First Essay — "Good and Evil," "Good and Bad"

1

Those English psychologists, who up to the present are the only philosophers who are to be thanked for any endeavour to get as far as a history of the origin of morality--these men, I say, offer us in their own personalities no paltry problem;--they even have, if I am to be quite frank about it, in their capacity of living riddles, an advantage over their books--_they themselves are interesting!_ These English psychologists--what do they really mean? We always find them voluntarily or involuntarily at the same task of pushing to the front the _partie honteuse_ of our inner world, and looking for the efficient, governing, and decisive principle in that precise quarter where the intellectual self-respect of the race would be the most reluctant to find it (for example, in the _vis inertiæ_ of habit, or in forgetfulness, or in a blind and fortuitous mechanism and association of ideas, or in some factor that is purely passive, reflex, molecular, or fundamentally stupid)--what is the real motive power which always impels these psychologists in precisely _this_ direction? Is it an instinct for human disparagement somewhat sinister, vulgar, and malignant, or perhaps incomprehensible even to itself? or perhaps a touch of pessimistic jealousy, the mistrust of disillusioned idealists who have become gloomy, poisoned, and bitter? or a petty subconscious enmity and rancour against Christianity (and Plato), that has conceivably never crossed the threshold of consciousness? or just a vicious taste for those elements of life which are bizarre, painfully paradoxical, mystical, and illogical? or, as a final alternative, a dash of each of these motives--a little vulgarity, a little gloominess, a little anti-Christianity, a little craving for the necessary piquancy?