or sudden. A subtle, slow, secular revolution in the mental and moral realm is what he has in mind—a matter, as he says, of two thousand years, and only now out of sight and consciousness, because it has triumphantly accomplished itself.[1] For us today "moral" is almost identical with unegoistic, disinterested; our standard is the well-being of all or of the greatest number—it is only as we are unselfish that we are good, only as we serve that we are great.[2] This sweeping change in the very meaning of words is the insurrection. The former "slave" is now on top, and those once called "superior," "mighty ones," "beautiful," "happy," "loved of the Gods" are under: even if they emerge, they have bad conscience and feel that they must apologize for themselves—they too, forsooth, must serve the slave, as the slaves serve one another! At the very best we men of today have divided minds; Nietzsche remarks that there is perhaps no more decisive sign of a "higher nature" now than to be so divided—a battle-place for antithetical sets of valuations.[3] The reproach is often made against him that he proposed to overturn morality; but this is an overturning that has already taken place. The morality by which Greece and Rome lived in their great days no longer rules—it has been undermined, sapped by the Prophets and the Church. Speaking more simply, the aristocratic valuations, "good" and "bad," have been overthrown by the mass valuations, "good" and "evil." The overturning[4] which Nietzsche proposed was, in fact, as we shall see, more of a restoration than a destruction. He particularly says that by "beyond good and evil" he does not mean "beyond good and bad";[5] he has no idea of transcending moral distinctions in general, but simply of transcending a particular set of distinctions that have won preponderance in the modern, or rather Christian, world.
- ↑ Genealogy etc., I, § 7.
- ↑ Ibid., I, § 2.
- ↑ Ibid., I, § 16.
- ↑ The word which Nietzsche uses, "Umwerthung," is difficult of translation. It is not exact to say "overturning," for this suggests destruction simply; the idea is really of a turning around or altering of values. "Transvaluation" has come into popular use as an equivalent, but I confess that I have to turn it into German to know what it means.
- ↑ Genealogy etc., I, § 17.
