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Psychologists in France - and where else nowadays are there still any psychologists? - have not yet stopped enjoying the bitter and manifold pleasure they get from bêtise bourgoise [bourgeois stupidity]. It's as if - but enough, by doing that they are revealing something. For example, Flaubert, that decent citizen of Rouen, finished up by seeing, hearing, and tasting nothing else any more. That was his kind of self-torture and more refined cruelty.¹ Now, for a change - since this is becoming tedious - I recommend something else for our delight, and that is the unconscious shiftiness with which all good, thick, well-behaved, average spirits react to higher spirits and their works, that subtle complicated Jesuitical shiftiness, which is a thousand times more subtle than the understanding and taste of these average people in their best moments - or even than the understanding of their victims as well. This is repeated evidence for the fact that "Instinct" is the most intelligent of all forms of intelligence which have been discovered so far. Briefly put, you psychologists should study the philosophy of the "norm" in its war against the "exception." There you'll see a drama good enough for the gods and divine maliciousness! Or to put the matter still more clearly: practise vivisection on the "good people," on the "homo bonae voluntatis" [man of good will] . . . on yourselves!