Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
IV: How Virtue Is Made to Dominate§318 Above all, gentlemen of virtue, 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. 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 partly what seems useful to you. But if you do only what is in keeping with your inclinations, or what necessity exacts from you, or what is useful to you, you ought neither to praise yourselves nor let others praise you! One is a thoroughly small kind of man if one is only virtuous: nothing should mislead you in this regard! Men who have to be considered at all, were never such virtuous asses: their inmost instinct, that which determined their quantum of power, did not find its satisfaction thus: whereas with your minimum amount of power, nothing can seem more full of wisdom to you than virtue. But you have numbers on your side: and because you tyrannise over us, we shall make war on you -—