Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: Concerning the Slander of the so-called Evil Qualities§367 My kind of “pity” — This is a feeling for which I can find no adequate term: I feel it when I am in the presence of any squandering of precious capabilities, as for instance when I think of Luther: what power and what insipid problems fit for backwoodsmen! (At a time when the brave and light-hearted scepticism of a Montaigne was already possible in France!) Or when I see someone standing below where he might have stood, thanks to the development of a set of perfectly senseless accidents. Or even when, with the thought of man’s destiny in my mind, I contemplate with horror and contempt the whole system of modern European politics, which is creating the circumstances and weaving the fabric of the whole future of mankind. Yes, to what could not become of “man” if! This is a kind of “compassion” although there is really no passion that I share.