Herd pangs of conscience. – During the longest and most remote periods of time there was a kind of pang of conscience completely different from that which exists now. Today one feels responsible only for what one wants and does, and finds one’s pride in oneself: all our teachers of justice start from this feeling of self and pleasure in the individual (des Einzelnen), as if the spring of justice (des Rechts)2 had always arisen here. But for the longest period of humanity’s existence there was nothing more frightful than feeling alone (einzeln). To be alone (allein), to experience things by oneself (einzeln), to neither obey nor rule, to represent an individual (ein Individuum bedeuten) – that was no pleasure back then, but a punishment; one was sentenced ‘to be an individual (Individuum)’. Freedom of thought was considered discomfort itself. While we experience law and conformity as compulsion and loss, one formerly experienced egoism as a painful thing, as an actual affliction. To be a self, to estimate oneself according to one’s own measure and weight – that was contrary to taste in those days. The inclination to this would have been considered madness, for every misery and every fear were associated with being alone (Alleinsein). Back then, ‘free will’ had bad conscience as its closest neighbour. The more unfreely one acted, the more the herd instinct and not the sense of self spoke through the action, the more moral one considered oneself. In those days, everything that hurt the herd, whether the individual had willed it or not, gave the individual pangs of conscience – and his neighbour as well; indeed, the whole herd! On this point we have relearned most of all.