– Through your irrationality you
have inflicted profound suffering on your neighbor and have
destroyed an irretrievable happiness – and now you overcome
your vanity sufficiently to go to him; you humble yourself before him, expose your irrationality to his contempt, and believe that after this difficult, and for you extremely burdensome scene, everything has basically been put to rights – your
voluntary loss of honor evens out the other's involuntary loss of happiness: in this feeling you walk away uplifted and restored to your virtue. But the other has his profound suffering
just the same; for him there is nothing at all comforting in the
fact that you are irrational and have admitted it; even the mortifying sight you presented to him as you expressed to his face
your contempt for yourself he experiences as a fresh injury for
which he has you to thank – but he does not contemplate revenge nor does he grasp how anything between you and him
could be evened out. Basically you performed that scene before,
and for yourself: you had invited a witness to it, once again for
your own sake and not for his – don't deceive yourself!
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn 219
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn 219