Part Seven

Our Virtues

214

Our virtues? It's probable that we also still have our virtues, although it's reasonable to think that they will not be those naive, four-square virtues for whose sake we respect our grandfathers, at the same time holding them somewhat at arm's length. We Europeans of the day-after-tomorrow, we first-born of the twentieth century - with all our dangerous curiosity, our multiplicity, and art of disguise, our tender and, so to speak, sweetened cruelty in spirit and sense - if we're to have virtues, we'll presumably have only those which have learned best how to tolerate our most secret and most heartfelt inclinations, our most burning needs. So then let's look for them in our labyrinths! - where, as we know, so many different things get lost, so many different things disappear for ever. And is there anything more beautiful than seeking out one's own virtues? Doesn't this mean that one already almost believes in one's own virtues? But this phrase "believe in one's own virtues" - isn't that basically the same thing people in earlier times used to call their "good conscience," that long worthy pigtail of an idea which our grandfathers hung behind their heads and often enough behind their understanding as well? Thus, it seems to follow that, no matter how little we may think ourselves as old fashioned and as respectable as our grandfathers in other things, in one respect we are nonetheless the worthy grandsons of these grandfathers, we last Europeans with good consciences: we, too, still carry their pigtail. - Alas, if you knew how soon, how very soon - things will be otherwise! . . .

Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
Part VII - Aphorism # 214

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