Noble and common. – For common natures all noble, magnanimous feelings appear to be inexpedient and therefore initially incredible: they give a wink when they hear of such things and seem to want to say, ‘Surely there must be some advantage involved; one cannot see through every wall’ – they are suspicious of the noble person, as if he were furtively seeking his advantage. If they become all too clearly convinced of the absence of selfish intentions and gains, they view the noble person as a kind of fool: they despise him in his pleasure and laugh at the sparkle in his eye. ‘How could one enjoy being at a disadvantage? How could one want with open eyes to be disadvantaged? Some disease of reason must be linked to the noble affection’ – thus they think and look disparagingly, the way they disparage the pleasure that a madman derives from his fixed idea. What distinguishes the common nature is that it unflinchingly keeps sight of its advantage, and that this thought of purpose and advantage is even stronger than its strongest drives; not to allow these drives to lead it astray to perform inexpeditious acts – that is its wisdom and self-esteem. In comparison, the higher nature is more unreasonable – for the noble, magnanimous, and self-sacrificing person does in fact succumb to his drives; and in his best moments, his reason pauses. An animal that protects its young at the risk of its own life or during the mating period follows the female unto death does not think of danger and death; its reason likewise pauses because the pleasure in its brood or in the female and the fear of being deprived of this pleasure dominate it totally; the animal becomes stupider than it usually is – just like the person who is noble and magnanimous. Such persons have several feelings of pleasure and displeasure so strong that they reduce the intellect to silence or to servitude: at that point their heart displaces their head, and one speaks thenceforth of ‘passion’. (Occasionally we also encounter the opposite, the ‘reversal of passion’, as it were; for example, somebody once laid his hand on Fontenelle’s heart and said, ‘What you have here, my dear sir, is also brains.’3) The unreason or odd reason (Unvernunft oder Quervernunft) of passion is what the common type despises in the noble, especially when this passion is directed at objects whose value seems quite fantastic and arbitrary. He is annoyed by the person who succumbs to the passion of the belly, but at least he comprehends the appeal that plays the tyrant in this case; but he cannot comprehend how anyone could, for example, risk health and honour for the sake of a passion for knowledge. The higher nature’s taste is for exceptions, for things that leave most people cold and seem to lack sweetness; the higher nature has a singular value standard. Moreover, it usually believes that the idiosyncrasy of its taste is not a singular value standard; rather, it posits its values and disvalues as generally valid and so becomes incomprehensible and impractical. It is very rare that a higher nature has enough reason left over to understand and treat commonplace people as what they are; above all, it believes in its own passion as something that is present in everyone but concealed, and in this belief it is full of ardour and eloquence. Now when such exceptional people do not themselves feel like exceptions, how can they ever understand the common natures and arrive at a proper estimate of the rule! – and so they, too, speak of the stupidity, inexpedience, and fancifulness of humanity, stunned that the world is taking such an insane course and that it will not commit itself to that which ‘is needful’. – This is the eternal injustice of the noble.