Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: The Moral Ideal§341 The origin of the ideal. The examination of the soil out of which it grows.
A. Starting out from those “aesthetic” mental states during which the world seems rounder, fuller and more perfect: — we have the pagan ideal with its dominating spirit of self-affirmation (one gives –). The highest type: the classical ideal regarded as an expression of the successful nature of all the more important instincts. In this classical ideal we find the grand style as the highest style. An expression of the “will to power” itself. The instinct which is most feared dares to acknowledge itself.
B. Starting out from the mental states in which the world seemed emptier, paler and thinner, when “spiritualisation” and the absence of sensuality assume the rank of perfection and when all that is brutal, animal, direct and proximate is avoided (people calculate and select): the “sage”, “the angel”, priestly = virginal = ignorant, the physiological ideals of such idealists: the anaemic ideal. Under certain circumstances this anaemic ideal may be the ideal of such natures as represent paganism (thus Goethe sees his “saint” in Spinoza).
C. Starting out from those mental states in which the world seemed more absurd, more evil, poorer and more deceptive, an ideal cannot even be imagined or desired in it (people deny and annihilate); the projection of the ideal into the sphere of the anti-natural, anti-actual, illogical; the state of him who judges thus (the “impoverishment” of the world as a result of suffering: people take, they no longer give): the anti-natural ideal.
(The Christian ideal is a transitional form between the second and the third, now inclining more towards the former type and now inclining towards the latter).
The three ideals: A. Either a strengthening of Life (paganism), or B. an impoverishment of Life (anaemic) or C. a denial of Life (anti-naturalism). The state of beatitude in A. is the feeling of extreme abundance; in B. it is reached by the most fastidious selectivity; in C. it is the contempt and the destruction of Life.