If Plutarch's heroes are enthusiastically
and a
reluctance is experienced to looking too critically into the motives of
their actions, not the knowledge but the welfare of human society is
promoted thereby: psychological error and above all obtuseness in regard
to it, help human nature forward, whereas knowledge of the truth is more
promoted by means of the stimulating strength of a hypothesis; as La
Rochefoucauld in the first edition of his "Sentences and Moral Maxims"
has expressed it: "What the world calls virtue is ordinarily but a
phantom created by the passions, and to which we give a good name in
order to do whatever we please with impunity.
reluctance is experienced to looking too critically into the motives of
their actions, not the knowledge but the welfare of human society is
promoted thereby: psychological error and above all obtuseness in regard
to it, help human nature forward, whereas knowledge of the truth is more
promoted by means of the stimulating strength of a hypothesis; as La
Rochefoucauld in the first edition of his "Sentences and Moral Maxims"
has expressed it: "What the world calls virtue is ordinarily but a
phantom created by the passions, and to which we give a good name in
order to do whatever we please with impunity.
Nietzsche - Human, All Too Human
