Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
IV: How Virtue Is Made to Dominate§320 Under certain circumstances, virtue is merely an honourable form of stupidity: who could blame her for it? And this kind of virtue has not been outlived even today. A sort of honest peasant simplicity, which is possible however in all classes of society and which one cannot meet with anything else than a respectful smile, still thinks today that everything is in good hands — that is to say, in “God’s hands”: and when it supports this proposition with that same modest assurance as when asserting that two and two are four, we others naturally refrain from contradiction. Why disturb this pure foolery? Why darken it with our cares concerning man, people, goals, the future? Even if we wished to do so, we could not succeed. In all things these people see the reflection of their own honourable stupidity and goodness (the old God, deus myops still lives among them)! We others see something else in everything: our own enigmatic nature, our contradictions, our deeper, more painful and more mistrustful wisdom.