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nydus/Beyond Good and EvilPublic

Nietzsche’s philosophical treatise on the ambiguity of traditional morality.

Page 249 of 418
Table of Contents

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The difference among men does not manifest itself only in the difference of their lists of desirable things⁠—in their regarding different good things as worth striving for, and being disagreed as to the greater or less value, the order of rank, of the commonly recognized desirable things:⁠—it manifests itself much more in what they regard as actually having and possessing a desirable thing. As regards a woman, for instance, the control over her body and her sexual gratification serves as an amply sufficient sign of ownership and possession to the more modest man; another with a more suspicious and ambitious thirst for possession, sees the “questionableness,” the mere apparentness of such ownership, and wishes to have finer tests in order to know especially whether the woman not only gives herself to him, but also gives up for his sake what she has or would like to have⁠—only then does he look upon her as “possessed.” A third, however, has not even here got to the limit of his distrust and his desire for possession: he asks himself whether the woman, when she gives up everything for him, does not perhaps do so for a phantom of him; he wishes first to be thoroughly, indeed, profoundly well known; in order to be loved at all he ventures to let himself be found out. Only then does he feel the beloved one fully in his possession, when she no longer deceives herself about him, when she loves him just as much for the sake of his devilry and concealed insatiability, as for his goodness, patience, and spirituality. One man would like to possess a nation, and he finds all the higher arts of Cagliostro and Catalina suitable for his purpose. Another, with a more refined thirst for possession, says to himself: “One may not deceive where one desires to possess”⁠—he is irritated and impatient at the idea that a mask of him should rule in the hearts of the people: “I must, therefore, make myself known, and first of all learn to know myself!” Among helpful and charitable people, one almost always finds the awkward craftiness which first gets up suitably him who has to be

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