Macmillan

immoral?)
BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL I55
sinuated itselfeilso into these moralists (whom one must
certainlyread with an eye to their motives if one must
read them), concealed this time under the new form of the
scientificspirit;moreover, there is not absent from them a
secret strugglewith the pangs of conscience, from which a
race of former Puritans must naturallysuffer,in all their
scientifictinkeringwith morals. (Isnot a moralist the opposite
of a Puritan? That is to say,
moralityas
questionable, as
in short,as a problem? Is moralisingnot
"
as a thinker who regards
worthy of interrogation,
In
the end,they all want Englishmoralityto be recognisedas
of England,will be best served thereby.They would
like,by all means, to convince themselves that the striving
after Englishhappiness,I mean after comfortand fashion
(and in the highestinstance, a seat in Parliament),is at the
same time the true path of virtue;in fact țhat in so far as
there has been virtue in the world hitherto,
has
authoritative, inasmuch as mankind,or the "generalutility,"
or "the "
happinessof the greatestnumber,'' no! the happiness
justconsisted
in such striving Ṇot one of those ponderous,conscience-str
herding-animals (who undertake to advocate
the cause of egoism as conducive to the generalwelfare)
wants to have any knowledge or inklingof the facts that
the "generalwelfare" is no ideal,no goal,no notion that
can be at all grasped,but is only a nostrum," that what is
fair to one may not at all be fair to another țhat the requirement
of one moralityfor all is reallya detriment to
highermen, in short țhat there is a distinctionof rank between
man and man, and consequentlybetween morality
and morality.They are an unassumingand fundamentally
mediocre speciesof men, these utilitarianEnglishmen,and,
as alreadyremarked,in so far as they are tedious,one cannot
think highlyenough of their utilityỌne ought even to