directions—he could not have said an übles or schlechtes book]. He had known in his own history, he tells us, how to be boshaft to conclusions which are bred by sickness or loneliness.[1] The böse or boshafte attitude is, of course, usually somber, but it may be light and gay: Emerson says that for the great who eradicate old and foolish churches and nations—a böses work surely from the standpoint of the churches and nations affected—"all must be as gay as the song of a canary."[2] Contemplating the part which enmity and destruction have to play in the world, recognizing that it is as needful and as beneficent as that of love and creation, Nietzsche makes Zarathustra say, "to the highest goodness belongs the highest Böse,""man must become better and böser [not schlechter]—so do I teach."[3]
The evil which Nietzsche particularly considers is then essentially the same as the hostile, harmful, destructive, or at least threatening, fear-inspiring—this from the standpoint of those who suffer or fear the harm. That social groups should make the judgment in relation to themselves was natural and inevitable. Living uncertainly and precariously as they did, it was absolutely necessary for them to note what helped or harmed them—particularly what harmed. Fear of evil indeed predominated in the minds of primitive men—and, as they did not know what to expect, accident, the uncertain, the sudden were forms of it.[4] To diminish such fear was part of the function of the reign of mores, for through it members of a group became regular and calculable to one another—this though members of foreign groups were still evil, i.e., incalculable to them; and members of their own group, so far as they anywise stood apart and were peculiar, were regarded in much the same light. Men wanted to be able to relax their tension. One is evil in their eyes, even apart from actual harm, if one does not allow them to do this, and one is good who does—particularly then the kindly intentioned, benevolent man, whose very look disarms suspicion. If—says Nietzsche, speaking now generally—we reckon up the qualities of the good man, why do they please us? And he answers, Because we have no need of warring
