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208 morality—it functions most usefully in average society; he simply finds it intellectually uninteresting, or rather first interesting when a sense of the problematical in it is aroused. Then indeed it may become dangerously interesting, so much so that it is perhaps just as well that few regard it in this light. But however this may be, morality does become a problem to him—I might say, his great and specific problem. "To see and indicate the problem of morality—that seems to me the new task and principal thing. I deny that it has been done in previous moral philosophy." The most settled and commonplace features of the subject excite his skeptical wonderment. "I wonder at the most recognized things in morality,—and other philosophers, like Schopenhauer, have only been struck by the 'wonders' in morality." He calls his an "attempt to think about morality, without standing under its spell."

As just stated, he does not recommend his attitude to all. The question as to the origin and root meaning of good and evil he speaks of as a "stilles Problem" which "addresses itself selectively to only a few ears." "We are the exception and the danger" and "forever need justification," he admits, adding that something may be said in favor of the exception, provided that it does not seek to become the rule. There is perhaps also a suggestion of the dangerousness of his undertaking in an aphorism labeled "Casuistic": "There is a bitter (bitterböse) alternative to which every man's courage and character are not equal: as passengers on a ship to discover that captain and pilot are making dangerous errors, and that in nautical knowledge we are superior to them—and now to ask ourselves: How is it, should you not incite a mutiny against them and have them both imprisoned? Does not your superiority obligate you to do this? And on the other hand, are they not in the right in locking you up, since you undermine authority?