: 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.