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.) It follows from this origin that the word “good” was definitely not linked from the first and by necessity to “unegoistic” actions, as the superstition of these genealogists of morality would have it.Rather it was only when aristocratic value judgments declined that the whole antithesis “egoistic” “unegoistic” obtruded itself more and more on the human conscience—it is, to speak in my own language, the herd instinct that through this antithesis at last gets its word (and its words) in.And even then it was a long time before that instinct attained such dominion that moral evaluation was actually stuck and halted at this antithesis (as, for example, is the case in contemporary Europe: the prejudice that takes “moral,” “unegoistic,” “désintéressé” as concepts of equivalent value already rules today with the force of a “fixed idea” and brain-sickness).3In the second place, however: quite apart from the historical untenability of this hypothesis regarding the origin of the value judgment “good,” it suffers from an inherent psychological absurdity.The utility of the unegoistic action is supposed to be the source of the approval accorded it, and this source is supposed to have been forgotten—but how is this forgetting possible? Has the utility of such actions come to an end at some time or other? The opposite is the case: this utility has rather been an everyday experience at all times, therefore something that has been underlined again and again: consequently, instead of fading from consciousness, instead of becoming easily forgotten, it must have been impressed on the consciousness more and more clearly.How much more reasonable is that opposing theory (it is not for that reason more true—) which Herbert Spencer,1 for example, espoused: that the concept “good” is essentially identical with the concept “useful,” “practical,” so that in the judgments “good” and “bad” mankind has summed up and sanctioned precisely its unforgotten and unforgettable experiences regarding what is useful-practical and what is harmful-impractical.According to this theory, that which has always proved itself useful is good: therefore it may claim to be “valuable in the highest degree,” “valuable in itself.” This road to an explanation is, as aforesaid, also a wrong one, but at least the explanation is in itself reasonable and psychologically tenable.4The signpost to the right road was for me the question: what was the real etymological significance of the designations for “good” coined in the various languages? I found they all led back to the same conceptual transformation—that everywhere “noble,” “aristocratic” in the social sense, is the basic concept from which “good” in the sense of “with aristocratic soul,” “noble,” “with a soul of a high order,” “with a privileged soul” necessarily developed: a development which always runs parallel with that other in which “common,” “plebeian,” “low” are finally transformed into the concept “bad.” The most convincing example of the latter is the German word schlecht [bad] itself: which is identical with schlicht [plain, simple]—compare schlechtweg [plainly], schlechterdings [simply]—and orginally designated the plain, the common man, as yet with no inculpatory implication and simply in contradistinction to the nobility.About the time of the Thirty Years’ War, late enough therefore, this meaning changed into the one now customary.1With regard to a moral genealogy this seems to me a fundamental insight; that it has been arrived at so late is the fault of the retarding influence exercised by the democratic prejudice in the modern world toward all questions of origin.And this is so even in the apparently quite objective domain of natural science and physiology, as I shall merely hint here.But what mischief this prejudice is capable of doing, especially to morality and history, once it has been unbridled to the point of hatred is shown by the notorious case of Buckle;2 here the plebeianism of the modern spirit, which is of English origin, erupted once again on its native soil, as violently as a mud volcano and with that salty, noisy, vulgar eloquence with which all volcanos have spoken hitherto.—5With regard to our problem, which may on good grounds be called a quiet problem and one which fastidiously directs itself to few ears, it is of no small interest to ascertain that through those words and roots which designate “good” there frequently still shines the most important nuance by virtue of which the noble felt themselves to be men of a higher rank.Granted that, in the majority of cases, they designate themselves simply by their superiority in power (as “the powerful,” “the masters,” “the commanders”) or by the most clearly visible signs of this superiority, for example, as “the rich,” “the possessors” (this is the meaning of arya; and of corresponding words in Iranian and Slavic).But they also do it by a typical character trait: and this is the case that concerns us here.They call themselves, for instance, “the truthful;” this is so above all of the Greek nobility, whose mouthpiece is the Megarian poet Theognis
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