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CHAPTER XThe Criterion for Ethical Values and Its Determination
Evil means a failure - Beethoven’s nephew, who sponged at the expense of genius. Diseases are evil, as is the action of bacteria. Also death is evil. Relative evil is the assimilation of something that could have been replaced by the inferior - that which has a lesser capability for the production of lasting values [these last being defined as] accumulated powers of assimilation. Thus the eating of meat is relatively evil. The assimilation drive, in and of itself, is neither good nor evil: it becomes good when sublimation takes place, but when abasement occurs, it becomes evil. Mean is the embezzlement of life from something that is meant to serve the assimilation only to a limited extent. It is mean, because the greater portion is thus condemned to go the contrary way of useless devaluation. Thus the consumption of bird tongues, for which birds are killed, is meant mean, and relatively evil. Equally mean is the activity of bacteria who, for want of a small portion of the human substance which they need, destroy a whole organism -that is, diminish its assimilation capacity excessively. The usurer who destroys the livelihood of a person for a few pennies, is just as mean. If it is possible to calculate the energetic values of an introgenic event mathematically, also nothing stands in the way of determining ethical values in mathematical quantities. |