Corpus · The Gay Science · Full-text route

Praised Virtues, a Morning Dream, and the Harvest of Corruption

Optional full-text route · Station 5 of 35

Read: Book I, §§21–23, in full, from the original 1882 edition. Begin at §21 and stop before §24.
Allow: About 60–80 minutes, including the passages, this guide, rereading, and a short written response. This is an editorial estimate, not a measured reading time. The three sections total about 2,500 words in the free edition; §§21 and 23 are among the longest in Book I. If you need two sittings, stop after §22.

Preferred translation: Walter Kaufmann. Free alternative (Thomas Common, The Joyful Wisdom): §21 · §22 · §23.

Quotations on this page follow Common’s free translation, including his section titles. Kaufmann’s wording differs, and none of it is quoted here.

Before you read

Station 4 explained kindness and love by power and possession. These three sections turn to virtue itself. §21 asks whom the praise of virtue really serves. §22 is a dream about a king’s morning, told by his servants. §23 reverses the usual judgment of periods of “corruption” and ends with a sentence that sounds like a slogan.

The main question: What does virtue cost when it becomes a public judgment—and who gains when a society calls some ages corrupt?

Use the marks from station 2: P, H, V, and ? for Nietzsche’s own hedges. §23 contains many Hs about whole societies and a quoted remark by Napoleon.

What to notice

1. “For the general good.” In §21, follow who benefits each time a virtue is praised.
2. Whose dream? §22 is told in a courtier’s “we.” Find the point at which the speaker wakes and says whose habits the dream mocked.
3. Quotation marks in §23. “Corruption,” “effeminacy,” “morals decay.” Whose words are these, and which are the translator’s?

Close reading

The neighbour praises

§21 is addressed “To the Teachers of Unselfishness.” Its first claim: a person’s virtues are called good not for what they do for him, but for what “we expect therefrom for ourselves and for society.” Diligence, obedience, chastity, piety, and justice “are mostly injurious to their possessors.” If you have a real virtue, “you are its victim!” The neighbour praises you precisely for that. §21, virtues and their possessors

Nietzsche’s example is a young man honoured and mourned as one who has “worn himself out by work.” Society regrets him “not on his own account,” but because a devoted instrument has been lost. What is praised in the virtues, he concludes, is their unreason, “in consequence of which the individual allows himself to be transformed into a function of the whole.” Education works the same way. It turns a habit into a passion that rules a person “in opposition to his ultimate advantage, but ‘for the general good.’” §21, the unreason in the virtues

The section ends with an argument, not only a diagnosis. The neighbour praises unselfishness “because he profits by it!” If he were unselfish himself, he would refuse the sacrifice made for his advantage. So “the motives to such a morality are in antithesis to its principle”: a morality of self-sacrifice is recommended for the neighbour’s advantage, and “‘thou shalt,’ and ‘thou shalt not,’ are preached in one breath!” §21, the contradiction

Mark this V and P, and separate its parts. The claim that praised virtues often harm their possessors can be tested against cases. The claim that praise comes from the praiser’s advantage is a claim about motive. The final argument is different again. It says a morality refutes itself if it can be recommended only on grounds its own principle forbids. That argument can be judged on its own terms. It connects with station 2, where §1 made every teacher of purpose serve the species, and it looks ahead to Book III’s account of herd instinct (§116, station 13 and Reading 3).

A king’s morning

§22 changes voice completely. Its title, “L’Ordre du Jour pour le Roi,” is French for the king’s order of the day. Courtiers plan the day of “His Majesty.” If the weather is bad, they will not call it bad. If he is sick, they will tell him of Montaigne, who joked about his own illness. They will receive a pompous visitor, an “old inflated frog” who would say, “I am no person, … but always the thing itself.” They will tell the story of a poet who wrote over his door: “He who enters here will do me an honour; he who does not—a favour.” Then a bell rings, and the court must “improvise.” §22, the court’s morning

The last sentences reveal the frame. It was the speaker’s “wonderful morning dream,” ended by a clock. The god of dreams, he thinks, “wanted to make merry over my habits”: his habit of beginning each day by arranging it, perhaps “too formally, and too much like a prince.” The whole section is self-mockery. The king is the speaker, and the courtiers are his own habits of self-management. Read it after §21 and it takes on a second edge: even the arranger of his own day can become a court that serves and flatters. §22, the dream’s end

The harvest time of a people

§23 examines the condition of society “designated by the word ‘corruption,’” which it calls “from time to time necessary.” It lists four characteristics and reverses the usual verdict on each.

1. Superstition. When a people’s common belief weakens, a “motley superstition” takes its place. Nietzsche calls superstition “freethinking of the second rank”: the superstitious person chooses his forms and so claims “a right of choice.” The old faithful call it corruption; “Let us learn that it is a symptom of enlightenment.”
2. “Effeminacy.” A corrupt society, in Common’s English, is “blamed for effeminacy” because it loses its delight in war. Nietzsche answers that the old national energy has moved into countless private passions. In such times “the flame of knowledge flashes heavenward in full blaze.”
3. Cruelty. Such periods are praised as milder. Nietzsche denies it: “cruelty now becomes more refined,” and wounding by word and look reaches its height.
4. Tyrants. When “morals decay,” tyrants appear; “they are the forerunners of the individual.” At the end of the struggle “there always arises the Cæsar, the final tyrant.”

§23, superstition and enlightenment

The fourth characteristic carries the section’s strongest claims. In the Caesar’s time, “the individual is usually most mature,” and culture is highest—“but not on his account nor through him.” Bribery and treason flourish, because “the love of the ego” is newly discovered and stronger than love of a worn-out “fatherland.” Individuals attach themselves to despots, because “the tyrant or the Cæsar understands the rights of the Individual even in his excesses.” Nietzsche then quotes Napoleon, speaking to his wife when she questioned his fidelity: “I have the right to answer by an eternal ‘thus I am’ to everything about which complaint is brought against me.” §23, the Caesar

The section ends: “Corruption is only an abusive term for the harvest time of a people.” The individuals who fall from the tree like apples are “the seed-bearers of the future.” §23, the harvest

Mark it carefully.

• The sequence of superstition, private passion, refined cruelty, tyrants, and Caesar is a large H about how societies develop. The section names no period, and gives no evidence beyond the pattern it describes.
• The Napoleon quotation is a report the section does not source. Treat it as Nietzsche’s use of an anecdote, not as a verified record.
• The reversal of “corruption” into “harvest” is a V.
• “Effeminacy” is Common’s translation choice, not Nietzsche’s exact word. The German is Erschlaffung: slackening, enervation, a loss of tension. The gendered colouring comes from the English. In both languages the charge belongs to the complainers, and the section answers it by redescribing where the energy went.

A difficulty

Freed from the whole, delivered to the Caesar?

§21 objects that praised virtue turns an individual into “a function of the whole.” §23 welcomes periods when the individual finally ripens. But it places that ripening beside bribery, treason, refined cruelty, and a Caesar who “understands the rights of the Individual even in his excesses.” Its model of individual self-assertion is Napoleon answering his wife’s complaint with an “eternal ‘thus I am.’”

Two readings are possible.

• A description. §23 describes, without endorsing, the conditions under which individuals have historically emerged. The ugliness is part of the history, not the ideal.
• An endorsement. The section celebrates the individual’s emancipation even at the price of others: the betrayed, the bribed, the wife. The harvest image gives the whole process a single, favourable meaning.

Decide which the text better supports. Name the sentence that tips it. Then ask whether §21’s complaint on behalf of the self-sacrificing youth survives §23’s praise of the Caesar’s age.

Check your understanding

Try answering before opening each suggested response.

Writing prompt

Write 200–250 words answering:

Does §23’s praise of the individual answer §21’s complaint, or change the subject?

• State §21’s complaint in one sentence, using the phrase “a function of the whole.”
• Explain what §23 means by calling corruption a “harvest,” and mark the claim’s types.
• Say who pays for the harvest, using one detail from §23.

A successful response separates §21’s argument from its claims about motive, treats §23’s history as a hypothesis, and states its link between the individual and the tyrant plainly.

Continue

Continue to station 6: Dissatisfaction, Heresy, and the Taste That Changes Opinions →

Read next: Book I, §§24–40. Seventeen shorter sections ask how dissent, taste, and changing conditions alter inherited standards.

Previous station: station 4, §§13–20. Return to the route list in the book guide.

A reading guide from Reading Nietzsche · Revised September 27, 2026.

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