195.  The Jews—­a people “born for slavery,” as Tacitus and the whole ancient world say of them; “the chosen people among the nations,” as they themselves say and believe—­the Jews performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums.  Their prophets fused into one the expressions “rich,” “godless,” “wicked,” “violent,” “sensual,” and for the first time coined the word “world” as a term of reproach.  In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included the use of the word “poor” as synonymous with “saint” and “friend”) the significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with them that the slave-insurrection in morals commences.

196.  It is to be inferred that there are countless dark bodies near the sun—­such as we shall never see.  Among ourselves, this is an allegory; and the psychologist of morals reads the whole star-writing merely as an allegorical and symbolic language in which much may be unexpressed.

197.  The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Caesar Borgia) are fundamentally misunderstood, “nature” is misunderstood, so long as one seeks a “morbidness” in the constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths, or even an innate “hell” in them—­as almost all moralists have done hitherto.  Does it not seem that there is a hatred of the virgin forest and of the tropics among moralists?  And that the “tropical man” must be discredited at all costs, whether as disease and deterioration of mankind, or as his own hell and self-torture?  And why?  In favour of the “temperate zones”?  In favour of the temperate men?  The “moral”?  The mediocre?—­This for the chapter:  “Morals as Timidity.”

198.  All the systems of morals which address themselves with a view to their “happiness,” as it is called—­what else are they but suggestions for behaviour adapted to the degree of danger from themselves in which the individuals live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad propensities, insofar as such have the Will to Power and would like to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form—­because they address themselves to “all,” because they generalize where generalization is not authorized; all of them speaking unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously, especially of “the other world.”  That is all of little value when estimated intellectually, and is far from being “science,” much less “wisdom”; but, repeated once more, and three times repeated, it is expediency, expediency, expediency, mixed with stupidity, stupidity, stupidity—­whether