Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
IV: How Virtue Is Made to Dominate§326 Virtues are as dangerous as vices, in so far as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and laws coming from outside and not as qualities one develops one’s self. The latter is the only right way; they should be the most personal means of defense and most individual needs, the determining factors of precisely our existence and growth, which we recognize and acknowledge independently of the question whether others grow with us under the same or of different conditions. This view of the danger of virtue understood as impersonal and objective also holds good of modesty: through modesty many of the choicest spirits perish. The morality of modesty is the worst possible softening influence for those souls for which it is pre-eminently necessary that they become hard over time.