Truth, The Mechanics of Virtue, aphorism 230

230


Truth is often a solution to a confrontation with a dominating social organ.  It wants revenge and a reversal of ranks.  The fact that it achieves its overthrow by securing the true is only a stroke of luck.  We will hazard ambiguity: nature determines the outcome, not the moralist — in the sense that the conditions, not the moralist, determine the outcomes — and the moralist is an outcome and therefore not really a moralist after all.  Eventually however, despite its dishonest beginnings, the motive can actually build up a superior being — and quite honestly.  These highest expressions are rare, but they could not develop in any other way.  If one wants truth, one also wants a mental overthrow of the dominant.  But one cannot have both truth and peace.  Truthfulness, in abundance, is an irritation that one rubs ... but must never cure.






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