Was it therewith over? Was that greatest of all antitheses of ideals thereby relegated ad acta for all time? Or only postponed, postponed for a long time? May there not take place at some time or other a much more awful, much more carefully prepared flaring up of the old conflagration? Further! Should not one wish that consummation with all one’s strength?—will it oneself? demand it oneself? He who at this juncture begins, like my readers, to reflect, to think further, will have difficulty in coming quickly to a conclusion—ground enough for me to come myself to a conclusion, taking it for granted that for some time past what I mean has been sufficiently clear, what I exactly mean by that dangerous motto which is inscribed on the body of my last book: Beyond Good and Evil —at any rate that is not the same as “Beyond Good and Bad.”
Note.—I avail myself of the opportunity offered by this treatise to express, openly and formally, a wish which up to the present has only been expressed in occasional conversations with scholars, namely, that some Faculty of philosophy should, by means of a series of prize essays, gain the glory of having promoted the further study of the history of morals —perhaps this book may serve to give forcible impetus in such a direction. With regard to a possibility of this character, the following question deserves consideration. It merits quite as much the attention of philologists and historians as of actual professional philosophers.
“ What indication of the history of the evolution of the moral ideas is afforded by philology, and especially by etymological investigation? ”
On the other hand, it is of course equally necessary to induce physiologists and doctors to be interested in these problems ( of the value of the valuations which have prevailed up to the present): in this connection the professional philosophers may be trusted to act as the