1 Beyond Good and Evil
other respects, in one thing we are nevertheless the worthy
grandchildren of our grandfathers, we last Europeans with
good consciences: we also still wear their pigtail.—Ah! if
you only knew how soon, so very soon—it will be different!
- As in the stellar firmament there are sometimes two
suns which determine the path of one planet, and in cer-
tain cases suns of different colours shine around a single
planet, now with red light, now with green, and then si-
multaneously illumine and flood it with motley colours: so
we modern men, owing to the complicated mechanism of
our ‘firmament,’ are determined by DIFFERENT morali-
ties; our actions shine alternately in different colours, and
are seldom unequivocal—and there are often cases, also, in
which our actions are MOTLEY-COLOURED. - To love one’s enemies? I think that has been well learnt:
it takes place thousands of times at present on a large and
small scale; indeed, at times the higher and sublimer thing
takes place:—we learn to DESPISE when we love, and pre-
cisely when we love best; all of it, however, unconsciously,
without noise, without ostentation, with the shame and
secrecy of goodness, which forbids the utterance of the
pompous word and the formula of virtue. Morality as at-
titude—is opposed to our taste nowadays. This is ALSO an
advance, as it was an advance in our fathers that religion as
an attitude finally became opposed to their taste, including
the enmity and Voltairean bitterness against religion (and
all that formerly belonged to freethinker- pantomime). It