Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: Concerning the Slander of the so-called Evil Qualities§390 My final conclusion is, that the real man represents a much higher value than the “desirable” man of any ideal that has ever existed hitherto; that all “desiderata” in regard to mankind have been absurd and dangerous dissipations by means of which a particular kind of man has sought to establish his measures of preservation and of growth as a law for all; that every “desideratum” of this kind which has been made to dominate has reduced man’s worth, his strength and his trust in the future; that the indigence and mediocre intellectuality of man becomes most apparent, even today, when he reveals a desire that man’s ability to fix values has hitherto been developed too inadequately to do justice to the actual, not merely to the “desirable”, worth of man that, up to the present, ideals have really been the power which has most slandered man and the world, the poisonous fumes which have hung over reality and which have seduced men to yearn for nonentity —