"Herd instinct. - Wherever we encounter a morality, we find an evaluation and ranking of human drives and actions.  These evaluations and rankings are always the expression of the needs of a community and herd: that which benefits it the most - and second most, and third most - is also the highest standard of value for all individuals.  With morality the individual is instructed to be a function of the herd and to ascribe value to himself only as a function.  Since the conditions for preserving one community have been very different from those of another community, there have been very different moralities; and in view of essential changes in herds and communities, states and societies that are yet to come, one can prophesy that there will yet be very divergent moralities.  Morality is herd-instinct in the individual."

             - Nietzsche (TGS Book III.)

"The Four Errors - Man has been educated by his errors: first, he saw himself only incompletely; secondly he endowed himself with fictitious attributes; thirdly, he placed himself in a false rank order in relation to animals and nature; fourthly, he invented ever new tables of goods and for a time took them to be eternal and unconditioned - so that now this, now that human drive and condition occupied first place and was ennobled as a result of this valuation.  If one discounts the effect of these four errors, one has also discounted humanity, humaneness, and 'human dignity'."

             - Nietzsche (TGS Book III.)

There is something quite surreal about watching Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire slowly being devoured by silverfish.