Notebook 5[89]summer1886-autumn1887

Against the great error of thinking that our era (Europe) represents the highest human type. Instead: the men of the Renaissance were higher, as were the Greeks; infact, perhaps we are at a rather low level: 'understanding' is not a sign of highest force but of thorough fatigue, moralisation itself is a 'decadence'.

-Nietzsche

(quoted in entirety from Writings From the Late Notebooks, Cambridge, 2003. Translated by Kate Sturge. Such unpublished texts were previously only easily publicly available in the posthumous collation of notes published as 'The Will to Power’)