propitious time for the blossoming of great individuals may be limited, and an absolute dominancy of morality may mean the defeat of the higher possibilities.[1] Morality a danger!—this is one of Nietzsche's points of view. The language is not so startling as it sounds—sometimes old-time religious teachers have used it, though from another point of view; and even in Nietzsche's mouth it is not without a touch of religious meaning, since his thought is that morality covers only the lower ranges of man's life and that there are higher! With questions of morality and immorality, we do not even touch, he holds, the higher value of man, which is altogether independent of social utility—a man may have it, though there is no one to whom he can be useful; indeed, one may be injurious to others and yet have it. "A man with a taste of his own, shut and hidden by his solitude, incommunicable, uncommunicative—an incalculable man, hence a man of a higher, in any case a different species: how are you going to measure him, since you cannot know, cannot compare him?" Moral preoccupation then puts one low in the order of rank, since it shows that one lacks the instinct for separate right, the a parte, the sense of freedom of creative natures, of "children of God" (or the Devil).[2]
To mention one or two details, the criticism undermines the ordinary idea of conscience. Conscience is a social product, and may vary as social standards vary. Yes, as a late result of social evolution, there may be an individual conscience against social standards. But conscience of itself is no standard at all. The notion is also undermined that evil is to be stamped out in the world, that only the good has a rightful place there. The total necessities of the world, i.e., of progress in it, require good and evil (understanding by "good" the friendly, preservative impulses, and by "evil" the destructive ones). The criticism still further undermines the idea that moral acts are of a peculiar kind, i.e., free and unegoistic. There is an absolute homogeneity in all happening; there are no moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. As the perspective, the interests differ, so do the moralities.[3] A curious
