a noble man to understand: he will be tempted to deny it, where another
kind of man thinks he sees it self-evidently. The problem for him is
to represent to his mind beings who seek to arouse a good opinion of
themselves which they themselves do not possess--and consequently also
do not "deserve,"--and who yet BELIEVE in this good opinion
afterwards. This seems to him on the one hand such bad taste and so
self-disrespectful, and on the other hand so grotesquely unreasonable,
that he would like to consider vanity an exception, and is doubtful
about it in most cases when it is spoken of. He will say, for
instance: "I may be mistaken about my value, and on the other hand
may nevertheless demand that my value should be acknowledged by others
precisely as I rate it:--that, however, is not vanity (but self-conceit,
or, in most cases, that which is called 'humility,' and also
'modesty')." Or he will even say: "For many reasons I can delight in
the good opinion of others, perhaps because I love and honour them,
and rejoice in all their joys, perhaps also because their good opinion
endorses and strengthens my belief in my own good opinion, perhaps
because the good opinion of others, even in cases where I do not share
it, is useful to me, or gives promise of usefulness:--all this, however,
is not vanity." The man of noble character must first bring it home
forcibly to his mind, especially with the aid of history, that, from
time immemorial, in all social strata in any way dependent, the ordinary
man WAS only that which he PASSED FOR:--not being at all accustomed to
fix values, he did not assign even to himself any other value than that
which his master assigned to him (it is the peculiar RIGHT OF MASTERS to
create values). It may be looked upon as the result of an extraordinary
atavism, that the ordinary man, even at present, is still always WAITING
for an opinion about himself, and then instinctively submitting himself
to it; yet by no means only to a "good" opinion, but also to a bad
and unjust one (think, for instance, of the greater part of the
self-appreciations and self-depreciations which believing women learn
from their confessors, and which in general the believing Christian
learns from his Church). In fact, conformably to the slow rise of the
democratic social order (and its cause, the blending of the blood
of masters and slaves), the originally noble and rare impulse of
the masters to assign a value to themselves and to "think well" of
themselves, will now be more and more encouraged and extended; but
it has at all times an older, ampler, and more radically ingrained
propensity opposed to it--and in the phenomenon of "vanity" this older
propensity overmasters the younger. The vain person rejoices over EVERY
good opinion which he hears about himself (quite apart from the point
of view of its usefulness, and equally regardless of its truth or
falsehood), just as he suffers from every bad opinion: for he subjects
himself to both, he feels himself subjected to both, by that oldest
instinct of subjection which breaks forth in him.--It is "the slave"
in the vain man's blood, the remains of the slave's craftiness--and how
much of the "slave" is still left in woman, for instance!--which
seeks to SEDUCE to good opinions of itself; it is the slave, too, who
immediately afterwards falls prostrate himself before these opinions, as
though he had not called them forth.--And to repeat it again: vanity is
an atavism.