Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
I: Criticism of Religion§249 What is it I protest against? That people should regard this paltry and peaceful mediocrity, this spiritual equilibrium which knows nothing of the fine impulses of great accumulations of strength, as something high, or possibly as the standard of all things. Bacon of Verulam says: Infimarum virtutum apud vulgus laus est, mediarum admiratio supremarum sensus nullus. Christianity as a religion, however, belongs to the vulgar: it has no feeling for the highest kind of virtue.
“Praise the virtues of the lowest among the masses, the mean of the highest sense no surprise.”