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And as it is now unreasonable to term pity unselfish and seek to consecrate it, it is equally so to hand over a series of actions to the evil conscience, merely because they have been maligned as egotistical. What has happened in recent times in this connection is that the instinct of self-denial and self-sacrifice, everything altruistic, has been glorified as if it were the supreme value of morality.

The English moralists, who at present dominate Europe, explain the origin of ethics in the following way: Unselfish actions were originally called good by those who were their objects and who benefited by them; afterwards this original reason for praising them was forgotten, and unselfish actions came to be regarded as good in themselves.

According to a statement of Nietzsche himself it was a work by a German author with English leanings, Dr. Paul Re's Der Ursprung der moralischen Empfindungen (Chemnitz, 1877), which provoked him to such passionate and detailed opposition that he had to thank this book for the impulse to clear up and develop his own ideas on the subject.

The surprising part of it, however, is this: Dissatisfaction with his first book caused Re to write a second and far more important work on the same subject—Die Entstehung des Gewissens (Berlin, 1885)—in which the point of view offensive to Nietzsche is abandoned and several of the leading ideas advanced by the latter against Re are set forth, supported by a mass of evidence taken from various authors and races of men.

The two philosophers were personally acquainted. I knew them both, but had no opportunity of questioning either on this matter. It is therefore impossible for me to say which of the two influenced the other, or why Nietzsche in 1887 alludes to his detestation of the opinions put forward by Re in 1877, without mentioning how near the latter had come to his own view in the work published two years previously.

Re had already adduced a number of examples to show that the most diverse peoples of antiquity knew no other moral classification of men than that of nobles and common people, powerful and weak; so that the oldest meaning of good both in Greece and Iceland was noble, mighty, rich. Nietzsche builds his whole theory on this foundation. His train of thought is this—

The critical word good is not due to those to whom goodness has been shown. The oldest definition was this: the noble, the mightier, higher-placed and high-minded held themselves and their actions to be good—of the first rank—in contradistinction to everything low and low-minded. Noble, in the sense of the class-consciousness of a higher caste, is the primary concept from which develops good in the sense of spiritually aristocratic. The lowly are designated as bad (not evil). Bad does not acquire its unqualified depreciatory meaning till much later. In the mouth of the people it is a laudatory word; the German word schlecht is identical with schlicht (cf. schlechtweg and schlechterdings).

The ruling caste call themselves sometimes simply the Mighty, sometimes the Truthful; like the Greek nobility, whose mouthpiece Theognis was. With him beautiful, good and noble always have the sense of aristocratic. The aristocratic moral valuation proceeds from a triumphant affirmation, a yea-saying, which we find in the Homeric heroes: We, the noble, beautiful and brave—we are the good, the beloved of the gods. These are strong men, charged with force, who delight in warlike deeds, to whom, in other words, happiness is activity.

It is of course unavoidable that these nobles should misjudge and despise the plebeian herd they dominate. Yet as a rule there may be traced in them a pity for the downtrodden caste, for the drudge and beast of burden, an indulgence towards those to whom happiness is rest, the Sabbath of inactivity.

Among the lower orders, on the other hand, an image of the ruling caste distorted by hatred and spite is necessarily current. In this distortion there lies a revenge.[5]

In opposition to the aristocratic valuation (good = noble, beautiful, happy, favoured by the gods) the slave morality then is this: The wretched alone are the good; those who suffer and are heavy laden, the sick and the ugly, they are the only pious ones. On the other hand, you, ye noble and rich, are to all eternity the evil, the cruel, the insatiate, the ungodly, and after death the damned. Whereas noble morality was the manifestation of great self-esteem, a continual yea-saying, slave morality is a continual Nay, a Thou shalt not, a negation.

To the noble valuation good—bad (bad = worthless) corresponds the antithesis of slave morality, good—evil. And who are the evil in this morality of the oppressed? Precisely the same who in the other morality were the good.

Let any one read the Icelandic sagas and examine the morality of the ancient Northmen, and then compare with it the complaints of other nations about the vikings' misdeeds. It will be seen that these aristocrats, whose conduct in many ways stood high, were no better than beasts of prey in dealing with their enemies. They fell upon the inhabitants of Christian shores like eagles upon lambs. One may say they followed an eagle ideal. But then we cannot wonder that those who were exposed to such fearful attacks gathered round an entirely opposite moral ideal, that of the lamb.

In the third chapter of his Utilitarianism, Stuart Mill attempts to prove that the sense of justice has developed from the animal instinct of making reprisal for an injury or a loss. In an essay on "the transcendental satisfaction of the feeling of revenge" (supplement to the first edition of the Werth des Lebens) Eugen Dhring has followed him in trying to establish the whole doctrine of punishment upon the instinct of retaliation. In his Phnomenologie Eduard von Hartmann shows how this instinct strictly speaking never does more than involve a new suffering, a new offence, to gain external satisfaction for the old one, so that the principle of requital can never be any distinct principle.

Nietzsche makes a violent, passionate attempt to refer the sum total of false modern morality, not to the instinct of requital or to the feeling of revenge in general, but to the narrower form of it which we call spite, envy and rancune. What he calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. Misery became a distinction; God chastens whom he loves. Or it became a preparation, a trial and a training; even more—something that will one day be made good with interest, paid back in bliss. And the vilest underground creatures, swollen with hate and spite, were heard to say: We, the good, we are the righteous. They did not hate their enemies—they hated injustice, ungodliness. What they hoped for was not the sweets of revenge, but the victory of righteousness. Those they had left to love on earth were their brothers and sisters in hatred, whom they called their brothers and sisters in love. The future state they looked for was called the coming of their kingdom, of God's kingdom. Until it arrives they live on in faith, hope and love.

If Nietzsche's design in this picture was to strike at historical Christianity, he has given us—as any one may see—a caricature in the spirit and style of the eighteenth century. But that his description hits off a certain type of the apostles of spite-morality cannot be denied, and rarely has all the self-deception that may lurk beneath moral preaching been more vigorously unmasked. (Compare Beyond Good and Evil and The Genealogy of Morals.)[6]