106

Against the definitions of the goal of morality.  Everywhere today the goal of morality is defined in approximately the following way: it is the preservation and advancement of mankind; but this definition is an expression of the desire for a formula, and nothing more. Preservation of what? is the question one immediately has to ask. Advancement to what? Is the essential thing  the answer to this of what? and to what?  not precisely what is left out of the formula? So what, then, can it contribute to any teaching of what our duty is that is not already, if tacitly and thoughtlessly, regarded in advance as fixed? Can one deduce from it with certainty whether what is to be kept in view is the longest possible existence of mankind? Or the greatest possible deanimalisation of mankind? How different the means, that is to say the practical morality, would have to be in these two cases! Suppose one wanted to bestow on mankind the highest degree of rationality possible to it: this would certainly not guarantee it the longest period of duration possible to it! Or suppose one conceived the attainment of mankind's 'highest happiness' as being the to what and of what of morality: would one mean the highest degree of happiness that individual men could gradually attain to? Or a  necessarily incalculable  average-happiness which could finally be attained to by all? And why should the way to that have to be morality? Has morality not, broadly speaking, opened up such an abundance of sources of displeasure that one could say, rather, that with every refinement of morals mankind has hitherto become more discontented with himself, his neighbour and the lot of his existence? Did the hitherto most moral man not entertain the belief that the only justified condition of mankind in the face of morality was the profoundest misery?