The absolute dominion of moral valuations over all others: nobody doubted that God could not be evil and could do no harm—that is to say, perfection was understood merely as moral perfection.
291.
How false is the supposition that an action must depend upon what has preceded it in consciousness! And morality has been measured in the light of this supposition, as also criminality....
The value of an action must be judged by its results, say the utilitarians: to measure it according to its origin involves the impossibility of knowing that origin.
But do we know its results? Five stages ahead, perhaps. Who can tell what an action provokes and sets in motion? As a stimulus? As the spark which fires a powder-magazine? Utilitarians are simpletons.... And finally, they would first of all have to know what is useful; here also their sight can travel only over five stages or so.... They have no notion of the great economy which cannot dispense with evil.
We do not know the origin or the results: has an action, then, any value?
We have yet the action itself to consider: the states of consciousness that accompany it, the yea or nay which follows upon its performance: does the value of an action lie in the subjective states which accompany it? (In that case, the value of music would be measured according to the pleasure or displeasure which it occasions in us ... which it gives to the composer. ...) Obviously feelings of value must accompany it, a sensation of power, restraint, or impotence—for instance, freedom or lightsomeness. Or, putting the question differently: could the value of an action be reduced to physiological terms? could it be the expression of completely free or constrained life?—Maybe its biological value is expressed in this way....
If, then, an action can be judged neither in the light of its origin, nor its results, nor its accompaniments in consciousness, then its value must be x unknown....
292.
It amounts to a denaturalisation of morality, to separate an action from a man; to direct hatred or contempt against "sin"; to believe that there are actions which are good or bad in themselves.