield to virtue, when they lose control of virtue, when they themselves become moral or true. A great moralist is, among other things, necessarily a great actor; his only danger is that his pose may unconsciously become a second nature, just like his ideal, which is to keep his esse and his operari apart in a divine way; everything he does must be done sub specie boni — a lofty, remote and exacting ideal! A divine ideal! And, as a matter of fact, they say that the moralist thus imitates a model which is no less than God Himself: God, the greatest Immoralist in practice that exists, but who nevertheless understands how to remain what He is, the good God —