44.
Grades of Morals.—Morality is primarily a means of preserving the community and saving it from destruction. Next it is a means of maintaining the community on a certain plane and in a certain degree of benevolence. Its motives are fear and hope, and these in a more coarse, rough, and powerful form, the more the propensity towards the perverse, one-sided, and personal still persists. The most terrible means of intimidation must be brought into play so long as milder forms have no effect and that twofold species of preservation cannot be attained. (The strongest intimidation, by the way, is the invention of a hereafter with a hell everlasting.) For this purpose we must have racks and torturers of the soul. Further grades of morality, and accordingly means to the end referred to, are the commandments of a God (as in the Mosaic law). Still further and higher are the commandments of an absolute sense of duty with [pg 222] a “Thou shalt”—all rather roughly hewn yet broad steps, because on the finer, narrower steps men cannot yet set their feet. Then comes a morality of inclination, of taste, finally of insight—which is beyond all the illusory motives of morality, but has convinced itself that humanity for long periods could be allowed no other.
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The Morality of Pity in the Mouths of The Intemperate.—All those who are not sufficiently masters of themselves and do not know morality as a self-control and self-conquest continuously exercised in things great and small, unconsciously come to glorify the good, compassionate, benevolent impulses of that instinctive morality which has no head, but seems merely to consist of a heart and helpful hands. It is to their interest even to cast suspicion upon a morality of reason and to set up the other as the sole morality.
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Sewers of the Soul.—Even the soul must have its definite sewers, through which it can allow its filth to flow off: for this purpose it may use persons, relations, social classes, its native country, or the world, or finally—for the wholly arrogant (I mean our modern “pessimists”)—le bon Dieu.
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A Kind of Rest and Contemplation.—Beware lest your rest and contemplation resemble that [pg 223] of a dog before a butcher's stall, prevented by fear from advancing and by greed from retiring, and opening its eyes wide as though they were mouths.
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Prohibitions without Reasons.—A prohibition, the reason of which we do not understand or admit, is almost a command, not only for the stiff-necked but for the thirster after knowledge. We at once make an experiment in order to learn why the prohibition was made. Moral prohibitions, like those of the Decalogue, are only suited to ages when reason lies vanquished. Nowadays a prohibition like “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” laid down without reasons, would have an injurious rather than a beneficial effect.