Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
IV: How Virtue Is Made to Dominate§319 A virtuous man is of a lower species because, in the first place, he is not a “person” but acquires his value by conforming with a certain human scheme which has been once and for ever fixed. He has no independent value: he may be compared; he has his equals, he must not be an individual.
Reckoning up the qualities of the good man, why is it that they appear pleasant to us? Because they urge us neither to war, to mistrust, to caution, to the accumulating of forces, nor to severity: our laziness, our good nature and our levity, have a good time. It is this feeling of our well-being that we project into the good man in the form of a quality, as a value.