Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: Concerning the Slander of the so-called Evil Qualities§388 How it was that, under the pressure of the dominion of an ascetic and self-effacing morality it was precisely the passions love, goodness, pity, even justice, generosity and heroism, which were necessarily misunderstood:
It is the richness of a personality, the fullness of it, its power to flow over and to bestow, its instinctive feeling of ease and its affirmative attitude towards itself, that creates great love and great sacrifices: these passions proceed from strong and godlike selfhood as surely as do the desire to be master, to obtrude and the inner certainty that one has a right to everything. The opposite views, according to the most accepted notions, are indeed common views; and if one does not stand firmly and bravely on one’s legs, one has nothing to give and it is perfectly useless to stretch out one’s hand either to protect or to support others —
How was it possible to transform these instincts to such an extent that man could feel that to be of value which is directed against himself, so that he could sacrifice himself for another self! O the psychological baseness and falseness which hitherto has laid down the law in the Church and in Church-infected philosophy!
If man is thoroughly sinful, then all he can do is to hate himself. As a matter of fact, he ought not to regard even his fellows otherwise than he does himself; the love of man requires a justification and it is found in the fact that God commanded it. From this it follows that all the natural instincts of man (to love, etc). appear to him to be, in themselves, prohibited; and that he re-acquires a right to them only after having denied them as an obedient worshipper of God — Pascal, the admirable logician of Christianity, went as far! Consider his relations to his sister. “Not to make one’s self love”, seemed Christian to him.