stocratic values and of the belief in "origin,"
the mark of a period which may be designated in the narrower sense as
the MORAL one: the first attempt at self-knowledge is thereby
made. Instead of the consequences, the origin--what an inversion
of perspective! And assuredly an inversion effected only after long
struggle and wavering! To be sure, an ominous new superstition, a
peculiar narrowness of interpretation, attained supremacy precisely
thereby: the origin of an action was interpreted in the most definite
sense possible, as origin out of an INTENTION; people were agreed in the
belief that the value of an action lay in the value of its intention.
The intention as the sole origin and antecedent history of an action:
under the influence of this prejudice moral praise and blame have been
bestowed, and men have judged and even philosophized almost up to the
present day.--Is it not possible, however, that the necessity may now
have arisen of again making up our minds with regard to the reversing
and fundamental shifting of values, owing to a new self-consciousness
and acuteness in man--is it not possible that we may be standing on
the threshold of a period which to begin with, would be distinguished
negatively as ULTRA-MORAL: nowadays when, at least among us immoralists,
the suspicion arises that the decisive value of an action lies precisely
in that which is NOT INTENTIONAL, and that all its intentionalness, all
that is seen, sensible, or "sensed" in it, belongs to its surface or
skin--which, like every skin, betrays something, but CONCEALS still
more? In short, we believe that the intention is only a sign or symptom,
which first requires an explanation--a sign, moreover, which has too
many interpretations, and consequently hardly any meaning in itself
alone: that morality, in the sense in which it has been understood
hitherto, as intention-morality, has been a prejudice, perhaps a
prematureness or preliminariness, probably something of the same rank
as astrology and alchemy, but in any case something which must be
surmounted. The surmounting of morality, in a certain sense even the
self-mounting of morality--let that be the name for the long-secret
labour which has been reserved for the most refined, the most upright,
and also the most wicked consciences of today, as the living touchstones
of the soul.

33. It cannot be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of sacrifice for
one's neighbour, and all self-renunciation-mor