Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
I: Criticism of Religion§244 It is the height of psychological falsity on the part of man to imagine a being according to his own petty standard, who is a beginning, a “thing-in-itself”, and who appears to him good, wise, mighty and precious; for thus he suppresses in thought all the causality by means of which every kind of goodness, wisdom and power comes into existence and has value. In short, elements of the most recent and most conditional origin were regarded not as evolved, but as spontaneously generated and “things-in-themselves”, and perhaps as the cause of all things —
Experience teaches us that, in every case in which a man has elevated himself to any great extent above the average of his fellows, every high degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from Good and Evil as also from “true” and “false”, and cannot take into account what goodness dictates: the same holds good of a high degree of wisdom, in this case goodness is just as much suppressed as truthfulness, justice, virtue and other popular whims in valuations. In fact, is it not obvious that every high degree of goodness itself presupposes a certain intellectual myopia and obtuseness? As also an inability to distinguish at a great distance between true and false, useful and harmful? Not to mention the fact that a high degree of power in the hands of the highest goodness might lead to the most baleful consequences (“the suppression of evil”). In truth it is enough to perceive with what aspirations the “God of Love” inspires His believers: they ruin mankind for the benefit of “good men”. In practice, this same God has shown Himself to be a God of the most acute myopia, devilry and impotence, in the face of the actual arrangement of the universe and from this the value of His conception may be estimated.
Knowledge and wisdom can have no value in themselves, any more than goodness can: the goal they are striving after must be known first, for then only can their value or worthlessness be judged; a goal might be imagined which would make excessive wisdom a great disadvantage (if, for instance, complete deception were a prerequisite to the enhancement of life; likewise, if goodness were able to paralyse and depress the main springs of the great passions) —
Taking our human life as it is, it cannot be denied that all “truth”, “goodness”, “holiness”, and “Godliness” in the Christian sense, have hitherto shown themselves to be great dangers — even now mankind is in danger of perishing owing to an ideal which is hostile to life.