Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: The Moral Ideal§359 We must realise all that has been accumulated as the result of the highest moral idealism: how almost all other values have crystallised round it. This shows that it has been desired for a very long time and with the strongest passions and that it has not yet been attained: otherwise it would have disappointed everybody (that is to say, it would have been followed by a more moderate valuation).
The saint as the most powerful type of man: this ideal it is which has elevated the value of moral perfection so high. One would think that the whole of science had been engaged in proving that the moral man is the most powerful and most godly. The conquest of the senses and the passions, everything inspired terror; the unnatural seemed to the spectators to be supernatural and transcendental —