There comes a point in the history of a society that has become pathologically rotten and soft, when it even sides with its attacker, the criminal, and indeed, in a genuine and serious way. Punishment: that seems unfair to it somehow, – what is certain is that it hurts and frightens society to imagine ‘punishment’ and ‘having to punish’. Is it not sufficient to render the criminal undangerous? Why punish as well? Punishment itself is terrible! – with this question, herd morality, the morality of timidity, draws its final conclusion. Assuming one could completely get rid of the danger, the reason for being afraid, one would have got rid of this morality at the same time: it would no longer be necessary, it would no longer regard itself as necessary any more! – Whoever tests the conscience of today’s European will always have to draw out the same imperative from a thousand moral folds and hiding places, the imperative of herd timidity: ‘our desire is for there to be nothing more to fear some time or other!’ Some time or other – the will and the way there is called ‘progress’ everywhere in Europe today.
– “Beyond Good or Evil,” Friedrich Nietzche
