Morality of truthfulness in the herd. ‘You shall be knowable, express your inner nature by clear and constant signs—otherwise you are dangerous: and if you are evil, your ability to dissimulate is the worst thing for the herd. We despise the secret and unrecognizable.— Consequently you must consider yourself knowable, you may not be concealed from yourself, you may not believe that you change.’ Thus: the demand for truthfulness presupposes the knowability and stability of the person. In fact, it is the object of education to create in the herd member a definite faith concerning the nature of man: it first invents this faith and then demands ‘truthfulness.’ Within a herd, within any community, that is to say inter pares, the overestimation of truthfulness makes good sense. Not to be deceived—and consequently, as a personal point of morality, not to deceive! a mutual obligation between equals! In dealing with what lies outside, danger and caution demand that one should be on one’s guard against deception: as a psychological preconditioning for this, also in dealing with what lies within. Mistrust as the source of truthfulness.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, n. 277 & 278, pg. 158















