The ultimate noblemindedness. – So what makes a person ‘noble’? Certainly not making sacrifices; even those burning with lust make sacrifices. Certainly not following some passion, for there are contemptible passions. Certainly not that one does something for others without selfishness: perhaps no one is more consistently selfish than the noble one. – Rather, the passion that overcomes the noble one is a singularity, and he fails to realize this: the use of a rare and singular standard and almost a madness; the feeling of heat in things that feel cold to everyone else; a hitting upon values for which the scale has not yet been invented; a sacrifice on altars made for an unknown god; a courage without any desire for honours; a self-sufficiency that overflows and communicates to men and things. Hitherto, then, it was rarity and the unawareness of this rarity that made noble. Note, however, that by means of this standard everything usual, near, and indispensable, in short, that which most preserved the species, and in general the rule of humanity hitherto, was inequitably judged and on the whole slandered in favour of the exceptions. To become the advocate of the rule – that might be the ultimate form and refinement in which noblemindedness manifests itself on earth.