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diff --git a/19322.txt b/19322.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..022629a --- /dev/null +++ b/19322.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3779 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Antichrist, by F. W. Nietzsche + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Antichrist + +Author: F. W. Nietzsche + +Translator: H. L. Mencken + +Release Date: September 18, 2006 [EBook #19322] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANTICHRIST *** + + + + +Produced by Laura Wisewell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + +THE ANTICHRIST + + +BORZOI POCKET BOOKS + +A complete list to date of this series of popular reprints, bound +uniformly with a design and endpapers by Claude Bragdon, may be found at +the back of this volume. One book will appear each month, numbered for +convenience in ordering. + + + + + THE ANTICHRIST + + + _by_ + + F. W. NIETZSCHE + + + _Translated from the German + with an introduction by_ + H. L. MENCKEN + + + + _New York_ + ALFRED A. KNOPF + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. + + _Pocket Book Edition, Published September, 1923 + Second Printing, November, 1924_ + + + _Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Press, + Binghamton, N. Y._ + + _Paper manufactured by W. C. Hamilton & Sons, Miquon, Pa., and + furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York._ + + MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + INTRODUCTION BY H. L. MENCKEN 7 + AUTHOR'S PREFACE 37 + THE ANTICHRIST 41 + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +Save for his raucous, rhapsodical autobiography, "Ecce Homo," "The +Antichrist" is the last thing that Nietzsche ever wrote, and so it may +be accepted as a statement of some of his most salient ideas in their +final form. Notes for it had been accumulating for years and it was to +have constituted the first volume of his long-projected _magnum opus_, +"The Will to Power." His full plan for this work, as originally drawn +up, was as follows: + + Vol. I. The Antichrist: an Attempt at a Criticism of Christianity. + + Vol. II. The Free Spirit: a Criticism of Philosophy as a Nihilistic + Movement. + + Vol. III. The Immoralist: a Criticism of Morality, the Most Fatal + Form of Ignorance. + + Vol. IV. Dionysus: the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence. + +The first sketches for "The Will to Power" were made in 1884, soon after +the publication of the first three parts of "Thus Spake Zarathustra," +and thereafter, for four years, Nietzsche piled up notes. They were +written at all the places he visited on his endless travels in search of +health--at Nice, at Venice, at Sils-Maria in the Engadine (for long his +favourite resort), at Cannobio, at Zuerich, at Genoa, at Chur, at +Leipzig. Several times his work was interrupted by other books, first by +"Beyond Good and Evil," then by "The Genealogy of Morals" (written in +twenty days), then by his Wagner pamphlets. Almost as often he changed +his plan. Once he decided to expand "The Will to Power" to ten volumes, +with "An Attempt at a New Interpretation of the World" as a general +sub-title. Again he adopted the sub-title of "An Interpretation of All +That Happens." Finally, he hit upon "An Attempt at a Transvaluation of +All Values," and went back to four volumes, though with a number of +changes in their arrangement. In September, 1888, he began actual work +upon the first volume, and before the end of the month it was completed. +The Summer had been one of almost hysterical creative activity. Since +the middle of June he had written two other small books, "The Case of +Wagner" and "The Twilight of the Idols," and before the end of the year +he was destined to write "Ecce Homo." Some time during December his +health began to fail rapidly, and soon after the New Year he was +helpless. Thereafter he wrote no more. + +The Wagner diatribe and "The Twilight of the Idols" were published +immediately, but "The Antichrist" did not get into type until 1895. I +suspect that the delay was due to the influence of the philosopher's +sister, Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, an intelligent and ardent but by no +means uniformly judicious propagandist of his ideas. During his dark +days of neglect and misunderstanding, when even family and friends kept +aloof, Frau Foerster-Nietzsche went with him farther than any other, but +there were bounds beyond which she, also, hesitated to go, and those +bounds were marked by crosses. One notes, in her biography of him--a +useful but not always accurate work--an evident desire to purge him of +the accusation of mocking at sacred things. He had, she says, great +admiration for "the elevating effect of Christianity ... upon the weak +and ailing," and "a real liking for sincere, pious Christians," and "a +tender love for the Founder of Christianity." All his wrath, she +continues, was reserved for "St. Paul and his like," who perverted the +Beatitudes, which Christ intended for the lowly only, into a universal +religion which made war upon aristocratic values. Here, obviously, one +is addressed by an interpreter who cannot forget that she is the +daughter of a Lutheran pastor and the grand-daughter of two others; a +touch of conscience gets into her reading of "The Antichrist." She even +hints that the text may have been garbled, after the author's collapse, +by some more sinister heretic. There is not the slightest reason to +believe that any such garbling ever took place, nor is there any +evidence that their common heritage of piety rested upon the brother as +heavily as it rested upon the sister. On the contrary, it must be +manifest that Nietzsche, in this book, intended to attack Christianity +headlong and with all arms, that for all his rapid writing he put the +utmost care into it, and that he wanted it to be printed exactly as it +stands. The ideas in it were anything but new to him when he set them +down. He had been developing them since the days of his beginning. You +will find some of them, clearly recognizable, in the first book he ever +wrote, "The Birth of Tragedy." You will find the most important of all +of them--the conception of Christianity as _ressentiment_--set forth at +length in the first part of "The Genealogy of Morals," published under +his own supervision in 1887. And the rest are scattered through the +whole vast mass of his notes, sometimes as mere questionings but often +worked out very carefully. Moreover, let it not be forgotten that it was +Wagner's yielding to Christian sentimentality in "Parsifal" that +transformed Nietzsche from the first among his literary advocates into +the most bitter of his opponents. He could forgive every other sort of +mountebankery, but not that. "In me," he once said, "the Christianity of +my forbears reaches its logical conclusion. In me the stern intellectual +conscience that Christianity fosters and makes paramount turns _against_ +Christianity. In me Christianity ... devours itself." + +In truth, the present philippic is as necessary to the completeness of +the whole of Nietzsche's system as the keystone is to the arch. All the +curves of his speculation lead up to it. What he flung himself against, +from beginning to end of his days of writing, was always, in the last +analysis, Christianity in some form or other--Christianity as a system +of practical ethics, Christianity as a political code, Christianity as +metaphysics, Christianity as a gauge of the truth. It would be +difficult to think of any intellectual enterprise on his long list that +did not, more or less directly and clearly, relate itself to this master +enterprise of them all. It was as if his apostasy from the +faith of his fathers, filling him with the fiery zeal of the convert, +and particularly of the convert to heresy, had blinded him to every +other element in the gigantic self-delusion of civilized man. The will +to power was his answer to Christianity's affectation of humility and +self-sacrifice; eternal recurrence was his mocking criticism of +Christian optimism and millennialism; the superman was his candidate for +the place of the Christian ideal of the "good" man, prudently abased +before the throne of God. The things he chiefly argued for were +anti-Christian things--the abandonment of the purely moral view of life, +the rehabilitation of instinct, the dethronement of weakness and +timidity as ideals, the renunciation of the whole hocus-pocus of +dogmatic religion, the extermination of false aristocracies (of the +priest, of the politician, of the plutocrat), the revival of the +healthy, lordly "innocence" that was Greek. If he was anything in a +word, Nietzsche was a Greek born two thousand years too late. His +dreams were thoroughly Hellenic; his whole manner of thinking was +Hellenic; his peculiar errors were Hellenic no less. But his Hellenism, +I need not add, was anything but the pale neo-Platonism that has run +like a thread through the thinking of the Western world since the days +of the Christian Fathers. From Plato, to be sure, he got what all of us +must get, but his real forefather was Heraclitus. It is in Heraclitus +that one finds the germ of his primary view of the universe--a view, to +wit, that sees it, not as moral phenomenon, but as mere aesthetic +representation. The God that Nietzsche imagined, in the end, was not far +from the God that such an artist as Joseph Conrad imagines--a supreme +craftsman, ever experimenting, ever coming closer to an ideal balancing +of lines and forces, and yet always failing to work out the final +harmony. + +The late war, awakening all the primitive racial fury of the Western +nations, and therewith all their ancient enthusiasm for religious taboos +and sanctions, naturally focused attention upon Nietzsche, as upon the +most daring and provocative of recent amateur theologians. The Germans, +with their characteristic tendency to explain their every act in terms +as realistic and unpleasant as possible, appear to have mauled him in a +belated and unexpected embrace, to the horror, I daresay, of the Kaiser, +and perhaps to the even greater horror of Nietzsche's own ghost. The +folks of Anglo-Saxondom, with their equally characteristic tendency to +explain all their enterprises romantically, simultaneously set him up as +the Antichrist he no doubt secretly longed to be. The result was a great +deal of misrepresentation and misunderstanding of him. From the pulpits +of the allied countries, and particularly from those of England and the +United States, a horde of patriotic ecclesiastics denounced him in +extravagant terms as the author of all the horrors of the time, and in +the newspapers, until the Kaiser was elected sole bugaboo, he shared the +honors of that office with von Hindenburg, the Crown Prince, Capt. +Boy-Ed, von Bernstorff and von Tirpitz. Most of this denunciation, of +course, was frankly idiotic--the naive pishposh of suburban Methodists, +notoriety-seeking college professors, almost illiterate editorial +writers, and other such numskulls. In much of it, including not a few +official hymns of hate, Nietzsche was gravely discovered to be the +teacher of such spokesmen of the extremest sort of German nationalism +as von Bernhardi and von Treitschke--which was just as intelligent as +making George Bernard Shaw the mentor of Lloyd-George. In other solemn +pronunciamentoes he was credited with being philosophically responsible +for various imaginary crimes of the enemy--the wholesale slaughter or +mutilation of prisoners of war, the deliberate burning down of Red Cross +hospitals, the utilization of the corpses of the slain for soap-making. +I amused myself, in those gaudy days, by collecting newspaper clippings +to this general effect, and later on I shall probably publish a digest +of them, as a contribution to the study of war hysteria. The thing went +to unbelievable lengths. On the strength of the fact that I had +published a book on Nietzsche in 1906, six years after his death, I was +called upon by agents of the Department of Justice, elaborately +outfitted with badges, to meet the charge that I was an intimate +associate and agent of "the German monster, Nietzsky." I quote the +official _proces verbal_, an indignant but often misspelled document. +Alas, poor Nietzsche! After all his laborious efforts to prove that he +was not a German, but a Pole--even after his heroic readiness, via +anti-anti-Semitism, to meet the deduction that, if a Pole, then probably +also a Jew! + +But under all this alarmed and preposterous tosh there was at least a +sound instinct, and that was the instinct which recognized Nietzsche as +the most eloquent, pertinacious and effective of all the critics of the +philosophy to which the Allies against Germany stood committed, and on +the strength of which, at all events in theory, the United States had +engaged itself in the war. He was not, in point of fact, involved with +the visible enemy, save in remote and transient ways; the German, +officially, remained the most ardent of Christians during the war and +became a democrat at its close. But he was plainly a foe of democracy in +all its forms, political, religious and epistemological, and what is +worse, his opposition was set forth in terms that were not only +extraordinarily penetrating and devastating, but also uncommonly +offensive. It was thus quite natural that he should have aroused a +degree of indignation verging upon the pathological in the two countries +that had planted themselves upon the democratic platform most boldly, +and that felt it most shaky, one may add, under their feet. I daresay +that Nietzsche, had he been alive, would have got a lot of satisfaction +out of the execration thus heaped upon him, not only because, being a +vain fellow, he enjoyed execration as a tribute to his general +singularity, and hence to his superiority, but also and more importantly +because, being no mean psychologist, he would have recognized the +disconcerting doubts underlying it. If Nietzsche's criticism of +democracy were as ignorant and empty, say, as the average evangelical +clergyman's criticism of Darwin's hypothesis of natural selection, then +the advocates of democracy could afford to dismiss it as loftily as the +Darwinians dismiss the blather of the holy clerks. And if his attack +upon Christianity were mere sound and fury, signifying nothing, then +there would be no call for anathemas from the sacred desk. But these +onslaughts, in point of fact, have behind them a tremendous learning and +a great deal of point and plausibility--there are, in brief, bullets in +the gun, teeth in the tiger,--and so it is no wonder that they excite +the ire of men who hold, as a primary article of belief, that their +acceptance would destroy civilization, darken the sun, and bring Jahveh +to sobs upon His Throne. + +But in all this justifiable fear, of course, there remains a false +assumption, and that is the assumption that Nietzsche proposed to +destroy Christianity altogether, and so rob the plain people of the +world of their virtue, their spiritual consolations, and their hope of +heaven. Nothing could be more untrue. The fact is that Nietzsche had no +interest whatever in the delusions of the plain people--that is, +intrinsically. It seemed to him of small moment _what_ they believed, so +long as it was safely imbecile. What he stood against was not their +beliefs, but the elevation of those beliefs, by any sort of democratic +process, to the dignity of a state philosophy--what he feared most was +the pollution and crippling of the superior minority by intellectual +disease from below. His plain aim in "The Antichrist" was to combat that +menace by completing the work begun, on the one hand, by Darwin and the +other evolutionist philosophers, and, on the other hand, by German +historians and philologians. The net effect of this earlier attack, in +the eighties, had been the collapse of Christian theology as a serious +concern of educated men. The mob, it must be obvious, was very little +shaken; even to this day it has not put off its belief in the essential +Christian doctrines. But the _intelligentsia_, by 1885, had been pretty +well convinced. No man of sound information, at the time Nietzsche +planned "The Antichrist," actually believed that the world was created +in seven days, or that its fauna was once overwhelmed by a flood as a +penalty for the sins of man, or that Noah saved the boa constrictor, the +prairie dog and the _pediculus capitis_ by taking a pair of each into +the ark, or that Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt, or that a +fragment of the True Cross could cure hydrophobia. Such notions, still +almost universally prevalent in Christendom a century before, were now +confined to the great body of ignorant and credulous men--that is, to +ninety-five or ninety-six percent. of the race. For a man of the +superior minority to subscribe to one of them publicly was already +sufficient to set him off as one in imminent need of psychiatrical +attention. Belief in them had become a mark of inferiority, like the +allied belief in madstones, magic and apparitions. + +But though the theology of Christianity had thus sunk to the lowly +estate of a mere delusion of the rabble, propagated on that level by the +ancient caste of sacerdotal parasites, the ethics of Christianity +continued to enjoy the utmost acceptance, and perhaps even more +acceptance than ever before. It seemed to be generally felt, in fact, +that they simply _must_ be saved from the wreck--that the world would +vanish into chaos if they went the way of the revelations supporting +them. In this fear a great many judicious men joined, and so there arose +what was, in essence, an absolutely new Christian cult--a cult, to wit, +purged of all the supernaturalism superimposed upon the older cult by +generations of theologians, and harking back to what was conceived to be +the pure ethical doctrine of Jesus. This cult still flourishes; +Protestantism tends to become identical with it; it invades Catholicism +as Modernism; it is supported by great numbers of men whose intelligence +is manifest and whose sincerity is not open to question. Even Nietzsche +himself yielded to it in weak moments, as you will discover on examining +his somewhat laborious effort to make Paul the villain of Christian +theology, and Jesus no more than an innocent bystander. But this +sentimental yielding never went far enough to distract his attention for +long from his main idea, which was this: that Christian ethics were +quite as dubious, at bottom, as Christian theology--that they were +founded, just as surely as such childish fables as the story of Jonah +and the whale, upon the peculiar prejudices and credulities, the special +desires and appetites, of inferior men--that they warred upon the best +interests of men of a better sort quite as unmistakably as the most +extravagant of objective superstitions. In brief, what he saw in +Christian ethics, under all the poetry and all the fine show of altruism +and all the theoretical benefits therein, was a democratic effort to +curb the egoism of the strong--a conspiracy of the _chandala_ against +the free functioning of their superiors, nay, against the free progress +of mankind. This theory is the thing he exposes in "The Antichrist," +bringing to the business his amazingly chromatic and exigent eloquence +at its finest flower. This is the "conspiracy" he sets forth in all the +panoply of his characteristic italics, dashes, _sforzando_ interjections +and exclamation points. + +Well, an idea is an idea. The present one may be right and it may be +wrong. One thing is quite certain: that no progress will be made against +it by denouncing it as merely immoral. If it is ever laid at all, it +must be laid evidentially, logically. The notion to the contrary is +thoroughly democratic; the mob is the most ruthless of tyrants; it is +always in a democratic society that heresy and felony tend to be most +constantly confused. One hears without surprise of a Bismarck +philosophizing placidly (at least in his old age) upon the delusion of +Socialism and of a Frederick the Great playing the hose of his cynicism +upon the absolutism that was almost identical with his own person, but +men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion of their +fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident in +those societies in which men in the mass are most influential. Democracy +and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are +eternal enemies. But in any battle between an institution and an idea, +the idea, in the long run, has the better of it. Here I do not venture +into the absurdity of arguing that, as the world wags on, the truth +always survives. I believe nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, it +seems to me that an idea that happens to be true--or, more exactly, as +near to truth as any human idea can be, and yet remain generally +intelligible--it seems to me that such an idea carries a special and +often fatal handicap. The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It +soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the +truth into a universe of false appearances--of complex and irrational +phenomena, defectively grasped. But though an idea that is true is thus +not likely to prevail, an idea that is _attacked_ enjoys a great +advantage. The evidence behind it is now supported by sympathy, the +sporting instinct, sentimentality--and sentimentality is as powerful as +an army with banners. One never hears of a martyr in history whose +notions are seriously disputed today. The forgotten ideas are those of +the men who put them forward soberly and quietly, hoping fatuously that +they would conquer by the force of their truth; these are the ideas that +we now struggle to rediscover. Had Nietzsche lived to be burned at the +stake by outraged Mississippi Methodists, it would have been a glorious +day for his doctrines. As it is, they are helped on their way every time +they are denounced as immoral and against God. The war brought down upon +them the maledictions of vast herds of right-thinking men. And now "The +Antichrist," after fifteen years of neglect, is being reprinted.... + +One imagines the author, a sardonic wraith, snickering somewhat sadly +over the fact. His shade, wherever it suffers, is favoured in these days +by many such consolations, some of them of much greater horsepower. +Think of the facts and arguments, even the underlying theories and +attitudes, that have been borrowed from him, consciously and +unconsciously, by the foes of Bolshevism during these last thrilling +years! The face of democracy, suddenly seen hideously close, has scared +the guardians of the reigning plutocracy half to death, and they have +gone to the devil himself for aid. Southern Senators, almost illiterate +men, have mixed his acids with well water and spouted them like +affrighted geysers, not knowing what they did. Nor are they the first to +borrow from him. Years ago I called attention to the debt incurred with +characteristic forgetfulness of obligation by the late Theodore +Roosevelt, in "The Strenuous Life" and elsewhere. Roosevelt, a typical +apologist for the existing order, adeptly dragging a herring across the +trail whenever it was menaced, yet managed to delude the native boobery, +at least until toward the end, into accepting him as a fiery exponent of +pure democracy. Perhaps he even fooled himself; charlatans usually do +so soon or late. A study of Nietzsche reveals the sources of much that +was honest in him, and exposes the hollowness of much that was sham. +Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was +incapable of any such confusion of ideas; he seldom allowed +sentimentality to turn him from the glaring fact. What is called +Bolshevism today he saw clearly a generation ago and described for what +it was and is--democracy in another aspect, the old _ressentiment_ of the +lower orders in free function once more. Socialism, Puritanism, +Philistinism, Christianity--he saw them all as allotropic forms of +democracy, as variations upon the endless struggle of quantity against +quality, of the weak and timorous against the strong and enterprising, +of the botched against the fit. The world needed a staggering +exaggeration to make it see even half of the truth. It trembles today as +it trembled during the French Revolution. Perhaps it would tremble less +if it could combat the monster with a clearer conscience and less burden +of compromising theory--if it could launch its forces frankly at the +fundamental doctrine, and not merely employ them to police the +transient orgy. + +Nietzsche, in the long run, may help it toward that greater honesty. His +notions, propagated by cuttings from cuttings from cuttings, may +conceivably prepare the way for a sounder, more healthful theory of +society and of the state, and so free human progress from the +stupidities which now hamper it, and men of true vision from the +despairs which now sicken them. I say it is conceivable, but I doubt +that it is probable. The soul and the belly of mankind are too evenly +balanced; it is not likely that the belly will ever put away its hunger +or forget its power. Here, perhaps, there is an example of the eternal +recurrence that Nietzsche was fond of mulling over in his blacker moods. +We are in the midst of one of the perennial risings of the lower orders. +It got under way long before any of the current Bolshevist demons was +born; it was given its long, secure start by the intolerable tyranny of +the plutocracy--the end product of the Eighteenth Century revolt against +the old aristocracy. It found resistance suddenly slackened by civil war +within the plutocracy itself--one gang of traders falling upon another +gang, to the tune of vast hymn-singing and yells to God. Perhaps it has +already passed its apogee; the plutocracy, chastened, shows signs of a +new solidarity; the wheel continues to swing 'round. But this combat +between proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. +Two inferiorities struggle for the privilege of polluting the world. +What actual difference does it make to a civilized man, when there is a +steel strike, whether the workmen win or the mill-owners win? The +conflict can interest him only as spectacle, as the conflict between +Bonaparte and the old order in Europe interested Goethe and Beethoven. +The victory, whichever way it goes, will simply bring chaos nearer, and +so set the stage for a genuine revolution later on, with (let us hope) a +new feudalism or something better coming out of it, and a new Thirteenth +Century at dawn. This seems to be the slow, costly way of the worst of +habitable worlds. + +In the present case my money is laid upon the plutocracy. It will win +because it will be able, in the long run, to enlist the finer +intelligences. The mob and its maudlin causes attract only +sentimentalists and scoundrels, chiefly the latter. Politics, under a +democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers +of the proletariat; even when a superior man prevails at that disgusting +game he must prevail at the cost of his self-respect. Not many superior +men make the attempt. The average great captain of the rabble, when he +is not simply a weeper over irremediable wrongs, is a hypocrite so far +gone that he is unconscious of his own hypocrisy--a slimy fellow, +offensive to the nose. The plutocracy can recruit measurably more +respectable janissaries, if only because it can make self-interest less +obviously costly to _amour propre_. Its defect and its weakness lie in +the fact that it is still too young to have acquired dignity. But lately +sprung from the mob it now preys upon, it yet shows some of the habits +of mind of that mob: it is blatant, stupid, ignorant, lacking in all +delicate instinct and governmental finesse. Above all, it remains +somewhat heavily moral. One seldom finds it undertaking one of its +characteristic imbecilities without offering a sonorous moral reason; it +spends almost as much to support the Y. M. C. A., vice-crusading, +Prohibition and other such puerilities as it spends upon Congressmen, +strike-breakers, gun-men, kept patriots and newspapers. In England the +case is even worse. It is almost impossible to find a wealthy industrial +over there who is not also an eminent non-conformist layman, and even +among financiers there are praying brothers. On the Continent, the day +is saved by the fact that the plutocracy tends to become more and more +Jewish. Here the intellectual cynicism of the Jew almost counterbalances +his social unpleasantness. If he is destined to lead the plutocracy of +the world out of Little Bethel he will fail, of course, to turn it into +an aristocracy--_i. e._, a caste of gentlemen--, but he will at least +make it clever, and hence worthy of consideration. The case against the +Jews is long and damning; it would justify ten thousand times as many +pogroms as now go on in the world. But whenever you find a +Davidsbuendlerschaft making practise against the Philistines, there you +will find a Jew laying on. Maybe it was this fact that caused Nietzsche +to speak up for the children of Israel quite as often as he spoke +against them. He was not blind to their faults, but when he set them +beside Christians he could not deny their general superiority. Perhaps +in America and England, as on the Continent, the increasing Jewishness +of the plutocracy, while cutting it off from all chance of ever +developing into an aristocracy, will yet lift it to such a dignity that +it will at least deserve a certain grudging respect. + +But even so, it will remain in a sort of half-world, midway between the +gutter and the stars. Above it will still stand the small group of men +that constitutes the permanent aristocracy of the race--the men of +imagination and high purpose, the makers of genuine progress, the brave +and ardent spirits, above all petty fears and discontents and above all +petty hopes and ideals no less. There were heroes before Agamemnon; +there will be Bachs after Johann Sebastian. And beneath the Judaized +plutocracy, the sublimated _bourgeoisie_, there the immemorial +proletariat, I venture to guess, will roar on, endlessly tortured by its +vain hatreds and envies, stampeded and made to tremble by its ancient +superstitions, prodded and made miserable by its sordid and degrading +hopes. It seems to me very likely that, in this proletariat, +Christianity will continue to survive. It is nonsense, true enough, but +it is sweet. Nietzsche, denouncing its dangers as a poison, almost falls +into the error of denying it its undoubtedly sugary smack. Of all the +religions ever devised by the great practical jokers of the race, this +is the one that offers most for the least money, so to speak, to the +inferior man. It starts out by denying his inferiority in plain terms: +_all_ men are equal in the sight of God. It ends by erecting that +inferiority into a sort of actual superiority: it is a merit to be +stupid, and miserable, and sorely put upon--of such are the celestial +elect. Not all the eloquence of a million Nietzsches, nor all the +painful marshalling of evidence of a million Darwins and Harnacks, will +ever empty that great consolation of its allure. The most they can ever +accomplish is to make the superior orders of men acutely conscious of +the exact nature of it, and so give them armament against the contagion. +This is going on; this is being done. I think that "The Antichrist" has +a useful place in that enterprise. It is strident, it is often +extravagant, it is, to many sensitive men, in the worst of possible +taste, but at bottom it is enormously apt and effective--and on the +surface it is undoubtedly a good show. One somehow enjoys, with the +malice that is native to man, the spectacle of anathemas batted back; it +is refreshing to see the pitchfork employed against gentlemen who have +doomed such innumerable caravans to hell. In Nietzsche they found, after +many long years, a foeman worthy of them--not a mere fancy swordsman +like Voltaire, or a mob orator like Tom Paine, or a pedant like the +heretics of exegesis, but a gladiator armed with steel and armoured with +steel, and showing all the ferocious gusto of a mediaeval bishop. It is +a pity that Holy Church has no process for the elevation of demons, like +its process for the canonization of saints. There must be a long roll of +black miracles to the discredit of the Accursed Friedrich--sinners +purged of conscience and made happy in their sinning, clerics shaken in +their theology by visions of a new and better holy city, the strong made +to exult, the weak robbed of their old sad romance. It would be a +pleasure to see the _Advocatus Diaboli_ turn from the table of the +prosecution to the table of the defence, and move in solemn form for the +damnation of the Naumburg hobgoblin.... + +Of all Nietzsche's books, "The Antichrist" comes nearest to +conventionality in form. It presents a connected argument with very few +interludes, and has a beginning, a middle and an end. Most of his works +are in the form of collections of apothegms, and sometimes the subject +changes on every second page. This fact constitutes one of the counts in +the orthodox indictment of him: it is cited as proof that his capacity +for consecutive thought was limited, and that he was thus deficient +mentally, and perhaps a downright moron. The argument, it must be +obvious, is fundamentally nonsensical. What deceives the professors is +the traditional prolixity of philosophers. Because the average +philosophical writer, when he essays to expose his ideas, makes such +inordinate drafts upon the parts of speech that the dictionary is almost +emptied these defective observers jump to the conclusion that his +intrinsic notions are of corresponding weight. This is not unseldom +quite untrue. What makes philosophy so garrulous is not the profundity +of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who +sought to cure a slight hyperacidity by giving the patient a carload of +burned oyster-shells to eat. There is, too, the endless poll-parrotting +that goes on: each new philosopher must prove his learning by +laboriously rehearsing the ideas of all previous philosophers.... +Nietzsche avoided both faults. He always assumed that his readers knew +the books, and that it was thus unnecessary to rewrite them. And, having +an idea that seemed to him to be novel and original, he stated it in as +few words as possible, and then shut down. Sometimes he got it into a +hundred words; sometimes it took a thousand; now and then, as in the +present case, he developed a series of related ideas into a connected +book. But he never wrote a word too many. He never pumped up an idea to +make it appear bigger than it actually was. The pedagogues, alas, are +not accustomed to that sort of writing in serious fields. They resent +it, and sometimes they even try to improve it. There exists, in fact, a +huge and solemn tome on Nietzsche by a learned man of America in which +all of his brilliancy is painfully translated into the windy phrases of +the seminaries. The tome is satisfactorily ponderous, but the meat of +the cocoanut is left out: there is actually no discussion of the +Nietzschean view of Christianity!... Always Nietzsche daunts the +pedants. He employed too few words for them--and he had too many ideas. + + * * * * * + +The present translation of "The Antichrist" is published by agreement +with Dr. Oscar Levy, editor of the English edition of Nietzsche. There +are two earlier translations, one by Thomas Common and the other by +Anthony M. Ludovici. That of Mr. Common follows the text very closely, +and thus occasionally shows some essentially German turns of phrase; +that of Mr. Ludovici is more fluent but rather less exact. I do not +offer my own version on the plea that either of these is useless; on the +contrary, I cheerfully acknowledge that they have much merit, and that +they helped me at almost every line. I began this new Englishing of the +book, not in any hope of supplanting them, and surely not with any +notion of meeting a great public need, but simply as a private amusement +in troubled days. But as I got on with it I began to see ways of putting +some flavour of Nietzsche's peculiar style into the English, and so +amusement turned into a more or less serious labour. The result, of +course, is far from satisfactory, but it at least represents a very +diligent attempt. Nietzsche, always under the influence of French +models, wrote a German that differs materially from any other German +that I know. It is more nervous, more varied, more rapid in tempo; it +runs to more effective climaxes; it is never stodgy. His marks begin to +show upon the writing of the younger Germans of today. They are getting +away from the old thunderous manner, with its long sentences and its +tedious grammatical complexities. In the course of time, I daresay, they +will develop a German almost as clear as French and almost as colourful +and resilient as English. + +I owe thanks to Dr. Levy for his _imprimatur_, to Mr. Theodor Hemberger +for criticism, and to Messrs. Common and Ludovici for showing me the way +around many a difficulty. + + H. L. MENCKEN. + + + + +PREFACE + + +This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is +yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my +"Zarathustra": how _could_ I confound myself with those who are now +sprouting ears?--First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some men +are born posthumously. + +The conditions under which any one understands me, and _necessarily_ +understands me--I know them only too well. Even to endure my +seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the +verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops--and +to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as +_beneath_ him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the +truth whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him.... He must +have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the +courage for; the courage for the _forbidden_; predestination for the +labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. +New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have +hitherto remained unheard. _And_ the will to economize in the grand +manner--to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm.... Reverence for +self; love of self; absolute freedom of self.... + +Very well, then! of that sort only are my readers, my true readers, my +readers foreordained: of what account are the _rest_?--The rest are +merely humanity.--One must make one's self superior to humanity, in +power, in _loftiness_ of soul,--in contempt. + + FRIEDRICH W. NIETZSCHE. + + + + +THE ANTICHRIST + + +1. + +--Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans--we know well +enough how remote our place is. "Neither by land nor by water will you +find the road to the Hyperboreans": even Pindar,[1] in his day, knew +_that_ much about us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond +_death_--_our_ life, _our_ happiness.... We have discovered that +happiness; we know the way; we got our knowledge of it from thousands of +years in the labyrinth. Who _else_ has found it?--The man of today?--"I +don't know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn't know +either the way out or the way in"--so sighs the man of today.... _This_ +is the sort of modernity that made us ill,--we sickened on lazy peace, +cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the modern Yea and +Nay. This tolerance and _largeur_ of the heart that "forgives" +everything because it "understands" everything is a sirocco to us. +Rather live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other such +south-winds!... We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor +others; but we were a long time finding out _where_ to direct our +courage. We grew dismal; they called us fatalists. _Our_ fate--it was +the fulness, the tension, the _storing up_ of powers. We thirsted for +the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from the +happiness of the weakling, from "resignation"... There was thunder in +our air; nature, as we embodied it, became overcast--_for we had not yet +found the way_. The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight +line, a _goal_.... + +[1] _Cf._ the tenth Pythian ode. See also the fourth book of Herodotus. +The Hyperboreans were a mythical people beyond the Rhipaean mountains, +in the far North. They enjoyed unbroken happiness and perpetual youth. + + +2. + +What is good?--Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to +power, power itself, in man. + +What is evil?--Whatever springs from weakness. + +What is happiness?--The feeling that power _increases_--that resistance +is overcome. + +Not contentment, but more power; _not_ peace at any price, but war; +_not_ virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, _virtu_, +virtue free of moral acid). + +The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of _our_ charity. +And one should help them to it. + +What is more harmful than any vice?--Practical sympathy for the botched +and the weak--Christianity.... + + +3. + +The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the +order of living creatures (--man is an end--): but what type of man must +be _bred_, must be _willed_, as being the most valuable, the most worthy +of life, the most secure guarantee of the future. + +This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but +always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately +_willed_. Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it +has been almost _the_ terror of terrors;--and out of that terror the +contrary type has been willed, cultivated and _attained_: the domestic +animal, the herd animal, the sick brute-man--the Christian.... + + +4. + +Mankind surely does _not_ represent an evolution toward a better or +stronger or higher level, as progress is now understood. This "progress" +is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of +today, in his essential worth, falls far below the European of the +Renaissance; the process of evolution does _not_ necessarily mean +elevation, enhancement, strengthening. + +True enough, it succeeds in isolated and individual cases in various +parts of the earth and under the most widely different cultures, and in +these cases a _higher_ type certainly manifests itself; something which, +compared to mankind in the mass, appears as a sort of superman. Such +happy strokes of high success have always been possible, and will remain +possible, perhaps, for all time to come. Even whole races, tribes and +nations may occasionally represent such lucky accidents. + + +5. + +We should not deck out and embellish Christianity: it has waged a war to +the death against this _higher_ type of man, it has put all the deepest +instincts of this type under its ban, it has developed its concept of +evil, of the Evil One himself, out of these instincts--the strong man as +the typical reprobate, the "outcast among men." Christianity has taken +the part of all the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out +of _antagonism_ to all the self-preservative instincts of sound life; it +has corrupted even the faculties of those natures that are +intellectually most vigorous, by representing the highest intellectual +values as sinful, as misleading, as full of temptation. The most +lamentable example: the corruption of Pascal, who believed that his +intellect had been destroyed by original sin, whereas it was actually +destroyed by Christianity!-- + + +6. + +It is a painful and tragic spectacle that rises before me: I have drawn +back the curtain from the _rottenness_ of man. This word, in my mouth, +is at least free from one suspicion: that it involves a moral accusation +against humanity. It is used--and I wish to emphasize the fact +again--without any moral significance: and this is so far true that the +rottenness I speak of is most apparent to me precisely in those quarters +where there has been most aspiration, hitherto, toward "virtue" and +"godliness." As you probably surmise, I understand rottenness in the +sense of _decadence_: my argument is that all the values on which +mankind now fixes its highest aspirations are _decadence_-values. + +I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its +instincts, when it chooses, when it _prefers_, what is injurious to it. +A history of the "higher feelings," the "ideals of humanity"--and it is +possible that I'll have to write it--would almost explain why man is so +degenerate. Life itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for +survival, for the accumulation of forces, for _power_: whenever the will +to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest +values of humanity have been emptied of this will--that the values of +_decadence_, of _nihilism_, now prevail under the holiest names. + + +7. + +Christianity is called the religion of _pity_.--Pity stands in +opposition to all the tonic passions that augment the energy of the +feeling of aliveness: it is a depressant. A man loses power when he +pities. Through pity that drain upon strength which suffering works is +multiplied a thousandfold. Suffering is made contagious by pity; under +certain circumstances it may lead to a total sacrifice of life and +living energy--a loss out of all proportion to the magnitude of the +cause (--the case of the death of the Nazarene). This is the first view +of it; there is, however, a still more important one. If one measures +the effects of pity by the gravity of the reactions it sets up, its +character as a menace to life appears in a much clearer light. Pity +thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural +selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; it fights on +the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining +life in so many of the botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a +gloomy and dubious aspect. Mankind has ventured to call pity a virtue +(--in every _superior_ moral system it appears as a weakness--); going +still further, it has been called _the_ virtue, the source and +foundation of all other virtues--but let us always bear in mind that +this was from the standpoint of a philosophy that was nihilistic, and +upon whose shield _the denial of life_ was inscribed. Schopenhauer was +right in this: that by means of pity life is denied, and made _worthy of +denial_--pity is the technic of nihilism. Let me repeat: this depressing +and contagious instinct stands against all those instincts which work +for the preservation and enhancement of life: in the role of _protector_ +of the miserable, it is a prime agent in the promotion of +_decadence_--pity persuades to extinction.... Of course, one doesn't say +"extinction": one says "the other world," or "God," or "the _true_ +life," or Nirvana, salvation, blessedness.... This innocent rhetoric, +from the realm of religious-ethical balderdash, appears _a good deal +less innocent_ when one reflects upon the tendency that it conceals +beneath sublime words: the tendency to _destroy life_. Schopenhauer was +hostile to life: that is why pity appeared to him as a virtue.... +Aristotle, as every one knows, saw in pity a sickly and dangerous state +of mind, the remedy for which was an occasional purgative: he regarded +tragedy as that purgative. The instinct of life should prompt us to seek +some means of puncturing any such pathological and dangerous +accumulation of pity as that appearing in Schopenhauer's case (and also, +alack, in that of our whole literary _decadence_, from St. Petersburg to +Paris, from Tolstoi to Wagner), that it may burst and be discharged.... +Nothing is more unhealthy, amid all our unhealthy modernism, than +Christian pity. To be the doctors _here_, to be unmerciful _here_, to +wield the knife _here_--all this is _our_ business, all this is _our_ +sort of humanity, by this sign we are philosophers, we Hyperboreans!-- + + +8. + +It is necessary to say just _whom_ we regard as our antagonists: +theologians and all who have any theological blood in their veins--this +is our whole philosophy.... One must have faced that menace at close +hand, better still, one must have had experience of it directly and +almost succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly +(--the alleged free-thinking of our naturalists and physiologists seems +to me to be a joke--they have no passion about such things; they have +not suffered--). This poisoning goes a great deal further than most +people think: I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who +regard themselves as "idealists"--among all who, by virtue of a higher +point of departure, claim a right to rise above reality, and to look +upon it with suspicion.... The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries +all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (--and not only in his hand!); +he launches them with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the +senses," "honor," "good living," "science"; he sees such things as +_beneath_ him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which "the soul" +soars as a pure thing-in-itself--as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a +word, _holiness_, had not already done much more damage to life than all +imaginable horrors and vices.... The pure soul is a pure lie.... So long +as the priest, that _professional_ denier, calumniator and poisoner of +life, is accepted as a _higher_ variety of man, there can be no answer +to the question, What _is_ truth? Truth has already been stood on its +head when the obvious attorney of mere emptiness is mistaken for its +representative.... + + +9. + +Upon this theological instinct I make war: I find the tracks of it +everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is shifty and +dishonourable in all things. The pathetic thing that grows out of this +condition is called _faith_: in other words, closing one's eyes upon +one's self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable +falsehood. People erect a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness +upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon +faulty vision; they argue that no _other_ sort of vision has value any +more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the names of "God," +"salvation" and "eternity." I unearth this theological instinct in all +directions: it is the most widespread and the most _subterranean_ form +of falsehood to be found on earth. Whatever a theologian regards as true +_must_ be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth. His +profound instinct of self-preservation stands against truth ever coming +into honour in any way, or even getting stated. Wherever the influence +of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the +concepts "true" and "false" are forced to change places: whatever is +most damaging to life is there called "true," and whatever exalts it, +intensifies it, approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is +there called "false."... When theologians, working through the +"consciences" of princes (or of peoples--), stretch out their hands for +_power_, there is never any doubt as to the fundamental issue: the will +to make an end, the _nihilistic_ will exerts that power.... + + +10. + +Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say that theological +blood is the ruin of philosophy. The Protestant pastor is the +grandfather of German philosophy; Protestantism itself is its _peccatum +originale_. Definition of Protestantism: hemiplegic paralysis of +Christianity--_and_ of reason.... One need only utter the words +"Tuebingen School" to get an understanding of what German philosophy is +at bottom--a very artful form of theology.... The Suabians are the best +liars in Germany; they lie innocently.... Why all the rejoicing over +the appearance of Kant that went through the learned world of Germany, +three-fourths of which is made up of the sons of preachers and +teachers--why the German conviction still echoing, that with Kant came a +change for the _better_? The theological instinct of German scholars +made them see clearly just _what_ had become possible again.... A +backstairs leading to the old ideal stood open; the concept of the "true +world," the concept of morality as the _essence_ of the world (--the two +most vicious errors that ever existed!), were once more, thanks to a +subtle and wily scepticism, if not actually demonstrable, then _at +least_ no longer _refutable_.... _Reason_, the _prerogative_ of reason, +does not go so far.... Out of reality there had been made "appearance"; +an absolutely false world, that of being, had been turned into +reality.... The success of Kant is merely a theological success; he was, +like Luther and Leibnitz, but one more impediment to German integrity, +already far from steady.-- + + +11. + +A word now against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be _our_ invention; +it must spring out of _our_ personal need and defence. In every other +case it is a source of danger. That which does not belong to our life +_menaces_ it; a virtue which has its roots in mere respect for the +concept of "virtue," as Kant would have it, is pernicious. "Virtue," +"duty," "good for its own sake," goodness grounded upon impersonality or +a notion of universal validity--these are all chimeras, and in them one +finds only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life, the +Chinese spirit of Koenigsberg. Quite the contrary is demanded by the most +profound laws of self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man +find his _own_ virtue, his _own_ categorical imperative. A nation goes +to pieces when it confounds _its_ duty with the general concept of duty. +Nothing works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every +"impersonal" duty, every sacrifice before the Moloch of abstraction.--To +think that no one has thought of Kant's categorical imperative as +_dangerous to life_!... The theological instinct alone took it under +protection!--An action prompted by the life-instinct proves that it is a +_right_ action by the amount of pleasure that goes with it: and yet that +Nihilist, with his bowels of Christian dogmatism, regarded pleasure as +an _objection_.... What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think +and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, +without pleasure--as a mere automaton of duty? That is the recipe for +_decadence_, and no less for idiocy.... Kant became an idiot.--And such +a man was the contemporary of Goethe! This calamitous spinner of cobwebs +passed for _the_ German philosopher--still passes today!... I forbid +myself to say what I think of the Germans.... Didn't Kant see in the +French Revolution the transformation of the state from the inorganic +form to the _organic_? Didn't he ask himself if there was a single event +that could be explained save on the assumption of a moral faculty in +man, so that on the basis of it, "the tendency of mankind toward the +good" could be _explained_, once and for all time? Kant's answer: "That +is revolution." Instinct at fault in everything and anything, instinct +as a revolt against nature, German _decadence_ as a philosophy--_that is +Kant_!-- + + +12. + +I put aside a few sceptics, the types of decency in the history of +philosophy: the rest haven't the slightest conception of intellectual +integrity. They behave like women, all these great enthusiasts and +prodigies--they regard "beautiful feelings" as arguments, the "heaving +breast" as the bellows of divine inspiration, conviction as the +_criterion_ of truth. In the end, with "German" innocence, Kant tried to +give a scientific flavour to this form of corruption, this dearth of +intellectual conscience, by calling it "practical reason." He +deliberately invented a variety of reasons for use on occasions when it +was desirable not to trouble with reason--that is, when morality, when +the sublime command "thou shalt," was heard. When one recalls the fact +that, among all peoples, the philosopher is no more than a development +from the old type of priest, this inheritance from the priest, this +_fraud upon self_, ceases to be remarkable. When a man feels that he has +a divine mission, say to lift up, to save or to liberate mankind--when a +man feels the divine spark in his heart and believes that he is the +mouthpiece of supernatural imperatives--when such a mission inflames +him, it is only natural that he should stand beyond all merely +reasonable standards of judgment. He feels that he is _himself_ +sanctified by this mission, that he is himself a type of a higher +order!... What has a priest to do with philosophy! He stands far above +it!--And hitherto the priest has _ruled_!--He has determined the meaning +of "true" and "not true"!... + + +13. + +Let us not underestimate this fact: that _we +ourselves_, we free spirits, are already a "transvaluation of all +values," a _visualized_ declaration of war and victory against all the +old concepts of "true" and "not true." The most valuable intuitions are +the last to be attained; the most valuable of all are those which +determine _methods_. All the methods, all the principles of the +scientific spirit of today, were the targets for thousands of years of +the most profound contempt; if a man inclined to them he was excluded +from the society of "decent" people--he passed as "an enemy of God," as +a scoffer at the truth, as one "possessed." As a man of science, he +belonged to the Chandala[2].... We have had the whole pathetic stupidity +of mankind against us--their every notion of what the truth _ought_ to +be, of what the service of the truth _ought_ to be--their every "thou +shalt" was launched against us.... Our objectives, our methods, our +quiet, cautious, distrustful manner--all appeared to them as absolutely +discreditable and contemptible.--Looking back, one may almost ask one's +self with reason if it was not actually an _aesthetic_ sense that kept +men blind so long: what they demanded of the truth was picturesque +effectiveness, and of the learned a strong appeal to their senses. It +was our _modesty_ that stood out longest against their taste.... How +well they guessed that, these turkey-cocks of God! + +[2] The lowest of the Hindu castes. + + +14. + +We have unlearned something. We have become more modest in every way. We +no longer derive man from the "spirit," from the "godhead"; we have +dropped him back among the beasts. We regard him as the strongest of the +beasts because he is the craftiest; one of the results thereof is his +intellectuality. On the other hand, we guard ourselves against a conceit +which would assert itself even here: that man is the great second +thought in the process of organic evolution. He is, in truth, anything +but the crown of creation: beside him stand many other animals, all at +similar stages of development.... And even when we say that we say a bit +too much, for man, relatively speaking, is the most botched of all the +animals and the sickliest, and he has wandered the most dangerously from +his instincts--though for all that, to be sure, he remains the most +_interesting_!--As regards the lower animals, it was Descartes who first +had the really admirable daring to describe them as _machina_; the whole +of our physiology is directed toward proving the truth of this doctrine. +Moreover, it is illogical to set man apart, as Descartes did: what we +know of man today is limited precisely by the extent to which we have +regarded him, too, as a machine. Formerly we accorded to man, as his +inheritance from some higher order of beings, what was called "free +will"; now we have taken even this will from him, for the term no longer +describes anything that we can understand. The old word "will" now +connotes only a sort of result, an individual reaction, that follows +inevitably upon a series of partly discordant and partly harmonious +stimuli--the will no longer "acts," or "moves."... Formerly it was +thought that man's consciousness, his "spirit," offered evidence of his +high origin, his divinity. That he might be _perfected_, he was advised, +tortoise-like, to draw his senses in, to have no traffic with earthly +things, to shuffle off his mortal coil--then only the important part of +him, the "pure spirit," would remain. Here again we have thought out the +thing better: to us consciousness, or "the spirit," appears as a symptom +of a relative imperfection of the organism, as an experiment, a groping, +a misunderstanding, as an affliction which uses up nervous force +unnecessarily--we deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as it +is done consciously. The "pure spirit" is a piece of pure stupidity: +take away the nervous system and the senses, the so-called "mortal +shell," and _the rest is miscalculation_--that is all!... + + +15. + +Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of +contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary _causes_ ("God," +"soul," "ego," "spirit," "free will"--or even "unfree"), and purely +imaginary _effects_ ("sin," "salvation," "grace," "punishment," +"forgiveness of sins"). Intercourse between imaginary _beings_ ("God," +"spirits," "souls"); an imaginary _natural history_ (anthropocentric; a +total denial of the concept of natural causes); an imaginary +_psychology_ (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable +or disagreeable general feelings--for example, of the states of the +_nervus sympathicus_ with the help of the sign-language of +religio-ethical balderdash--, "repentance," "pangs of conscience," +"temptation by the devil," "the presence of God"); an imaginary +_teleology_ (the "kingdom of God," "the last judgment," "eternal +life").--This purely _fictitious world_, greatly to its disadvantage, is +to be differentiated from the world of dreams; the latter at least +reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and +denies it. Once the concept of "nature" had been opposed to the concept +of "God," the word "natural" necessarily took on the meaning of +"abominable"--the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in +hatred of the natural (--the real!--), and is no more than evidence of a +profound uneasiness in the presence of reality.... _This explains +everything._ Who alone has any reason for living his way out of reality? +The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a +_botched_ reality.... The preponderance of pains over pleasures is the +cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such a preponderance +also supplies the formula for _decadence_.... + + +16. + +A criticism of the _Christian concept of God_ leads inevitably to the +same conclusion.--A nation that still believes in itself holds fast to +its own god. In him it does honour to the conditions which enable it to +survive, to its virtues--it projects its joy in itself, its feeling of +power, into a being to whom one may offer thanks. He who is rich will +give of his riches; a proud people need a god to whom they can make +_sacrifices_.... Religion, within these limits, is a form of gratitude. +A man is grateful for his own existence: to that end he needs a +god.--Such a god must be able to work both benefits and injuries; he +must be able to play either friend or foe--he is wondered at for the +good he does as well as for the evil he does. But the castration, +against all nature, of such a god, making him a god of goodness alone, +would be contrary to human inclination. Mankind has just as much need +for an evil god as for a good god; it doesn't have to thank mere +tolerance and humanitarianism for its own existence.... What would be +the value of a god who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn, +cunning, violence? who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous +_ardeurs_ of victory and of destruction? No one would understand such a +god: why should any one want him?--True enough, when a nation is on the +downward path, when it feels its belief in its own future, its hope of +freedom slipping from it, when it begins to see submission as a first +necessity and the virtues of submission as measures of self-preservation, +then it _must_ overhaul its god. He then becomes a hypocrite, timorous +and demure; he counsels "peace of soul," hate-no-more, leniency, "love" +of friend and foe. He moralizes endlessly; he creeps into every private +virtue; he becomes the god of every man; he becomes a private citizen, a +cosmopolitan.... Formerly he represented a people, the strength of a +people, everything aggressive and thirsty for power in the soul of a +people; now he is simply _the good god_.... The truth is that there is +no other alternative for gods: _either_ they are the will to power--in +which case they are national gods--_or_ incapacity for power--in which +case they have to be good.... + + +17. + +Wherever the will to power begins to decline, in whatever form, there is +always an accompanying decline physiologically, a _decadence_. The +divinity of this _decadence_, shorn of its masculine virtues and +passions, is converted perforce into a god of the physiologically +degraded, of the weak. Of course, they do not _call_ themselves the +weak; they call themselves "the good."... No hint is needed to indicate +the moments in history at which the dualistic fiction of a good and an +evil god first became possible. The same instinct which prompts the +inferior to reduce their own god to "goodness-in-itself" also prompts +them to eliminate all good qualities from the god of their superiors; +they make revenge on their masters by making a _devil_ of the latter's +god.--The _good_ god, and the devil like him--both are abortions of +_decadence_.--How can we be so tolerant of the naivete of Christian +theologians as to join in their doctrine that the evolution of the +concept of god from "the god of Israel," the god of a people, to the +Christian god, the essence of all goodness, is to be described as +_progress_?--But even Renan does this. As if Renan had a right to be +naive! The contrary actually stares one in the face. When everything +necessary to _ascending_ life; when all that is strong, courageous, +masterful and proud has been eliminated from the concept of a god; when +he has sunk step by step to the level of a staff for the weary, a +sheet-anchor for the drowning; when he becomes the poor man's god, the +sinner's god, the invalid's god _par excellence_, and the attribute of +"saviour" or "redeemer" remains as the one essential attribute of +divinity--just _what_ is the significance of such a metamorphosis? +what does such a _reduction_ of the godhead imply?--To be +sure, the "kingdom of God" has thus grown larger. Formerly he had only +his own people, his "chosen" people. But since then he has gone +wandering, like his people themselves, into foreign parts; he has given +up settling down quietly anywhere; finally he has come to feel at home +everywhere, and is the great cosmopolitan--until now he has the "great +majority" on his side, and half the earth. But this god of the "great +majority," this democrat among gods, has not become a proud heathen god: +on the contrary, he remains a Jew, he remains a god in a corner, a god +of all the dark nooks and crevices, of all the noisesome quarters of the +world!... His earthly kingdom, now as always, is a kingdom of the +underworld, a _souterrain_ kingdom, a ghetto kingdom.... And he himself +is so pale, so weak, so _decadent_.... Even the palest of the pale are +able to master him--messieurs the metaphysicians, those albinos of the +intellect. They spun their webs around him for so long that finally he +was hypnotized, and began to spin himself, and became another +metaphysician. Thereafter he resumed once more his old business of +spinning the world out of his inmost being _sub specie Spinozae_; +thereafter he became ever thinner and paler--became the "ideal," became +"pure spirit," became "the absolute," became "the thing-in-itself."... +_The collapse of a god_: he became a "thing-in-itself." + + +18. + +The Christian concept of a god--the god as the patron of the sick, the +god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit--is one of the most +corrupt concepts that has ever been set up in the world: it probably +touches low-water mark in the ebbing evolution of the god-type. God +degenerated into the _contradiction of life_. Instead of being its +transfiguration and eternal Yea! In him war is declared on life, on +nature, on the will to live! God becomes the formula for every slander +upon the "here and now," and for every lie about the "beyond"! In him +nothingness is deified, and the will to nothingness is made holy!... + + +19. + +The fact that the strong races of northern Europe did not repudiate this +Christian god does little credit to their gift for religion--and not +much more to their taste. They ought to have been able to make an end of +such a moribund and worn-out product of the _decadence_. A curse lies +upon them because they were not equal to it; they made illness, +decrepitude and contradiction a part of their instincts--and since then +they have not managed to _create_ any more gods. Two thousand years have +come and gone--and not a single new god! Instead, there still exists, +and as if by some intrinsic right,--as if he were the _ultimatum_ and +_maximum_ of the power to create gods, of the _creator spiritus_ in +mankind--this pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid +image of decay, conjured up out of emptiness, contradiction and vain +imagining, in which all the instincts of _decadence_, all the cowardices +and wearinesses of the soul find their sanction!-- + + +20. + +In my condemnation of Christianity I surely hope I do no injustice to a +related religion with an even larger number of believers: I allude to +_Buddhism_. Both are to be reckoned among the nihilistic religions--they +are both _decadence_ religions--but they are separated from each other +in a very remarkable way. For the fact that he is able to _compare_ them +at all the critic of Christianity is indebted to the scholars of +India.--Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity--it is +part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively +and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical +speculation. The concept, "god," was already disposed of before it +appeared. Buddhism is the only genuinely _positive_ religion to be +encountered in history, and this applies even to its epistemology (which +is a strict phenomenalism). It does not speak of a "struggle with sin," +but, yielding to reality, of the "struggle with suffering." Sharply +differentiating itself from Christianity, it puts the self-deception +that lies in moral concepts behind it; it is, in my phrase, _beyond_ +good and evil.--The two physiological facts upon which it grounds itself +and upon which it bestows its chief attention are: first, an excessive +sensitiveness to sensation, which manifests itself as a refined +susceptibility to pain, and _secondly_, an extraordinary spirituality, a +too protracted concern with concepts and logical procedures, under the +influence of which the instinct of personality has yielded to a notion +of the "impersonal." (--Both of these states will be familiar to a few +of my readers, the objectivists, by experience, as they are to me). +These physiological states produced a _depression_, and Buddha tried to +combat it by hygienic measures. Against it he prescribed a life in the +open, a life of travel; moderation in eating and a careful selection of +foods; caution in the use of intoxicants; the same caution in arousing +any of the passions that foster a bilious habit and heat the blood; +finally, no _worry_, either on one's own account or on account of +others. He encourages ideas that make for either quiet contentment or +good cheer--he finds means to combat ideas of other sorts. He +understands good, the state of goodness, as something which promotes +health. _Prayer_ is not included, and neither is _asceticism_. There is +no categorical imperative nor any disciplines, even within the walls of +a monastery (--it is always possible to leave--). These things would +have been simply means of increasing the excessive sensitiveness above +mentioned. For the same reason he does not advocate any conflict with +unbelievers; his teaching is antagonistic to nothing so much as to +revenge, aversion, _ressentiment_ (--"enmity never brings an end to +enmity": the moving refrain of all Buddhism....) And in all this he was +right, for it is precisely these passions which, in view of his main +regiminal purpose, are _unhealthful_. The mental fatigue that he +observes, already plainly displayed in too much "objectivity" (that is, +in the individual's loss of interest in himself, in loss of balance and +of "egoism"), he combats by strong efforts to lead even the spiritual +interests back to the _ego_. In Buddha's teaching egoism is a duty. The +"one thing needful," the question "how can you be delivered from +suffering," regulates and determines the whole spiritual diet. +(--Perhaps one will here recall that Athenian who also declared war upon +pure "scientificality," to wit, Socrates, who also elevated egoism to +the estate of a morality). + + +21. + +The things necessary to Buddhism are a very mild climate, customs of +great gentleness and liberality, and _no_ militarism; moreover, it must +get its start among the higher and better educated classes. +Cheerfulness, quiet and the absence of desire are the chief desiderata, +and they are _attained_. Buddhism is not a religion in which perfection +is merely an object of aspiration: perfection is actually normal.-- + +Under Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and the oppressed +come to the fore: it is only those who are at the bottom who seek their +salvation in it. Here the prevailing pastime, the favourite remedy for +boredom is the discussion of sin, self-criticism, the inquisition of +conscience; here the emotion produced by _power_ (called "God") is +pumped up (by prayer); here the highest good is regarded as +unattainable, as a gift, as "grace." Here, too, open dealing is lacking; +concealment and the darkened room are Christian. Here body is despised +and hygiene is denounced as sensual; the church even ranges itself +against cleanliness (--the first Christian order after the banishment of +the Moors closed the public baths, of which there were 270 in Cordova +alone). Christian, too, is a certain cruelty toward one's self and +toward others; hatred of unbelievers; the will to persecute. Sombre and +disquieting ideas are in the foreground; the most esteemed states of +mind, bearing the most respectable names, are epileptoid; the diet is so +regulated as to engender morbid symptoms and over-stimulate the nerves. +Christian, again, is all deadly enmity to the rulers of the earth, to +the "aristocratic"--along with a sort of secret rivalry with them (--one +resigns one's "body" to them; one wants _only_ one's "soul"...). And +Christian is all hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage, of +freedom, of intellectual _libertinage_; Christian is all hatred of the +senses, of joy in the senses, of joy in general.... + + +22. + +When Christianity departed from its native soil, that of the lowest +orders, the _underworld_ of the ancient world, and began seeking power +among barbarian peoples, it no longer had to deal with _exhausted_ men, +but with men still inwardly savage and capable of self-torture--in +brief, strong men, but bungled men. Here, unlike in the case of the +Buddhists, the cause of discontent with self, suffering through self, is +_not_ merely a general sensitiveness and susceptibility to pain, but, on +the contrary, an inordinate thirst for inflicting pain on others, a +tendency to obtain subjective satisfaction in hostile deeds and ideas. +Christianity had to embrace _barbaric_ concepts and valuations in order +to obtain mastery over barbarians: of such sort, for example, are the +sacrifices of the first-born, the drinking of blood as a sacrament, the +disdain of the intellect and of culture; torture in all its forms, +whether bodily or not; the whole pomp of the cult. Buddhism is a +religion for peoples in a further state of development, for races that +have become kind, gentle and over-spiritualized (--Europe is not yet +ripe for it--): it is a summons that takes them back to peace and +cheerfulness, to a careful rationing of the spirit, to a certain +hardening of the body. Christianity aims at mastering _beasts of prey_; +its modus operandi is to make them _ill_--to make feeble is the +Christian recipe for taming, for "_civilizing_." Buddhism is a religion +for the closing, over-wearied stages of civilization. Christianity +appears before civilization has so much as begun--under certain +circumstances it lays the very foundations thereof. + + +23. + +Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times more austere, more honest, more +objective. It no longer has to _justify_ its pains, its susceptibility +to suffering, by interpreting these things in terms of sin--it simply +says, as it simply thinks, "I suffer." To the barbarian, however, +suffering in itself is scarcely understandable: what he needs, first of +all, is an explanation as to _why_ he suffers. (His mere instinct +prompts him to deny his suffering altogether, or to endure it in +silence.) Here the word "devil" was a blessing: man had to have an +omnipotent and terrible enemy--there was no need to be ashamed of +suffering at the hands of such an enemy.-- + +At the bottom of Christianity there are several subtleties that belong +to the Orient. In the first place, it knows that it is of very little +consequence whether a thing be true or not, so long as it is _believed_ +to be true. Truth and _faith_: here we have two wholly distinct worlds +of ideas, almost two diametrically _opposite_ worlds--the road to the +one and the road to the other lie miles apart. To understand that fact +thoroughly--this is almost enough, in the Orient, to _make_ one a sage. +The Brahmins knew it, Plato knew it, every student of the esoteric knows +it. When, for example, a man gets any _pleasure_ out of the notion that +he has been saved from sin, it is _not_ necessary for him to be actually +sinful, but merely to _feel_ sinful. But when _faith_ is thus exalted +above everything else, it necessarily follows that reason, knowledge and +patient inquiry have to be discredited: the road to the truth becomes a +forbidden road.--Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more +powerful _stimulans_ to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be. +Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict +with actuality can dash it--so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can +_satisfy_ it: a hope reaching out beyond this world. (Precisely because +of this power that hope has of making the suffering hold out, the Greeks +regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most _malign_ of evils; it +remained behind at the source of all evil.)[3]--In order that _love_ may +be possible, God must become a person; in order that the lower instincts +may take a hand in the matter God must be young. To satisfy the ardor of +the woman a beautiful saint must appear on the scene, and to satisfy +that of the men there must be a virgin. These things are necessary if +Christianity is to assume lordship over a soil on which some +aphrodisiacal or Adonis cult has already established a notion as to what +a cult ought to be. To insist upon _chastity_ greatly strengthens the +vehemence and subjectivity of the religious instinct--it makes the cult +warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful.--Love is the state in which man +sees things most decidedly as they are _not_. The force of illusion +reaches its highest here, and so does the capacity for sweetening, for +_transfiguring_. When a man is in love he endures more than at any other +time; he submits to anything. The problem was to devise a religion which +would allow one to love: by this means the worst that life has to offer +is overcome--it is scarcely even noticed.--So much for the three +Christian virtues: faith, hope and charity: I call them the three +Christian _ingenuities_.--Buddhism is in too late a stage of +development, too full of positivism, to be shrewd in any such way.-- + +[3] That is, in Pandora's box. + + +24. + +Here I barely touch upon the problem of the _origin_ of Christianity. +The _first_ thing necessary to its solution is this: that Christianity +is to be understood only by examining the soil from which it sprung--it +is _not_ a reaction against Jewish instincts; it is their inevitable +product; it is simply one more step in the awe-inspiring logic of the +Jews. In the words of the Saviour, "salvation is of the Jews."[4]--The +_second_ thing to remember is this: that the psychological type of the +Galilean is still to be recognized, but it was only in its most +degenerate form (which is at once maimed and overladen with foreign +features) that it could serve in the manner in which it has been used: +as a type of the _Saviour_ of mankind.-- + +[4] John iv, 22. + +The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world, for +when they were confronted with the question, to be or not to be, they +chose, with perfectly unearthly deliberation, to be _at any price_: this +price involved a radical _falsification_ of all nature, of all +naturalness, of all reality, of the whole inner world, as well as of +the outer. They put themselves _against_ all those conditions under +which, hitherto, a people had been able to live, or had even been +_permitted_ to live; out of themselves they evolved an idea which stood +in direct opposition to _natural_ conditions--one by one they distorted +religion, civilization, morality, history and psychology until each +became a _contradiction_ of its _natural significance_. We meet with the +same phenomenon later on, in an incalculably exaggerated form, but only +as a copy: the Christian church, put beside the "people of God," shows a +complete lack of any claim to originality. Precisely for this reason the +Jews are the most _fateful_ people in the history of the world: their +influence has so falsified the reasoning of mankind in this matter that +today the Christian can cherish anti-Semitism without realizing that it +is no more than the _final consequence of Judaism_. + +In my "Genealogy of Morals" I give the first psychological explanation +of the concepts underlying those two antithetical things, a _noble_ +morality and a _ressentiment_ morality, the second of which is a mere +product of the denial of the former. The Judaeo-Christian moral system +belongs to the second division, and in every detail. In order to be able +to say Nay to everything representing an _ascending_ evolution of +life--that is, to well-being, to power, to beauty, to self-approval--the +instincts of _ressentiment_, here become downright genius, had to invent +an _other_ world in which the _acceptance of life_ appeared as the most +evil and abominable thing imaginable. Psychologically, the Jews are a +people gifted with the very strongest vitality, so much so that when +they found themselves facing impossible conditions of life they chose +voluntarily, and with a profound talent for self-preservation, the side +of all those instincts which make for _decadence_--_not_ as if mastered +by them, but as if detecting in them a power by which "the world" could +be _defied_. The Jews are the very opposite of _decadents_: they have +simply been forced into _appearing_ in that guise, and with a degree of +skill approaching the _non plus ultra_ of histrionic genius they have +managed to put themselves at the head of all _decadent_ movements (--for +example, the Christianity of Paul--), and so make of them something +stronger than any party frankly saying _Yes_ to life. To the sort of +men who reach out for power under Judaism and Christianity,--that is to +say, to the _priestly_ class--_decadence_ is no more than a means to an +end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and +in confusing the values of "good" and "bad," "true" and "false" in a +manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it. + + +25. + +The history of Israel is invaluable as a typical history of an attempt +to _denaturize_ all natural values: I point to five facts which bear +this out. Originally, and above all in the time of the monarchy, Israel +maintained the _right_ attitude of things, which is to say, the natural +attitude. Its Jahveh was an expression of its consciousness of power, +its joy in itself, its hopes for itself: to him the Jews looked for +victory and salvation and through him they expected nature to give them +whatever was necessary to their existence--above all, rain. Jahveh is +the god of Israel, and _consequently_ the god of justice: this is the +logic of every race that has power in its hands and a good conscience in +the use of it. In the religious ceremonial of the Jews both aspects of +this self-approval stand revealed. The nation is grateful for the high +destiny that has enabled it to obtain dominion; it is grateful for the +benign procession of the seasons, and for the good fortune attending its +herds and its crops.--This view of things remained an ideal for a long +while, even after it had been robbed of validity by tragic blows: +anarchy within and the Assyrian without. But the people still retained, +as a projection of their highest yearnings, that vision of a king who +was at once a gallant warrior and an upright judge--a vision best +visualized in the typical prophet (_i. e._, critic and satirist of the +moment), Isaiah.--But every hope remained unfulfilled. The old god no +longer _could_ do what he used to do. He ought to have been abandoned. +But what actually happened? Simply this: the conception of him was +_changed_--the conception of him was _denaturized_; this was the price +that had to be paid for keeping him.--Jahveh, the god of "justice"--he +is in accord with Israel _no more_, he no longer vizualizes the national +egoism; he is now a god only conditionally.... The public notion of this +god now becomes merely a weapon in the hands of clerical agitators, who +interpret all happiness as a reward and all unhappiness as a punishment +for obedience or disobedience to him, for "sin": that most fraudulent of +all imaginable interpretations, whereby a "moral order of the world" is +set up, and the fundamental concepts, "cause" and "effect," are stood on +their heads. Once natural causation has been swept out of the world by +doctrines of reward and punishment some sort of _un_-natural causation +becomes necessary: and all other varieties of the denial of nature +follow it. A god who _demands_--in place of a god who helps, who gives +counsel, who is at bottom merely a name for every happy inspiration of +courage and self-reliance.... _Morality_ is no longer a reflection of +the conditions which make for the sound life and development of the +people; it is no longer the primary life-instinct; instead it has become +abstract and in opposition to life--a fundamental perversion of the +fancy, an "evil eye" on all things. _What_ is Jewish, _what_ is +Christian morality? Chance robbed of its innocence; unhappiness polluted +with the idea of "sin"; well-being represented as a danger, as a +"temptation"; a physiological disorder produced by the canker worm of +conscience.... + + +26. + +The concept of god falsified; the concept of morality falsified;--but +even here Jewish priest-craft did not stop. The whole history of Israel +ceased to be of any value: out with it!--These priests accomplished that +miracle of falsification of which a great part of the Bible is the +documentary evidence; with a degree of contempt unparalleled, and in the +face of all tradition and all historical reality, they translated the +past of their people into _religious_ terms, which is to say, they +converted it into an idiotic mechanism of salvation, whereby all +offences against Jahveh were punished and all devotion to him was +rewarded. We would regard this act of historical falsification as +something far more shameful if familiarity with the _ecclesiastical_ +interpretation of history for thousands of years had not blunted our +inclinations for uprightness _in historicis_. And the philosophers +support the church: the _lie_ about a "moral order of the world" runs +through the whole of philosophy, even the newest. What is the meaning +of a "moral order of the world"? That there is a thing called the will +of God which, once and for all time, determines what man ought to do and +what he ought not to do; that the worth of a people, or of an individual +thereof, is to be measured by the extent to which they or he obey this +will of God; that the destinies of a people or of an individual are +_controlled_ by this will of God, which rewards or punishes according to +the degree of obedience manifested.--In place of all that pitiable lie +_reality_ has this to say: the _priest_, a parasitical variety of man +who can exist only at the cost of every sound view of life, takes the +name of God in vain: he calls that state of human society in which he +himself determines the value of all things "the kingdom of God"; he +calls the means whereby that state of affairs is attained "the will of +God"; with cold-blooded cynicism he estimates all peoples, all ages and +all individuals by the extent of their subservience or opposition to the +power of the priestly order. One observes him at work: under the hand of +the Jewish priesthood the _great_ age of Israel became an age of +decline; the Exile, with its long series of misfortunes, was +transformed into a _punishment_ for that great age--during which priests +had not yet come into existence. Out of the powerful and _wholly free_ +heroes of Israel's history they fashioned, according to their changing +needs, either wretched bigots and hypocrites or men entirely "godless." +They reduced every great event to the idiotic formula: "obedient _or_ +disobedient to God."--They went a step further: the "will of God" (in +other words some means necessary for preserving the power of the +priests) had to be _determined_--and to this end they had to have a +"revelation." In plain English, a gigantic literary fraud had to be +perpetrated, and "holy scriptures" had to be concocted--and so, with the +utmost hierarchical pomp, and days of penance and much lamentation over +the long days of "sin" now ended, they were duly published. The "will of +God," it appears, had long stood like a rock; the trouble was that +mankind had neglected the "holy scriptures".... But the "will of God" +had already been revealed to Moses.... What happened? Simply this: the +priest had formulated, once and for all time and with the strictest +meticulousness, what tithes were to be paid to him, from the largest to +the smallest (--not forgetting the most appetizing cuts of meat, for +the priest is a great consumer of beefsteaks); in brief, he let it be +known just _what he wanted_, what "the will of God" was.... From this +time forward things were so arranged that the priest became +_indispensable everywhere_; at all the great natural events of life, at +birth, at marriage, in sickness, at death, not to say at the +"_sacrifice_" (that is, at meal-times), the holy parasite put in his +appearance, and proceeded to _denaturize_ it--in his own phrase, to +"sanctify" it.... For this should be noted: that every natural habit, +every natural institution (the state, the administration of justice, +marriage, the care of the sick and of the poor), everything demanded by +the life-instinct, in short, everything that has any value _in itself_, +is reduced to absolute worthlessness and even made the _reverse_ of +valuable by the parasitism of priests (or, if you chose, by the "moral +order of the world"). The fact requires a sanction--a power to _grant +values_ becomes necessary, and the only way it can create such values is +by denying nature.... The priest depreciates and desecrates nature: it +is only at this price that he can exist at all.--Disobedience to God, +which actually means to the priest, to "the law," now gets the name of +"sin"; the means prescribed for "reconciliation with God" are, of +course, precisely the means which bring one most effectively under the +thumb of the priest; he alone can "save".... Psychologically considered, +"sins" are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical +basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest _lives_ +upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be "sinning".... Prime +axiom: "God forgiveth him that repenteth"--in plain English, _him that +submitteth to the priest_. + + +27. + +Christianity sprang from a soil so corrupt that on it everything +natural, every natural value, every _reality_ was opposed by the deepest +instincts of the ruling class--it grew up as a sort of war to the death +upon reality, and as such it has never been surpassed. The "holy +people," who had adopted priestly values and priestly names for all +things, and who, with a terrible logical consistency, had rejected +everything of the earth as "unholy," "worldly," "sinful"--this people +put its instinct into a final formula that was logical to the point of +self-annihilation: as _Christianity_ it actually denied even the last +form of reality, the "holy people," the "chosen people," _Jewish_ +reality itself. The phenomenon is of the first order of importance: the +small insurrectionary movement which took the name of Jesus of Nazareth +is simply the Jewish instinct _redivivus_--in other words, it is the +priestly instinct come to such a pass that it can no longer endure the +priest as a fact; it is the discovery of a state of existence even more +fantastic than any before it, of a vision of life even more _unreal_ +than that necessary to an ecclesiastical organization. Christianity +actually _denies_ the church.... + +I am unable to determine what was the target of the insurrection said to +have been led (whether rightly or _wrongly_) by Jesus, if it was not the +Jewish church--"church" being here used in exactly the same sense that +the word has today. It was an insurrection against the "good and just," +against the "prophets of Israel," against the whole hierarchy of +society--_not_ against corruption, but against caste, privilege, order, +formalism. It was _unbelief_ in "superior men," a Nay flung at +everything that priests and theologians stood for. But the hierarchy +that was called into question, if only for an instant, by this movement +was the structure of piles which, above everything, was necessary to the +safety of the Jewish people in the midst of the "waters"--it represented +their _last_ possibility of survival; it was the final _residuum_ of +their independent political existence; an attack upon it was an attack +upon the most profound national instinct, the most powerful national +will to live, that has ever appeared on earth. This saintly anarchist, +who aroused the people of the abyss, the outcasts and "sinners," the +Chandala of Judaism, to rise in revolt against the established order of +things--and in language which, if the Gospels are to be credited, would +get him sent to Siberia today--this man was certainly a political +criminal, at least in so far as it was possible to be one in so +_absurdly unpolitical_ a community. This is what brought him to the +cross: the proof thereof is to be found in the inscription that was put +upon the cross. He died for his _own_ sins--there is not the slightest +ground for believing, no matter how often it is asserted, that he died +for the sins of others.-- + + +28. + +As to whether he himself was conscious of this contradiction--whether, +in fact, this was the only contradiction he was cognizant of--that is +quite another question. Here, for the first time, I touch upon the +problem of the _psychology of the Saviour_.--I confess, to begin with, +that there are very few books which offer me harder reading than the +Gospels. My difficulties are quite different from those which enabled +the learned curiosity of the German mind to achieve one of its most +unforgettable triumphs. It is a long while since I, like all other young +scholars, enjoyed with all the sapient laboriousness of a fastidious +philologist the work of the incomparable Strauss.[5] At that time I was +twenty years old: now I am too serious for that sort of thing. What do I +care for the contradictions of "tradition"? How can any one call pious +legends "traditions"? The histories of saints present the most dubious +variety of literature in existence; to examine them by the scientific +method, _in the entire absence of corroborative documents_, seems to me +to condemn the whole inquiry from the start--it is simply learned +idling.... + +[5] David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74), author of "Das Leben Jesu" +(1835-6), a very famous work in its day. Nietzsche here refers to it. + + +29. + +What concerns _me_ is the psychological type of the Saviour. This type +might be depicted in the Gospels, in however mutilated a form and +however much overladen with extraneous characters--that is, in _spite_ +of the Gospels; just as the figure of Francis of Assisi shows itself in +his legends in spite of his legends. It is _not_ a question of mere +truthful evidence as to what he did, what he said and how he actually +died; the question is, whether his type is still conceivable, whether it +has been handed down to us.--All the attempts that I know of to read the +_history_ of a "soul" in the Gospels seem to me to reveal only a +lamentable psychological levity. M. Renan, that mountebank _in +psychologicus_, has contributed the two most _unseemly_ notions to this +business of explaining the type of Jesus: the notion of the _genius_ and +that of the _hero_ ("_heros_"). But if there is anything essentially +unevangelical, it is surely the concept of the hero. What the Gospels +make instinctive is precisely the reverse of all heroic struggle, of +all taste for conflict: the very incapacity for resistance is here +converted into something moral: ("resist not evil!"--the most profound +sentence in the Gospels, perhaps the true key to them), to wit, the +blessedness of peace, of gentleness, the _inability_ to be an enemy. +What is the meaning of "glad tidings"?--The true life, the life eternal +has been found--it is not merely promised, it is here, it is in _you_; +it is the life that lies in love free from all retreats and exclusions, +from all keeping of distances. Every one is the child of God--Jesus +claims nothing for himself alone--as the child of God each man is the +equal of every other man.... Imagine making Jesus a _hero_!--And what a +tremendous misunderstanding appears in the word "genius"! Our whole +conception of the "spiritual," the whole conception of our civilization, +could have had no meaning in the world that Jesus lived in. In the +strict sense of the physiologist, a quite different word ought to be +used here.... We all know that there is a morbid sensibility of the +tactile nerves which causes those suffering from it to recoil from every +touch, and from every effort to grasp a solid object. Brought to its +logical conclusion, such a physiological _habitus_ becomes an +instinctive hatred of all reality, a flight into the "intangible," into +the "incomprehensible"; a distaste for all formulae, for all conceptions +of time and space, for everything established--customs, institutions, +the church--; a feeling of being at home in a world in which no sort of +reality survives, a merely "inner" world, a "true" world, an "eternal" +world.... "The Kingdom of God is within _you_".... + + +30. + +_The instinctive hatred of reality_: the consequence of an extreme +susceptibility to pain and irritation--so great that merely to be +"touched" becomes unendurable, for every sensation is too profound. + +_The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all hostility, all bounds +and distances in feeling_: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility +to pain and irritation--so great that it senses all resistance, all +compulsion to resistance, as unbearable _anguish_ (--that is to say, as +_harmful_, as _prohibited_ by the instinct of self-preservation), and +regards blessedness (joy) as possible only when it is no longer +necessary to offer resistance to anybody or anything, however evil or +dangerous--love, as the only, as the _ultimate_ possibility of life.... + +These are the two _physiological realities_ upon and out of which the +doctrine of salvation has sprung. I call them a sublime +super-development of hedonism upon a thoroughly unsalubrious soil. What +stands most closely related to them, though with a large admixture of +Greek vitality and nerve-force, is epicureanism, the theory of salvation +of paganism. Epicurus was a _typical decadent_: I was the first to +recognize him.--The fear of pain, even of infinitely slight pain--the +end of this _can_ be nothing save a _religion of love_.... + + +31. + +I have already given my answer to the problem. The prerequisite to it is +the assumption that the type of the Saviour has reached us only in a +greatly distorted form. This distortion is very probable: there are many +reasons why a type of that sort should not be handed down in a pure +form, complete and free of additions. The milieu in which this strange +figure moved must have left marks upon him, and more must have been +imprinted by the history, the _destiny_, of the early Christian +communities; the latter indeed, must have embellished the type +retrospectively with characters which can be understood only as serving +the purposes of war and of propaganda. That strange and sickly world +into which the Gospels lead us--a world apparently out of a Russian +novel, in which the scum of society, nervous maladies and "childish" +idiocy keep a tryst--must, in any case, have _coarsened_ the type: the +first disciples, in particular, must have been forced to translate an +existence visible only in symbols and incomprehensibilities into their +own crudity, in order to understand it at all--in their sight the type +could take on reality only after it had been recast in a familiar +mould.... The prophet, the messiah, the future judge, the teacher of +morals, the worker of wonders, John the Baptist--all these merely +presented chances to misunderstand it.... Finally, let us not underrate +the _proprium_ of all great, and especially all sectarian veneration: it +tends to erase from the venerated objects all its original traits and +idiosyncrasies, often so painfully strange--_it does not even see +them_. It is greatly to be regretted that no Dostoyevsky lived in the +neighbourhood of this most interesting _decadent_--I mean some one who +would have felt the poignant charm of such a compound of the sublime, +the morbid and the childish. In the last analysis, the type, as a type +of the _decadence_, may actually have been peculiarly complex and +contradictory: such a possibility is not to be lost sight of. +Nevertheless, the probabilities seem to be against it, for in that case +tradition would have been particularly accurate and objective, whereas +we have reasons for assuming the contrary. Meanwhile, there is a +contradiction between the peaceful preacher of the mount, the sea-shore +and the fields, who appears like a new Buddha on a soil very unlike +India's, and the aggressive fanatic, the mortal enemy of theologians and +ecclesiastics, who stands glorified by Renan's malice as "_le grand +maitre en ironie_." I myself haven't any doubt that the greater part of +this venom (and no less of _esprit_) got itself into the concept of the +Master only as a result of the excited nature of Christian propaganda: +we all know the unscrupulousness of sectarians when they set out to turn +their leader into an _apologia_ for themselves. When the early +Christians had need of an adroit, contentious, pugnacious and +maliciously subtle theologian to tackle other theologians, they +_created_ a "god" that met that need, just as they put into his mouth +without hesitation certain ideas that were necessary to them but that +were utterly at odds with the Gospels--"the second coming," "the last +judgment," all sorts of expectations and promises, current at the +time.-- + + +32. + +I can only repeat that I set myself against all efforts to intrude the +fanatic into the figure of the Saviour: the very word _imperieux_, used +by Renan, is alone enough to _annul_ the type. What the "glad tidings" +tell us is simply that there are no more contradictions; the kingdom of +heaven belongs to _children_; the faith that is voiced here is no more +an embattled faith--it is at hand, it has been from the beginning, it is +a sort of recrudescent childishness of the spirit. The physiologists, at +all events, are familiar with such a delayed and incomplete puberty in +the living organism, the result of degeneration. A faith of this sort is +not furious, it does not denounce, it does not defend itself: it does +not come with "the sword"--it does not realize how it will one day set +man against man. It does not manifest itself either by miracles, or by +rewards and promises, or by "scriptures": it is itself, first and last, +its own miracle, its own reward, its own promise, its own "kingdom of +God." This faith does not formulate itself--it simply _lives_, and so +guards itself against formulae. To be sure, the accident of environment, +of educational background gives prominence to concepts of a certain +sort: in primitive Christianity one finds _only_ concepts of a +Judaeo-Semitic character (--that of eating and drinking at the last +supper belongs to this category--an idea which, like everything else +Jewish, has been badly mauled by the church). But let us be careful not +to see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics[6] +an opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no +work is to be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at +all. Set down among Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of +Sankhya,[7] and among Chinese he would have employed those of +Lao-tse[8]--and in neither case would it have made any difference to +him.--With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call +Jesus a "free spirit"[9]--he cares nothing for what is established: the +word _killeth_,[10] whatever is established _killeth_. The idea of +"life" as an _experience_, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to +his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He +speaks only of inner things: "life" or "truth" or "light" is his word +for the innermost--in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, +all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as +allegory.--Here it is of paramount importance to be led into no error by +the temptations lying in Christian, or rather _ecclesiastical_ +prejudices: such a symbolism _par excellence_ stands outside all +religion, all notions of worship, all history, all natural science, all +worldly experience, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all +books, all art--his "wisdom" is precisely a _pure ignorance_[11] of all +such things. He has never heard of _culture_; he doesn't have to make +war on it--he doesn't even deny it.... The same thing may be said of the +_state_, of the whole bourgeoise social order, of labour, of war--he has +no ground for denying "the world," for he knows nothing of the +ecclesiastical concept of "the world".... _Denial_ is precisely the +thing that is impossible to him.--In the same way he lacks argumentative +capacity, and has no belief that an article of faith, a "truth," may be +established by proofs (--_his_ proofs are inner "lights," subjective +sensations of happiness and self-approval, simple "proofs of power"--). +Such a doctrine _cannot_ contradict: it doesn't know that other +doctrines exist, or _can_ exist, and is wholly incapable of imagining +anything opposed to it.... If anything of the sort is ever encountered, +it laments the "blindness" with sincere sympathy--for it alone has +"light"--but it does not offer objections.... + +[6] The word _Semiotik_ is in the text, but it is probable that +_Semantik_ is what Nietzsche had in mind. + +[7] One of the six great systems of Hindu philosophy. + +[8] The reputed founder of Taoism. + +[9] Nietzsche's name for one accepting his own philosophy. + +[10] That is, the strict letter of the law--the chief target of Jesus's +early preaching. + +[11] A reference to the "pure ignorance" (_reine Thorheit_) of Parsifal. + + +33. + +In the whole psychology of the "Gospels" the concepts of guilt and +punishment are lacking, and so is that of reward. "Sin," which means +anything that puts a distance between God and man, is abolished--_this +is precisely the "glad tidings."_ Eternal bliss is not merely promised, +nor is it bound up with conditions: it is conceived as the _only_ +reality--what remains consists merely of signs useful in speaking of it. + +The _results_ of such a point of view project themselves into a new _way +of life_, the special evangelical way of life. It is not a "belief" that +marks off the Christian; he is distinguished by a different mode of +action; he acts _differently_. He offers no resistance, either by word +or in his heart, to those who stand against him. He draws no distinction +between strangers and countrymen, Jews and Gentiles ("neighbour," of +course, means fellow-believer, Jew). He is angry with no one, and he +despises no one. He neither appeals to the courts of justice nor heeds +their mandates ("Swear not at all").[12] He never under any +circumstances divorces his wife, even when he has proofs of her +infidelity.--And under all of this is one principle; all of it arises +from one instinct.-- + +[12] Matthew v, 34. + +The life of the Saviour was simply a carrying out of this way of +life--and so was his death.... He no longer needed any formula or ritual +in his relations with God--not even prayer. He had rejected the whole of +the Jewish doctrine of repentance and atonement; he _knew_ that it was +only by a _way_ of life that one could feel one's self "divine," +"blessed," "evangelical," a "child of God." _Not_ by "repentance," _not_ +by "prayer and forgiveness" is the way to God: _only the Gospel way_ +leads to God--it is _itself_ "God!"--What the Gospels _abolished_ was +the Judaism in the concepts of "sin," "forgiveness of sin," "faith," +"salvation through faith"--the whole _ecclesiastical_ dogma of the Jews +was denied by the "glad tidings." + +The deep instinct which prompts the Christian how to _live_ so that he +will feel that he is "in heaven" and is "immortal," despite many reasons +for feeling that he is _not_ "in heaven": this is the only psychological +reality in "salvation."--A new way of life, _not_ a new faith.... + + +34. + +If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: +that he regarded only _subjective_ realities as realities, as +"truths"--that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, +spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The +concept of "the Son of God" does not connote a concrete person in +history, an isolated and definite individual, but an "eternal" fact, a +psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing +is true, and in the highest sense, of the _God_ of this typical +symbolist, of the "kingdom of God," and of the "sonship of God." Nothing +could be more un-Christian than the _crude ecclesiastical_ notions of +God as a _person_, of a "kingdom of God" that is to come, of a "kingdom +of heaven" beyond, and of a "son of God" as the _second person_ of the +Trinity. All this--if I may be forgiven the phrase--is like thrusting +one's fist into the eye (and what an eye!) of the Gospels: a disrespect +for symbols amounting to _world-historical cynicism_.... But it is +nevertheless obvious enough what is meant by the symbols "Father" and +"Son"--not, of course, to every one--: the word "Son" expresses +_entrance_ into the feeling that there is a general transformation of +all things (beatitude), and "Father" expresses _that feeling +itself_--the sensation of eternity and of perfection.--I am ashamed to +remind you of what the church has made of this symbolism: has it not set +an Amphitryon story[13] at the threshold of the Christian "faith"? And a +dogma of "immaculate conception" for good measure?... _And thereby it +has robbed conception of its immaculateness_-- + +[13] Amphitryon was the son of Alcaeus, King of Tiryns. +His wife was Alcmene. During his absence she was visited by Zeus, and +bore Heracles. + +The "kingdom of heaven" is a state of the heart--not something to come +"beyond the world" or "after death." The whole idea of natural death is +_absent_ from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is +absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, +useful only as a symbol. The "hour of death" is _not_ a Christian +idea--"hours," time, the physical life and its crises have no existence +for the bearer of "glad tidings."... The "kingdom of God" is not +something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after +tomorrow, it is not going to come at a "millennium"--it is an experience +of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere.... + + +35. + +This "bearer of glad tidings" died as he lived and _taught_--_not_ to +"save mankind," but to show mankind how to live. It was a _way of life_ +that he bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the +officers, before his accusers--his demeanour on the _cross_. He does not +resist; he does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off +the most extreme penalty--more, _he invites it_.... And he prays, +suffers and loves _with_ those, _in_ those, who do him evil.... _Not_ to +defend one's self, _not_ to show anger, _not_ to lay blames.... On the +contrary, to submit even to the Evil One--to _love_ him.... + + +36. + +--We free spirits--we are the first to have the necessary prerequisite +to understanding what nineteen centuries have misunderstood--that +instinct and passion for integrity which makes war upon the "holy lie" +even more than upon all other lies.... Mankind was unspeakably far from +our benevolent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the +spirit which alone makes possible the solution of such strange and +subtle things: what men always sought, with shameless egoism, was their +_own_ advantage therein; they created the _church_ out of denial of the +Gospels.... + +Whoever sought for signs of an ironical divinity's hand in the great +drama of existence would find no small indication thereof in the +_stupendous question-mark_ that is called Christianity. That mankind +should be on its knees before the very antithesis of what was the +origin, the meaning and the _law_ of the Gospels--that in the concept of +the "church" the very things should be pronounced holy that the "bearer +of glad tidings" regards as _beneath_ him and _behind_ him--it would be +impossible to surpass this as a grand example of _world-historical +irony_-- + + +37. + +--Our age is proud of its historical sense: how, then, could it delude +itself into believing that the _crude fable of the wonder-worker and +Saviour_ constituted the beginnings of Christianity--and that everything +spiritual and symbolical in it only came later? Quite to the contrary, +the whole history of Christianity--from the death on the cross +onward--is the history of a progressively clumsier misunderstanding of +an _original_ symbolism. With every extension of Christianity among +larger and ruder masses, even less capable of grasping the principles +that gave birth to it, the need arose to make it more and more _vulgar_ +and _barbarous_--it absorbed the teachings and rites of all the +_subterranean_ cults of the _imperium Romanum_, and the absurdities +engendered by all sorts of sickly reasoning. It was the fate of +Christianity that its faith had to become as sickly, as low and as +vulgar as the needs were sickly, low and vulgar to which it had to +administer. A _sickly barbarism_ finally lifts itself to power as the +church--the church, that incarnation of deadly hostility to all honesty, +to all loftiness of soul, to all discipline of the spirit, to all +spontaneous and kindly humanity.--_Christian_ values--_noble_ values: it +is only we, we _free_ spirits, who have re-established this greatest of +all antitheses in values!... + + +38. + +--I cannot, at this place, avoid a sigh. There are days when I am +visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy--_contempt of +man_. Let me leave no doubt as to _what_ I despise, _whom_ I despise: +it is the man of today, the man with whom I am unhappily +contemporaneous. The man of today--I am suffocated by his foul +breath!... Toward the past, like all who understand, I am full of +tolerance, which is to say, _generous_ self-control: with gloomy caution +I pass through whole millenniums of this madhouse of a world, call it +"Christianity," "Christian faith" or the "Christian church," as you +will--I take care not to hold mankind responsible for its lunacies. But +my feeling changes and breaks out irresistibly the moment I enter modern +times, _our_ times. Our age _knows better_.... What was formerly merely +sickly now becomes indecent--it is indecent to be a Christian today. +_And here my disgust begins._--I look about me: not a word survives of +what was once called "truth"; we can no longer bear to hear a priest +pronounce the word. Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to +integrity _must_ know that a theologian, a priest, a pope of today not +only errs when he speaks, but actually _lies_--and that he no longer +escapes blame for his lie through "innocence" or "ignorance." The priest +knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any "God," or any +"sinner," or any "Saviour"--that "free will" and the "moral order of the +world" are lies--: serious reflection, the profound self-conquest of the +spirit, _allow_ no man to pretend that he does _not_ know it.... _All_ +the ideas of the church are now recognized for what they are--as the +worst counterfeits in existence, invented to debase nature and all +natural values; the priest himself is seen as he actually is--as the +most dangerous form of parasite, as the venomous spider of creation.... +We know, our _conscience_ now knows--just _what_ the real value of all +those sinister inventions of priest and church has been and _what ends +they have served_, with their debasement of humanity to a state of +self-pollution, the very sight of which excites loathing,--the concepts +"the other world," "the last judgment," "the immortality of the soul," +the "soul" itself: they are all merely so many instruments of torture, +systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains +master.... Every one knows this, _but nevertheless things remain as +before_. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of +self-respect, when our statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of +men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves +Christians and go to the communion-table?... A prince at the head of his +armies, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his +people--and yet acknowledging, _without_ any shame, that he is a +Christian!... Whom, then, does Christianity deny? _what_ does it call +"the world"? To be a _soldier_, to be a judge, to be a patriot; to +defend one's self; to be careful of one's honour; to desire one's own +advantage; to be _proud_ ... every act of everyday, every instinct, +every valuation that shows itself in a _deed_, is now anti-Christian: +what a _monster of falsehood_ the modern man must be to call himself +nevertheless, and _without_ shame, a Christian!-- + + +39. + +--I shall go back a bit, and tell you the _authentic_ history of +Christianity.--The very word "Christianity" is a misunderstanding--at +bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The +"Gospels" _died_ on the cross. What, from that moment onward, was called +the "Gospels" was the very reverse of what _he_ had lived: "bad +tidings," a _Dysangelium_.[14] It is an error amounting to +nonsensicality to see in "faith," and particularly in faith in salvation +through Christ, the distinguishing mark of the Christian: only the +Christian _way of life_, the life _lived_ by him who died on the cross, +is Christian.... To this day _such_ a life is still possible, and for +_certain_ men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will +remain possible in all ages.... _Not_ faith, but acts; above all, an +_avoidance_ of acts, a different _state of being_.... States of +consciousness, faith of a sort, the acceptance, for example, of anything +as true--as every psychologist knows, the value of these things is +perfectly indifferent and fifth-rate compared to that of the instincts: +strictly speaking, the whole concept of intellectual causality is false. +To reduce being a Christian, the state of Christianity, to an acceptance +of truth, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is to formulate the +negation of Christianity. _In fact, there are no Christians._ The +"Christian"--he who for two thousand years has passed as a Christian--is +simply a psychological self-delusion. Closely examined, it appears +that, _despite_ all his "faith," he has been ruled _only_ by his +instincts--and _what instincts_!--In all ages--for example, in the case +of Luther--"faith" has been no more than a cloak, a pretense, a _curtain_ +behind which the instincts have played their game--a shrewd _blindness_ +to the domination of _certain_ of the instincts.... I have already +called "faith" the specially Christian form of _shrewdness_--people +always _talk_ of their "faith" and _act_ according to their +instincts.... In the world of ideas of the Christian there is nothing +that so much as touches reality: on the contrary, one recognizes +an instinctive _hatred_ of reality as the motive power, the only motive +power at the bottom of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That even +here, in _psychologicis_, there is a radical error, which is to say one +conditioning fundamentals, which is to say, one in _substance_. Take +away one idea and put a genuine reality in its place--and the whole of +Christianity crumbles to nothingness!--Viewed calmly, this strangest of +all phenomena, a religion not only depending on errors, but inventive +and ingenious _only_ in devising injurious errors, poisonous to life +and to the heart--this remains a _spectacle for the gods_--for those +gods who are also philosophers, and whom I have encountered, for +example, in the celebrated dialogues at Naxos. At the moment when their +_disgust_ leaves them (--and us!) they will be thankful for the +spectacle afforded by the Christians: perhaps because of _this_ curious +exhibition alone the wretched little planet called the earth deserves a +glance from omnipotence, a show of divine interest.... Therefore, let us +not underestimate the Christians: the Christian, false _to the point of +innocence_, is far above the ape--in its application to the Christians a +well-known theory of descent becomes a mere piece of politeness.... + +[14] So in the text. One of Nietzsche's numerous coinages, obviously +suggested by _Evangelium_, the German for _gospel_. + + +40. + +--The fate of the Gospels was decided by death--it hung on the "cross."... +It was only death, that unexpected and shameful death; it was only +the cross, which was usually reserved for the canaille only--it was only +this appalling paradox which brought the disciples face to face with the +real riddle: "_Who was it? what was it_?"--The feeling of dismay, of +profound affront and injury; the suspicion that such a death might +involve a _refutation_ of their cause; the terrible question, "Why just +in this way?"--this state of mind is only too easy to understand. Here +everything _must_ be accounted for as necessary; everything must have a +meaning, a reason, the highest sort of reason; the love of a disciple +excludes all chance. Only then did the chasm of doubt yawn: "_Who_ put +him to death? who was his natural enemy?"--this question flashed like a +lightning-stroke. Answer: dominant Judaism, its ruling class. From that +moment, one found one's self in revolt _against_ the established order, +and began to understand Jesus as _in revolt against the established +order_. Until then this militant, this nay-saying, nay-doing element in +his character had been lacking; what is more, he had appeared to present +its opposite. Obviously, the little community had _not_ understood what +was precisely the most important thing of all: the example offered by +this way of dying, the freedom from and superiority to every feeling of +_ressentiment_--a plain indication of how little he was understood at +all! All that Jesus could hope to accomplish by his death, in itself, +was to offer the strongest possible proof, or _example_, of his +teachings in the most public manner.... But his disciples were very far +from _forgiving_ his death--though to have done so would have accorded +with the Gospels in the highest degree; and neither were they prepared +to _offer_ themselves, with gentle and serene calmness of heart, for a +similar death.... On the contrary, it was precisely the most +unevangelical of feelings, _revenge_, that now possessed them. It seemed +impossible that the cause should perish with his death: "recompense" and +"judgment" became necessary (--yet what could be less evangelical than +"recompense," "punishment," and "sitting in judgment"!). Once more the +popular belief in the coming of a messiah appeared in the foreground; +attention was rivetted upon an historical moment: the "kingdom of God" +is to come, with judgment upon his enemies.... But in all this there was +a wholesale misunderstanding: imagine the "kingdom of God" as a last +act, as a mere promise! The Gospels had been, in fact, the incarnation, +the fulfilment, the _realization_ of this "kingdom of God." It was only +now that all the familiar contempt for and bitterness against Pharisees +and theologians began to appear in the character of the Master--he was +thereby _turned_ into a Pharisee and theologian himself! On the other +hand, the savage veneration of these completely unbalanced souls could +no longer endure the Gospel doctrine, taught by Jesus, of the equal +right of all men to be children of God: their revenge took the form of +_elevating_ Jesus in an extravagant fashion, and thus separating him +from themselves: just as, in earlier times, the Jews, to revenge +themselves upon their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and +placed him on a great height. The One God and the Only Son of God: both +were products of _ressentiment_.... + + +41. + +--And from that time onward an absurd problem offered itself: "how +_could_ God allow it!" To which the deranged reason of the little +community formulated an answer that was terrifying in its absurdity: God +gave his son as a _sacrifice_ for the forgiveness of sins. At once there +was an end of the gospels! Sacrifice for sin, and in its most obnoxious +and barbarous form: sacrifice of the _innocent_ for the sins of the +guilty! What appalling paganism!--Jesus himself had done away with the +very concept of "guilt," he denied that there was any gulf fixed between +God and man; he _lived_ this unity between God and man, and that was +precisely _his_ "glad tidings".... And _not_ as a mere privilege!--From +this time forward the type of the Saviour was corrupted, bit by bit, by +the doctrine of judgment and of the second coming, the doctrine of death +as a sacrifice, the doctrine of the _resurrection_, by means of which +the entire concept of "blessedness," the whole and only reality of the +gospels, is juggled away--in favour of a state of existence _after_ +death!... St. Paul, with that rabbinical impudence which shows itself in +all his doings, gave a logical quality to that conception, that +_indecent_ conception, in this way: "_If_ Christ did not rise from the +dead, then all our faith is in vain!"--And at once there sprang from the +Gospels the most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the +_shameless_ doctrine of personal immortality.... Paul even preached it +as a _reward_.... + + +42. + +One now begins to see just _what_ it was that came to an end with the +death on the cross: a new and thoroughly original effort to found a +Buddhistic peace movement, and so establish _happiness on earth_--real, +_not_ merely promised. For this remains--as I have already pointed +out--the essential difference between the two religions of _decadence_: +Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises +everything, but _fulfils nothing_.--Hard upon the heels of the "glad +tidings" came the worst imaginable: those of Paul. In Paul is incarnated +the very opposite of the "bearer of glad tidings"; he represents the +genius for hatred, the vision of hatred, the relentless logic of hatred. +_What_, indeed, has not this dysangelist sacrificed to hatred! Above +all, the Saviour: he nailed him to _his own_ cross. The life, the +example, the teaching, the death of Christ, the meaning and the law of +the whole gospels--nothing was left of all this after that counterfeiter +in hatred had reduced it to his uses. Surely _not_ reality; surely _not_ +historical truth!... Once more the priestly instinct of the Jew +perpetrated the same old master crime against history--he simply struck +out the yesterday and the day before yesterday of Christianity, and +_invented his own history of Christian beginnings_. Going further, he +treated the history of Israel to another falsification, so that it +became a mere prologue to _his_ achievement: all the prophets, it now +appeared, had referred to _his_ "Saviour."... Later on the church even +falsified the history of man in order to make it a prologue to +Christianity.... The figure of the Saviour, his teaching, his way of +life, his death, the meaning of his death, even the consequences of his +death--nothing remained untouched, nothing remained in even remote +contact with reality. Paul simply shifted the centre of gravity of that +whole life to a place _behind_ this existence--in the _lie_ of the +"risen" Jesus. At bottom, he had no use for the life of the +Saviour--what he needed was the death on the cross, _and_ something +more. To see anything honest in such a man as Paul, whose home was at +the centre of the Stoical enlightenment, when he converts an +hallucination into a _proof_ of the resurrection of the Saviour, or even +to believe his tale that he suffered from this hallucination +himself--this would be a genuine _niaiserie_ in a psychologist. Paul +willed the end; _therefore_ he also willed the means.... What he himself +didn't believe was swallowed readily enough by the idiots among whom he +spread _his_ teaching.--What _he_ wanted was power; in Paul the priest +once more reached out for power--he had use only for such concepts, +teachings and symbols as served the purpose of tyrannizing over the +masses and organizing mobs. _What_ was the only part of Christianity +that Mohammed borrowed later on? Paul's invention, his device for +establishing priestly tyranny and organizing the mob: the belief in the +immortality of the soul--_that is to say, the doctrine of +"judgment"_.... + + +43. + +When the centre of gravity of life is placed, _not_ in life itself, but +in "the beyond"--in _nothingness_--then one has taken away its centre of +gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all +reason, all natural instinct--henceforth, everything in the instincts +that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is +a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: +_this_ is now the "meaning" of life.... Why be public-spirited? Why take +any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one +another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to +serve it?... Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the +"straight path."--"_One_ thing only is necessary".... That every man, +because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that +in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of _every_ individual +may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the +three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly +_suspended_ in their behalf--it is impossible to lavish too much +contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to +infinity, to _insolence_. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely +_this_ miserable flattery of personal vanity for its _triumph_--it was +thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon +evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side. +The "salvation of the soul"--in plain English: "the world revolves +around _me_."... The poisonous doctrine, "_equal_ rights for all," has +been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and +crannies of bad instinct Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all +feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to +say, upon the first _prerequisite_ to every step upward, to every +development of civilization--out of the _ressentiment_ of the masses it +has forged its chief weapons against _us_, against everything noble, +joyous and high-spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth.... To +allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most +vicious outrage upon _noble_ humanity ever perpetrated.--_And_ let us +not underestimate the fatal influence that Christianity has had, even +upon politics! Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, +for the right of dominion, for feelings of honourable pride in himself +and his equals--for the _pathos of distance_.... Our politics is sick +with this lack of courage!--The aristocratic attitude of mind has been +undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if belief in the +"privileges of the majority" makes and _will continue to make_ +revolutions--it is Christianity, let us not doubt, and _Christian_ +valuations, which convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and +crime! Christianity is a revolt of all creatures that creep on the +ground against everything that is _lofty_: the gospel of the "lowly" +_lowers_.... + + +44. + +--The gospels are invaluable as evidence of the corruption that was +already persistent _within_ the primitive community. That which Paul, +with the cynical logic of a rabbi, later developed to a conclusion was +at bottom merely a process of decay that had begun with the death of the +Saviour.--These gospels cannot be read too carefully; difficulties lurk +behind every word. I confess--I hope it will not be held against +me--that it is precisely for this reason that they offer first-rate joy +to a psychologist--as the _opposite_ of all merely naive corruption, as +refinement _par excellence_, as an artistic triumph in psychological +corruption. The gospels, in fact, stand alone. The Bible as a whole is +not to be compared to them. Here we are among Jews: this is the _first_ +thing to be borne in mind if we are not to lose the thread of the +matter. This positive genius for conjuring up a delusion of personal +"holiness" unmatched anywhere else, either in books or by men; this +elevation of fraud in word and attitude to the level of an _art_--all +this is not an accident due to the chance talents of an individual, or +to any violation of nature. The thing responsible is _race_. The whole +of Judaism appears in Christianity as the art of concocting holy lies, +and there, after many centuries of earnest Jewish training and hard +practice of Jewish technic, the business comes to the stage of mastery. +The Christian, that _ultima ratio_ of lying, is the Jew all over +again--he is _threefold_ the Jew.... The underlying will to make use +only of such concepts, symbols and attitudes as fit into priestly +practice, the instinctive repudiation of every _other_ mode of thought, +and every other method of estimating values and utilities--this is not +only tradition, it is _inheritance_: only as an inheritance is it able +to operate with the force of nature. The whole of mankind, even the best +minds of the best ages (with one exception, perhaps hardly human--), +have permitted themselves to be deceived. The gospels have been read as +a _book of innocence_ ... surely no small indication of the high skill +with which the trick has been done.--Of course, if we could actually +_see_ these astounding bigots and bogus saints, even if only for an +instant, the farce would come to an end,--and it is precisely because +_I_ cannot read a word of theirs without seeing their attitudinizing +that _I have made an end of them_.... I simply cannot endure the way +they have of rolling up their eyes.--For the majority, happily enough, +books are mere _literature_.--Let us not be led astray: they say "judge +not," and yet they condemn to hell whoever stands in their way. In +letting God sit in judgment they judge themselves; in glorifying God +they glorify themselves; in _demanding_ that every one show the virtues +which they themselves happen to be capable of--still more, which they +_must_ have in order to remain on top--they assume the grand air of men +struggling for virtue, of men engaging in a war that virtue may prevail. +"We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves _for the good_" (--"the truth," +"the light," "the kingdom of God"): in point of fact, they simply do +what they cannot help doing. Forced, like hypocrites, to be sneaky, to +hide in corners, to slink along in the shadows, they convert their +necessity into a _duty_: it is on grounds of duty that they account for +their lives of humility, and that humility becomes merely one more proof +of their piety.... Ah, that humble, chaste, charitable brand of fraud! +"Virtue itself shall bear witness for us."... One may read the gospels +as books of _moral_ seduction: these petty folks fasten themselves to +morality--they know the uses of morality! Morality is the best of all +devices for leading mankind _by the nose_!--The fact is that the +conscious conceit of the chosen here disguises itself as modesty: it is +in this way that _they_, the "community," the "good and just," range +themselves, once and for always, on one side, the side of "the +truth"--and the rest of mankind, "the world," on the other.... In _that_ +we observe the most fatal sort of megalomania that the earth has ever +seen: little abortions of bigots and liars began to claim exclusive +rights in the concepts of "God," "the truth," "the light," "the spirit," +"love," "wisdom" and "life," as if these things were synonyms of +themselves and thereby they sought to fence themselves off from the +"world"; little super-Jews, ripe for some sort of madhouse, turned +values upside down in order to meet _their_ notions, just as if the +Christian were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even the _last +judgment_ of all the rest.... The whole disaster was only made possible +by the fact that there already existed in the world a similar +megalomania, allied to this one in race, to wit, the _Jewish_: once a +chasm began to yawn between Jews and Judaeo-Christians, the latter had +no choice but to employ the self-preservative measures that the Jewish +instinct had devised, even _against_ the Jews themselves, whereas the +Jews had employed them only against non-Jews. The Christian is simply a +Jew of the "reformed" confession.-- + + +45. + +--I offer a few examples of the sort of thing these petty people have +got into their heads--what they have _put into the mouth_ of the Master: +the unalloyed creed of "beautiful souls."-- + +"And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart +thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. +Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha +in the day of judgment, than for that city" (Mark vi, 11)--How +_evangelical_!... + +"And whosoever shall offend one of _these_ little ones that believe in +me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, +and he were cast into the sea" (Mark ix, 42).--How _evangelical_!... + +"And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for +thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes +to be cast into hell fire; Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not +quenched." (Mark ix, 47.[15])--It is not exactly the eye that is +meant.... + +[15] To which, without mentioning it, Nietzsche adds verse 48. + +"Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, +which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God +come with power." (Mark ix, 1.)--Well _lied_, lion![16]... + +[16] A paraphrase of Demetrius' "Well roar'd, Lion!" in act v, scene 1 +of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The lion, of course, is the familiar +Christian symbol for Mark. + +"Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his +cross, and follow me. _For_..." (_Note of a psychologist._ Christian +morality is refuted by its _fors_: its reasons are against it,--this +makes it Christian.) Mark viii, 34.-- + +"Judge not, that ye be not judged. With what measure ye mete, it shall +be measured to you again." (Matthew vii, 1.[17])--What a notion of +justice, of a "just" judge!... + +[17] Nietzsche also quotes part of verse 2. + +"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even +the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye +more _than others_? do not even the publicans so?" (Matthew v, +46.[18])--Principle of "Christian love": it insists upon being well +_paid_ in the end.... + +[18] The quotation also includes verse 47. + +"But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father +forgive your trespasses." (Matthew vi, 15.)--Very compromising for the +said "father."... + +"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all +these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew vi, 33.)--All these +things: namely, food, clothing, all the necessities of life. An _error_, +to put it mildly.... A bit before this God appears as a tailor, at least +in certain cases.... + +"Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward _is_ +great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the +prophets." (Luke vi, 23.)--_Impudent_ rabble! It compares itself to the +prophets.... + +"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and _that_ the spirit of God +dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, _him shall God +destroy_; for the temple of God is holy, _which temple ye are_." (Paul, +1 Corinthians iii, 16.[19])--For that sort of thing one cannot have +enough contempt.... + +[19] And 17. + +"Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world +shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?" +(Paul, 1 Corinthians vi, 2.)--Unfortunately, not merely the speech of +a lunatic.... This _frightful impostor_ then proceeds: "Know ye not +that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this +life?"... + +"Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in +the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by +the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.... Not many wise +men after the flesh, not men mighty, not many noble _are called_: But +God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; +and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things +which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are +despised, hath God chosen, _yea_, and things which are not, to bring to +nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence." +(Paul, 1 Corinthians i, 20ff.[20])--In order to _understand_ this +passage, a first-rate example of the psychology underlying every +Chandala-morality, one should read the first part of my "Genealogy of +Morals": there, for the first time, the antagonism between a _noble_ +morality and a morality born of _ressentiment_ and impotent vengefulness +is exhibited. Paul was the greatest of all apostles of revenge.... + +[20] Verses 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, 29. + + +46. + +--_What follows, then?_ That one had better put on gloves before reading +the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it very +advisable. One would as little choose "early Christians" for companions +as Polish Jews: not that one need seek out an objection to them.... +Neither has a pleasant smell.--I have searched the New Testament in vain +for a single sympathetic touch; nothing is there that is free, kindly, +open-hearted or upright. In it humanity does not even make the first +step upward--the instinct for _cleanliness_ is lacking.... Only _evil_ +instincts are there, and there is not even the courage of these evil +instincts. It is all cowardice; it is all a shutting of the eyes, a +self-deception. Every other book becomes clean, once one has read the +New Testament: for example, immediately after reading Paul I took up +with delight that most charming and wanton of scoffers, Petronius, of +whom one may say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote of Caesar Borgia to the +Duke of Parma: "_e tutto festo_"--immortally healthy, immortally +cheerful and sound.... These petty bigots make a capital miscalculation. +They attack, but everything they attack is thereby _distinguished_. +Whoever is attacked by an "early Christian" is surely _not_ befouled.... +On the contrary, it is an honour to have an "early Christian" as an +opponent. One cannot read the New Testament without acquired admiration +for whatever it abuses--not to speak of the "wisdom of this world," +which an impudent wind-bag tries to dispose of "by the foolishness of +preaching."... Even the scribes and pharisees are benefitted by such +opposition: they must certainly have been worth something to have been +hated in such an indecent manner. Hypocrisy--as if this were a charge +that the "early Christians" _dared_ to make!--After all, they were the +_privileged_, and that was enough: the hatred of the Chandala needed no +other excuse. The "early Christian"--and also, I fear, the "last +Christian," _whom I may perhaps live to see_--is a rebel against all +privilege by profound instinct--he lives and makes war for ever for +"equal rights."... Strictly speaking, he has no alternative. When a man +proposes to represent, in his own person, the "chosen of God"--or to be +a "temple of God," or a "judge of the angels"--then every _other_ +criterion, whether based upon honesty, upon intellect, upon manliness +and pride, or upon beauty and freedom of the heart, becomes simply +"worldly"--_evil in itself_.... Moral: every word that comes from the +lips of an "early Christian" is a lie, and his every act is +instinctively dishonest--all his values, all his aims are noxious, but +_whoever_ he hates, _whatever_ he hates, has real _value_.... The +Christian, and particularly the Christian priest, is thus a _criterion +of values_. + +--Must I add that, in the whole New Testament, there appears but a +_solitary_ figure worthy of honour? Pilate, the Roman viceroy. To regard +a Jewish imbroglio _seriously_--that was quite beyond him. One Jew more +or less--what did it matter?... The noble scorn of a Roman, before whom +the word "truth" was shamelessly mishandled, enriched the New Testament +with the only saying _that has any value_--and that is at once its +criticism and its _destruction_: "What is truth?..." + + +47. + +--The thing that sets us apart is not that we are unable to find God, +either in history, or in nature, or behind nature--but that we regard +what has been honoured as God, not as "divine," but as pitiable, as +absurd, as injurious; not as a mere error, but as a _crime against +life_.... We deny that God is God.... If any one were to _show_ us this +Christian God, we'd be still less inclined to believe in him.--In a +formula: _deus, qualem Paulus creavit, dei negatio_.--Such a religion as +Christianity, which does not touch reality at a single point and which +goes to pieces the moment reality asserts its rights at any point, must +be inevitably the deadly enemy of the "wisdom of this world," which is +to say, of _science_--and it will give the name of good to whatever +means serve to poison, calumniate and _cry down_ all intellectual +discipline, all lucidity and strictness in matters of intellectual +conscience, and all noble coolness and freedom of the mind. "Faith," as +an imperative, vetoes science--_in praxi_, lying at any price.... Paul +_well knew_ that lying--that "faith"--was necessary; later on the church +borrowed the fact from Paul.--The God that Paul invented for himself, a +God who "reduced to absurdity" "the wisdom of this world" (especially +the two great enemies of superstition, philology and medicine), is in +truth only an indication of Paul's resolute _determination_ to +accomplish that very thing himself: to give one's own will the name of +God, _thora_--that is essentially Jewish. Paul _wants_ to dispose of the +"wisdom of this world": his enemies are the _good_ philologians and +physicians of the Alexandrine school--on them he makes his war. As a +matter of fact no man can be a _philologian_ or a physician without +being also _Antichrist_. That is to say, as a philologian a man sees +_behind_ the "holy books," and as a physician he sees _behind_ the +physiological degeneration of the typical Christian. The physician says +"incurable"; the philologian says "fraud."... + + +48. + +--Has any one ever clearly understood the celebrated story at the +beginning of the Bible--of God's mortal terror of _science_?... No one, +in fact, has understood it. This priest-book _par excellence_ opens, as +is fitting, with the great inner difficulty of the priest: _he_ faces +only one great danger; _ergo_, "God" faces only one great danger.-- + +The old God, wholly "spirit," wholly the high-priest, wholly perfect, is +promenading his garden: he is bored and trying to kill time. Against +boredom even gods struggle in vain.[21] What does he do? He creates +man--man is entertaining.... But then he notices that man is also bored. +God's pity for the only form of distress that invades all paradises +knows no bounds: so he forthwith creates other animals. God's first +mistake: to man these other animals were not entertaining--he sought +dominion over them; he did not want to be an "animal" himself.--So God +created woman. In the act he brought boredom to an end--and also many +other things! Woman was the _second_ mistake of God.--"Woman, at bottom, +is a serpent, Heva"--every priest knows that; "from woman comes every +evil in the world"--every priest knows that, too. _Ergo_, she is also to +blame for _science_.... It was through woman that man learned to taste +of the tree of knowledge.--What happened? The old God was seized by +mortal terror. Man himself had been his _greatest_ blunder; he had +created a rival to himself; science makes men _godlike_--it is all up +with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!--_Moral_: science is +the forbidden _per se_; it alone is forbidden. Science is the _first_ of +sins, the germ of all sins, the _original_ sin. _This is all there is of +morality._--"Thou shall _not_ know":--the rest follows from that.--God's +mortal terror, however, did not hinder him from being shrewd. How is one +to _protect_ one's self against science? For a long while this was the +capital problem. Answer: Out of paradise with man! Happiness, leisure, +foster thought--and all thoughts are bad thoughts!--Man _must_ not +think.--And so the priest invents distress, death, the mortal dangers of +childbirth, all sorts of misery, old age, decrepitude, above all, +_sickness_--nothing but devices for making war on science! The troubles +of man don't _allow_ him to think.... Nevertheless--how terrible!--, the +edifice of knowledge begins to tower aloft, invading heaven, shadowing +the gods--what is to be done?--The old God invents _war_; he separates +the peoples; he makes men destroy one another (--the priests have always +had need of war....). War--among other things, a great disturber of +science!--Incredible! Knowledge, _deliverance from the priests_, +prospers in spite of war.--So the old God comes to his final resolution: +"Man has become scientific--_there is no help for it: he must be +drowned!_"... + +[21] A paraphrase of Schiller's "Against stupidity even gods struggle in +vain." + + +49. + +--I have been understood. At the opening of the Bible there is the +_whole_ psychology of the priest.--The priest knows of only one great +danger: that is science--the sound comprehension of cause and effect. +But science flourishes, on the whole, only under favourable +conditions--a man must have time, he must have an _overflowing_ +intellect, in order to "know."... "_Therefore_, man must be made +unhappy,"--this has been, in all ages, the logic of the priest.--It is +easy to see just _what_, by this logic, was the first thing to come into +the world:--"_sin_."... The concept of guilt and punishment, the whole +"moral order of the world," was set up _against_ science--_against_ the +deliverance of man from priests.... Man must _not_ look outward; he must +look inward. He must _not_ look at things shrewdly and cautiously, to +learn about them; he must not look at all; he must _suffer_.... And he +must suffer so much that he is always in need of the priest.--Away with +physicians! _What is needed is a Saviour._--The concept of guilt and +punishment, including the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," of +"forgiveness"--_lies_ through and through, and absolutely without +psychological reality--were devised to destroy man's _sense of +causality_: they are an attack upon the concept of cause and +effect!--And _not_ an attack with the fist, with the knife, with honesty +in hate and love! On the contrary, one inspired by the most cowardly, +the most crafty, the most ignoble of instincts! An attack of _priests_! +An attack of _parasites_! The vampirism of pale, subterranean +leeches!... When the natural consequences of an act are no longer +"natural," but are regarded as produced by the ghostly creations of +superstition--by "God," by "spirits," by "souls"--and reckoned as merely +"moral" consequences, as rewards, as punishments, as hints, as lessons, +then the whole ground-work of knowledge is destroyed--_then the greatest +of crimes against humanity has been perpetrated_.--I repeat that sin, +man's self-desecration _par excellence_, was invented in order to make +science, culture, and every elevation and ennobling of man impossible; +the priest _rules_ through the invention of sin.-- + + +50. + +--In this place I can't permit myself to omit a psychology of "belief," +of the "believer," for the special benefit of "believers." If there +remain any today who do not yet know how _indecent_ it is to be +"believing"--_or_ how much a sign of _decadence_, of a broken will to +live--then they will know it well enough tomorrow. My voice reaches even +the deaf.--It appears, unless I have been incorrectly informed, that +there prevails among Christians a sort of criterion of truth that is +called "proof by power." "Faith makes blessed: _therefore_ it is +true."--It might be objected right here that blessedness is not +demonstrated, it is merely _promised_: it hangs upon "faith" as a +condition--one _shall_ be blessed _because_ one believes.... But what of +the thing that the priest promises to the believer, the wholly +transcendental "beyond"--how is _that_ to be demonstrated?--The "proof +by power," thus assumed, is actually no more at bottom than a belief +that the effects which faith promises will not fail to appear. In a +formula: "I believe that faith makes for blessedness--_therefore_, it is +true."... But this is as far as we may go. This "therefore" would be +_absurdum_ itself as a criterion of truth.--But let us admit, for the +sake of politeness, that blessedness by faith may be demonstrated +(--_not_ merely hoped for, and _not_ merely promised by the suspicious +lips of a priest): even so, _could_ blessedness--in a technical term, +_pleasure_--ever be a proof of truth? So little is this true that it is +almost a proof against truth when sensations of pleasure influence the +answer to the question "What is true?" or, at all events, it is enough +to make that "truth" highly suspicious. The proof by "pleasure" is a +proof _of_ "pleasure"--nothing more; why in the world should it be +assumed that _true_ judgments give more pleasure than false ones, and +that, in conformity to some pre-established harmony, they necessarily +bring agreeable feelings in their train?--The experience of all +disciplined and profound minds teaches _the contrary_. Man has had to +fight for every atom of the truth, and has had to pay for it almost +everything that the heart, that human love, that human trust cling to. +Greatness of soul is needed for this business: the service of truth is +the hardest of all services.--What, then, is the meaning of _integrity_ +in things intellectual? It means that a man must be severe with his own +heart, that he must scorn "beautiful feelings," and that he makes every +Yea and Nay a matter of conscience!--Faith makes blessed: _therefore_, +it lies.... + + +51. + +The fact that faith, under certain circumstances, may work for +blessedness, but that this blessedness produced by an _idee fixe_ by no +means makes the idea itself true, and the fact that faith actually moves +no mountains, but instead _raises them up_ where there were none before: +all this is made sufficiently clear by a walk through a _lunatic +asylum_. _Not_, of course, to a priest: for his instincts prompt him to +the lie that sickness is not sickness and lunatic asylums not lunatic +asylums. Christianity finds sickness _necessary_, just as the Greek +spirit had need of a superabundance of health--the actual ulterior +purpose of the whole system of salvation of the church is to _make_ +people ill. And the church itself--doesn't it set up a Catholic lunatic +asylum as the ultimate ideal?--The whole earth as a madhouse?--The sort +of religious man that the church _wants_ is a typical _decadent_; the +moment at which a religious crisis dominates a people is always marked +by epidemics of nervous disorder; the "inner world" of the religious man +is so much like the "inner world" of the overstrung and exhausted that +it is difficult to distinguish between them; the "highest" states of +mind, held up before mankind by Christianity as of supreme worth, are +actually epileptoid in form--the church has granted the name of holy +only to lunatics or to gigantic frauds _in majorem dei honorem_.... Once +I ventured to designate the whole Christian system of _training_[22] in +penance and salvation (now best studied in England) as a method of +producing a _folie circulaire_ upon a soil already prepared for it, +which is to say, a soil thoroughly unhealthy. Not every one may be a +Christian: one is not "converted" to Christianity--one must first +be sick enough for it.... We others, who have the _courage_ for health +_and_ likewise for contempt,--we may well despise a religion that +teaches misunderstanding of the body! that refuses to rid itself of the +superstition about the soul! that makes a "virtue" of insufficient +nourishment! that combats health as a sort of enemy, devil, temptation! +that persuades itself that it is possible to carry about a "perfect +soul" in a cadaver of a body, and that, to this end, had to devise for +itself a new concept of "perfection," a pale, sickly, idiotically +ecstatic state of existence, so-called "holiness"--a holiness that is +itself merely a series of symptoms of an impoverished, enervated and +incurably disordered body!... The Christian movement, as a European +movement, was from the start no more than a general uprising of all +sorts of outcast and refuse elements (--who now, under cover of +Christianity, aspire to power). It does _not_ represent the decay of a +race; it represents, on the contrary, a conglomeration of _decadence_ +products from all directions, crowding together and seeking one another +out. It was _not_, as has been thought, the corruption of antiquity, of +_noble_ antiquity, which made Christianity possible; one cannot too +sharply challenge the learned imbecility which today maintains that +theory. At the time when the sick and rotten Chandala classes in the +whole _imperium_ were Christianized, the _contrary type_, the nobility, +reached its finest and ripest development. The majority became master; +democracy, with its Christian instincts, _triumphed_.... Christianity +was not "national," it was not based on race--it appealed to all the +varieties of men disinherited by life, it had its allies everywhere. +Christianity has the rancour of the sick at its very core--the instinct +against the _healthy_, against _health_. Everything that is +well-constituted, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offence +to its ears and eyes. Again I remind you of Paul's priceless saying: +"And God hath chosen the _weak_ things of the world, the _foolish_ +things of the world, the _base_ things of the world, and things which +are _despised_":[23] _this_ was the formula; _in hoc signo_ the +_decadence_ triumphed.--_God on the cross_--is man always to miss the +frightful inner significance of this symbol?--Everything that suffers, +everything that hangs on the cross, is _divine_.... We all hang on the +cross, consequently _we_ are divine.... We alone are divine.... +Christianity was thus a victory: a nobler attitude of mind was destroyed +by it--Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of +humanity.-- + +[22] The word _training_ is in English in the text. + +[23] 1 Corinthians i, 27, 28. + + +52. + +Christianity also stands in opposition to all _intellectual_ +well-being,--sick reasoning is the only sort that it _can_ use as +Christian reasoning; it takes the side of everything that is idiotic; it +pronounces a curse upon "intellect," upon the _superbia_ of the healthy +intellect. Since sickness is inherent in Christianity, it follows that +the typically Christian state of "faith" _must_ be a form of sickness +too, and that all straight, straightforward and scientific paths to +knowledge _must_ be banned by the church as _forbidden_ ways. Doubt is +thus a sin from the start.... The complete lack of psychological +cleanliness in the priest--revealed by a glance at him--is a phenomenon +_resulting_ from _decadence_,--one may observe in hysterical women and +in rachitic children how regularly the falsification of instincts, +delight in lying for the mere sake of lying, and incapacity for looking +straight and walking straight are symptoms of _decadence_. "Faith" +means the will to avoid knowing what is true. The pietist, the priest of +either sex, is a fraud _because_ he is sick: his instinct _demands_ that +the truth shall never be allowed its rights on any point. "Whatever +makes for illness is _good_; whatever issues from abundance, from +superabundance, from power, is _evil_": so argues the believer. The +_impulse to lie_--it is by this that I recognize every foreordained +theologian.--Another characteristic of the theologian is his _unfitness +for philology_. What I here mean by philology is, in a general sense, +the art of reading with profit--the capacity for absorbing facts +_without_ interpreting them falsely, and _without_ losing caution, +patience and subtlety in the effort to understand them. Philology as +_ephexis_[24] in interpretation: whether one be dealing with books, with +newspaper reports, with the most fateful events or with weather +statistics--not to mention the "salvation of the soul."... The way in +which a theologian, whether in Berlin or in Rome, is ready to explain, +say, a "passage of Scripture," or an experience, or a victory by the +national army, by turning upon it the high illumination of the Psalms of +David, is always so _daring_ that it is enough to make a philologian run +up a wall. But what shall he do when pietists and other such cows from +Suabia[25] use the "finger of God" to convert their miserably +commonplace and huggermugger existence into a miracle of "grace," a +"providence" and an "experience of salvation"? The most modest exercise +of the intellect, not to say of decency, should certainly be enough to +convince these interpreters of the perfect childishness and unworthiness +of such a misuse of the divine digital dexterity. However small our +piety, if we ever encountered a god who always cured us of a cold in the +head at just the right time, or got us into our carriage at the very +instant heavy rain began to fall, he would seem so absurd a god that +he'd have to be abolished even if he existed. God as a domestic servant, +as a letter carrier, as an almanac-man--at bottom, he is a mere name for +the stupidest sort of chance.... "Divine Providence," which every third +man in "educated Germany" still believes in, is so strong an argument +against God that it would be impossible to think of a stronger. And in +any case it is an argument against Germans!... + +[24] That is, to say, scepticism. Among the Greeks scepticism was also +occasionally called ephecticism. + +[25] A reference to the University of Tuebingen and its famous school of +Biblical criticism. The leader of this school was F. C. Baur, and one of +the men greatly influenced by it was Nietzsche's pet abomination, David +F. Strauss, himself a Suabian. _Vide_ Sec. 10 and Sec. 28. + + +53. + +--It is so little true that _martyrs_ offer any support to the truth of +a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything +to do with the truth at all. In the very tone in which a martyr flings +what he fancies to be true at the head of the world there appears so low +a grade of intellectual honesty and such _insensibility_ to the problem +of "truth," that it is never necessary to refute him. Truth is not +something that one man has and another man has not: at best, only +peasants, or peasant-apostles like Luther, can think of truth in any +such way. One may rest assured that the greater the degree of a man's +intellectual conscience the greater will be his modesty, his +_discretion_, on this point. To _know_ in five cases, and to refuse, +with delicacy, to know anything _further_.... "Truth," as the word is +understood by every prophet, every sectarian, every free-thinker, every +Socialist and every churchman, is simply a complete proof that not even +a beginning has been made in the intellectual discipline and +self-control that are necessary to the unearthing of even the smallest +truth.--The deaths of the martyrs, it may be said in passing, have been +misfortunes of history: they have _misled_.... The conclusion that all +idiots, women and plebeians come to, that there must be something in a +cause for which any one goes to his death (or which, as under primitive +Christianity, sets off epidemics of death-seeking)--this conclusion has +been an unspeakable drag upon the testing of facts, upon the whole +spirit of inquiry and investigation. The martyrs have _damaged_ the +truth.... Even to this day the crude fact of persecution is enough to +give an honourable name to the most empty sort of sectarianism.--But +why? Is the worth of a cause altered by the fact that some one had laid +down his life for it?--An error that becomes honourable is simply an +error that has acquired one seductive charm the more: do you suppose, +Messrs. Theologians, that we shall give you the chance to be martyred +for your lies?--One best disposes of a cause by respectfully putting it +on ice--that is also the best way to dispose of theologians.... This was +precisely the world-historical stupidity of all the persecutors: that +they gave the appearance of honour to the cause they opposed--that they +made it a present of the fascination of martyrdom.... Women are still on +their knees before an error because they have been told that some one +died on the cross for it. _Is the cross, then, an argument?_--But about +all these things there is one, and one only, who has said what has been +needed for thousands of years--_Zarathustra_. + + They made signs in blood along the way that they went, and their + folly taught them that the truth is proved by blood. + + But blood is the worst of all testimonies to the truth; blood + poisoneth even the purest teaching and turneth it into madness and + hatred in the heart. + + And when one goeth through fire for his teaching--what doth that + prove? Verily, it is more when one's teaching cometh out of one's + own burning![26] + +[26] The quotations are from "Also sprach Zarathustra" ii, 24: "Of +Priests." + + +54. + +Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are sceptical. +Zarathustra is a sceptic. The strength, the _freedom_ which proceed from +intellectual power, from a superabundance of intellectual power, +_manifest_ themselves as scepticism. Men of fixed convictions do not +count when it comes to determining what is fundamental in values and +lack of values. Men of convictions are prisoners. They do not see far +enough, they do not see what is _below_ them: whereas a man who would +talk to any purpose about value and non-value must be able to see five +hundred convictions _beneath_ him--and _behind_ him.... A mind that +aspires to great things, and that wills the means thereto, is +necessarily sceptical. Freedom from any sort of conviction _belongs_ to +strength, and to an independent point of view.... That grand passion +which is at once the foundation and the power of a sceptic's existence, +and is both more enlightened and more despotic than he is himself, +drafts the whole of his intellect into its service; it makes him +unscrupulous; it gives him courage to employ unholy means; under certain +circumstances it does not _begrudge_ him even convictions. Conviction as +a means: one may achieve a good deal by means of a conviction. A grand +passion makes use of and uses up convictions; it does not yield to +them--it knows itself to be sovereign.--On the contrary, the need of +faith, of something unconditioned by yea or nay, of Carlylism, if I may +be allowed the word, is a need of _weakness_. The man of faith, the +"believer" of any sort, is necessarily a dependent man--such a man +cannot posit _himself_ as a goal, nor can he find goals within himself. +The "believer" does not belong to himself; he can only be a means to an +end; he must be _used up_; he needs some one to use him up. His instinct +gives the highest honours to an ethic of self-effacement; he is prompted +to embrace it by everything: his prudence, his experience, his vanity. +Every sort of faith is in itself an evidence of self-effacement, of +self-estrangement.... When one reflects how necessary it is to the great +majority that there be regulations to restrain them from without and +hold them fast, and to what extent control, or, in a higher sense, +_slavery_, is the one and only condition which makes for the well-being +of the weak-willed man, and especially woman, then one at once +understands conviction and "faith." To the man with convictions they are +his backbone. To _avoid_ seeing many things, to be impartial about +nothing, to be a party man through and through, to estimate all values +strictly and infallibly--these are conditions necessary to the existence +of such a man. But by the same token they are _antagonists_ of the +truthful man--of the truth.... The believer is not free to answer the +question, "true" or "not true," according to the dictates of his own +conscience: integrity on _this_ point would work his instant downfall. +The pathological limitations of his vision turn the man of convictions +into a fanatic--Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, +Saint-Simon--these types stand in opposition to the strong, +_emancipated_ spirit. But the grandiose attitudes of these _sick_ +intellects, these intellectual epileptics, are of influence upon the +great masses--fanatics are picturesque, and mankind prefers observing +poses to listening to _reasons_.... + + +55. + +--One step further in the psychology of conviction, of "faith." It is +now a good while since I first proposed for consideration the question +whether convictions are not even more dangerous enemies to truth than +lies. ("Human, All-Too-Human," I, aphorism 483.)[27] This time I desire +to put the question definitely: is there any actual difference between +a lie and a conviction?--All the world believes that there is; but what +is not believed by all the world!--Every conviction has its history, its +primitive forms, its stage of tentativeness and error: it _becomes_ a +conviction only after having been, for a long time, _not_ one, and then, +for an even longer time, _hardly_ one. What if falsehood be also one of +these embryonic forms of conviction?--Sometimes all that is needed is a +change in persons: what was a lie in the father becomes a conviction in +the son.--I call it lying to refuse to see what one sees, or to refuse +to see it _as_ it is: whether the lie be uttered before witnesses or not +before witnesses is of no consequence. The most common sort of lie is +that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a +relatively rare offence.--Now, this will _not_ to see what one sees, +this will _not_ to see it as it is, is almost the first requisite for +all who belong to a party of whatever sort: the party man becomes +inevitably a liar. For example, the German historians are convinced that +Rome was synonymous with despotism and that the Germanic peoples brought +the spirit of liberty into the world: what is the difference between +this conviction and a lie? Is it to be wondered at that all partisans, +including the German historians, instinctively roll the fine phrases of +morality upon their tongues--that morality almost owes its very +_survival_ to the fact that the party man of every sort has need of it +every moment?--"This is _our_ conviction: we publish it to the whole +world; we live and die for it--let us respect all who have +convictions!"--I have actually heard such sentiments from the mouths of +anti-Semites. On the contrary, gentlemen! An anti-Semite surely does not +become more respectable because he lies on principle.... The priests, +who have more finesse in such matters, and who well understand the +objection that lies against the notion of a conviction, which is to say, +of a falsehood that becomes a matter of principle _because_ it serves a +purpose, have borrowed from the Jews the shrewd device of sneaking in +the concepts, "God," "the will of God" and "the revelation of God" at +this place. Kant, too, with his categorical imperative, was on the same +road: this was his _practical_ reason.[28] There are questions regarding +the truth or untruth of which it is _not_ for man to decide; all the +capital questions, all the capital problems of valuation, are beyond +human reason.... To know the limits of reason--_that_ alone is genuine +philosophy.... Why did God make a revelation to man? Would God have done +anything superfluous? Man _could_ not find out for himself what was good +and what was evil, so God taught him His will.... Moral: the priest does +_not_ lie--the question, "true" or "untrue," has nothing to do with such +things as the priest discusses; it is impossible to lie about these +things. In order to lie here it would be necessary to know _what_ is +true. But this is more than man _can_ know; therefore, the priest is +simply the mouthpiece of God.--Such a priestly syllogism +is by no means merely Jewish and Christian; the right to lie and the +_shrewd dodge_ of "revelation" belong to the general priestly type--to +the priest of the _decadence_ as well as to the priest of pagan times +(--Pagans are all those who say yes to life, and to whom "God" is a word +signifying acquiescence in all things).--The "law," the "will of God," +the "holy book," and "inspiration"--all these things are merely words +for the conditions _under_ which the priest comes to power and _with_ +which he maintains his power,--these concepts are to be found at the +bottom of all priestly organizations, and of all priestly or +priestly-philosophical schemes of governments. The "holy lie"--common +alike to Confucius, to the Code of Manu, to Mohammed and to the +Christian church--is not even wanting in Plato. "Truth is here": this +means, no matter where it is heard, _the priest lies_.... + +[27] The aphorism, which is headed "The Enemies of Truth," makes the +direct statement: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than +lies." + +[28] A reference, of course, to Kant's "Kritik der praktischen Vernunft" +(Critique of Practical Reason). + + +56. + +--In the last analysis it comes to this: what is the _end_ of lying? The +fact that, in Christianity, "holy" ends are not visible is _my_ +objection to the means it employs. Only _bad_ ends appear: the +poisoning, the calumniation, the denial of life, the despising of the +body, the degradation and self-contamination of man by the concept of +sin--_therefore_, its means are also bad.--I have a contrary feeling +when I read the Code of Manu, an incomparably more intellectual and +superior work, which it would be a sin against the _intelligence_ to so +much as _name_ in the same breath with the Bible. It is easy to see why: +there is a genuine philosophy behind it, _in_ it, not merely an +evil-smelling mess of Jewish rabbinism and superstition,--it gives even +the most fastidious psychologist something to sink his teeth into. And, +_not_ to forget what is most important, it differs fundamentally from +every kind of Bible: by means of it the _nobles_, the philosophers and +the warriors keep the whip-hand over the majority; it is full of noble +valuations, it shows a feeling of perfection, an acceptance of life, and +triumphant feeling toward self and life--the _sun_ shines upon the whole +book.--All the things on which Christianity vents its fathomless +vulgarity--for example, procreation, women and marriage--are here +handled earnestly, with reverence and with love and confidence. How can +any one really put into the hands of children and ladies a book which +contains such vile things as this: "to avoid fornication, let every man +have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband; ... it is +better to marry than to burn"?[29] And is it _possible_ to be a +Christian so long as the origin of man is Christianized, which is to +say, _befouled_, by the doctrine of the _immaculata conceptio_?... I +know of no book in which so many delicate and kindly things are said of +women as in the Code of Manu; these old grey-beards and saints have a +way of being gallant to women that it would be impossible, perhaps, to +surpass. "The mouth of a woman," it says in one place, "the breasts of a +maiden, the prayer of a child and the smoke of sacrifice are always +pure." In another place: "there is nothing purer than the light of the +sun, the shadow cast by a cow, air, water, fire and the breath of a +maiden." Finally, in still another place--perhaps this is also a holy +lie--: "all the orifices of the body above the navel are pure, and all +below are impure. Only in the maiden is the whole body pure." + +[29] 1 Corinthians vii, 2, 9. + + +57. + +One catches the _unholiness_ of Christian means _in flagranti_ by the +simple process of putting the ends sought by Christianity beside the +ends sought by the Code of Manu--by putting these enormously +antithetical ends under a strong light. The critic of Christianity +cannot evade the necessity of making Christianity _contemptible_.--A +book of laws such as the Code of Manu has the same origin as every other +good law-book: it epitomizes the experience, the sagacity and the +ethical experimentation of long centuries; it brings things to a +conclusion; it no longer creates. The prerequisite to a codification of +this sort is recognition of the fact that the means which establish the +authority of a slowly and painfully attained _truth_ are fundamentally +different from those which one would make use of to prove it. A law-book +never recites the utility, the grounds, the casuistical antecedents of a +law: for if it did so it would lose the imperative tone, the "thou +shall," on which obedience is based. The problem lies exactly here.--At +a certain point in the evolution of a people, the class within it of the +greatest insight, which is to say, the greatest hindsight and foresight, +declares that the series of experiences determining how all shall +live--or _can_ live--has come to an end. The object now is to reap as +rich and as complete a harvest as possible from the days of experiment +and _hard_ experience. In consequence, the thing that is to be avoided +above everything is further experimentation--the continuation of the +state in which values are fluent, and are tested, chosen and criticized +_ad infinitum_. Against this a double wall is set up: on the one hand, +_revelation_, which is the assumption that the reasons lying behind the +laws are _not_ of human origin, that they were _not_ sought out and +found by a slow process and after many errors, but that they are of +divine ancestry, and came into being complete, perfect, without a +history, as a free gift, a miracle...; and on the other hand, +_tradition_, which is the assumption that the law has stood unchanged +from time immemorial, and that it is impious and a crime against one's +forefathers to bring it into question. The authority of the law is thus +grounded on the thesis: God gave it, and the fathers _lived_ it.--The +higher motive of such procedure lies in the design to distract +consciousness, step by step, from its concern with notions of right +living (that is to say, those that have been _proved_ to be right by +wide and carefully considered experience), so that instinct attains to a +perfect automatism--a primary necessity to every sort of mastery, to +every sort of perfection in the art of life. To draw up such a law-book +as Manu's means to lay before a people the possibility of future +mastery, of attainable perfection--it permits them to aspire to the +highest reaches of the art of life. _To that end the thing must be made +unconscious_: that is the aim of every holy lie.--The _order of castes_, +the highest, the dominating law, is merely the ratification of an _order +of nature_, of a natural law of the first rank, over which no arbitrary +fiat, no "modern idea," can exert any influence. In every healthy +society there are three physiological types, gravitating toward +differentiation but mutually conditioning one another, and each of these +has its own hygiene, its own sphere of work, its own special mastery and +feeling of perfection. It is _not_ Manu but nature that sets off in one +class those who are chiefly intellectual, in another those who are +marked by muscular strength and temperament, and in a third those who +are distinguished in neither one way or the other, but show only +mediocrity--the last-named represents the great majority, and the first +two the select. The superior caste--I call it the _fewest_--has, as the +most perfect, the privileges of the few: it stands for happiness, for +beauty, for everything good upon earth. Only the most intellectual of +men have any right to beauty, to the beautiful; only in them can +goodness escape being weakness. _Pulchrum est paucorum hominum_:[30] +goodness is a privilege. Nothing could be more unbecoming to them than +uncouth manners or a pessimistic look, or an eye that sees +_ugliness_--or indignation against the general aspect of things. +Indignation is the privilege of the Chandala; so is pessimism. "_The +world is perfect_"--so prompts the instinct of the intellectual, the +instinct of the man who says yes to life. "Imperfection, whatever is +_inferior_ to us, distance, the pathos of distance, even the Chandala +themselves are parts of this perfection." The most intelligent men, like +the _strongest_, find their happiness where others would find only +disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with +others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism +becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult +task as a privilege; it is to them a _recreation_ to play with burdens +that would crush all others.... Knowledge--a form of asceticism.--They +are the most honourable kind of men: but that does not prevent them +being the most cheerful and most amiable. They rule, not because they +want to, but because they _are_; they are not at liberty to play +second.--The _second caste_: to this belong the guardians of the law, +the keepers of order and security, the more noble warriors, above all, +the king as the highest form of warrior, judge and preserver of the law. +The second in rank constitute the executive arm of the intellectuals, +the next to them in rank, taking from them all that is _rough_ in the +business of ruling--their followers, their right hand, their most apt +disciples.--In all this, I repeat, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing +"made up"; whatever is to the _contrary_ is made up--by it nature is +brought to shame.... The order of castes, the _order of rank_, simply +formulates the supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three +types is necessary to the maintenance of society, and to the evolution +of higher types, and the highest types--the _inequality_ of rights is +essential to the existence of any rights at all.--A right is a +privilege. Every one enjoys the privileges that accord with his state of +existence. Let us not underestimate the privileges of the _mediocre_. +Life is always harder as one mounts the _heights_--the cold increases, +responsibility increases. A high civilization is a pyramid: it can stand +only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly +consolidated mediocrity. The handicrafts, commerce, agriculture, +_science_, the greater part of art, in brief, the whole range of +_occupational_ activities, are compatible only with mediocre ability and +aspiration; such callings would be out of place for exceptional men; the +instincts which belong to them stand as much opposed to aristocracy as +to anarchism. The fact that a man is publicly useful, that he is a +wheel, a function, is evidence of a natural predisposition; it is not +_society_, but the only sort of happiness that the majority are capable +of, that makes them intelligent machines. To the mediocre mediocrity is +a form of happiness; they have a natural instinct for mastering one +thing, for specialization. It would be altogether unworthy of a profound +intellect to see anything objectionable in mediocrity in itself. It is, +in fact, the _first_ prerequisite to the appearance of the exceptional: +it is a necessary condition to a high degree of civilization. When the +exceptional man handles the mediocre man with more delicate fingers than +he applies to himself or to his equals, this is not merely kindness of +heart--it is simply his _duty_.... Whom do I hate most heartily among +the rabbles of today? The rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the +Chandala, who undermine the workingman's instincts, his pleasure, his +feeling of contentment with his petty existence--who make him envious +and teach him revenge.... Wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies in +the assertion of "equal" rights.... What is _bad_? But I have already +answered: all that proceeds from weakness, from envy, from +_revenge_.--The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry.... + +[30] Few men are noble. + + +58. + +In point of fact, the end for which one lies makes a great difference: +whether one preserves thereby or destroys. There is a perfect likeness +between Christian and anarchist: their object, their instinct, points +only toward destruction. One need only turn to history for a proof of +this: there it appears with appalling distinctness. We have just studied +a code of religious legislation whose object it was to convert the +conditions which cause life to _flourish_ into an "eternal" social +organization,--Christianity found its mission in putting an end to such +an organization, _because life flourished under it_. There the benefits +that reason had produced during long ages of experiment and insecurity +were applied to the most remote uses, and an effort was made to bring in +a harvest that should be as large, as rich and as complete as possible; +here, on the contrary, the harvest is _blighted_ overnight.... That +which stood there _aere perennis_, the _imperium Romanum_, the most +magnificent form of organization under difficult conditions that has +ever been achieved, and compared to which everything before it and after +it appears as patchwork, bungling, _dilletantism_--those holy anarchists +made it a matter of "piety" to destroy "the world," _which is to say_, +the _imperium Romanum_, so that in the end not a stone stood upon +another--and even Germans and other such louts were able to become its +masters.... The Christian and the anarchist: both are _decadents_; both +are incapable of any act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, +degenerating, _blood-sucking_; both have an instinct of _mortal hatred_ +of everything that stands up, and is great, and has durability, and +promises life a future.... Christianity was the vampire of the _imperium +Romanum_,--overnight it destroyed the vast achievement of the Romans: +the conquest of the soil for a great culture _that could await its +time_. Can it be that this fact is not yet understood? The _imperium +Romanum_ that we know, and that the history of the Roman provinces +teaches us to know better and better,--this most admirable of all works +of art in the grand manner was merely the beginning, and the structure +to follow was not to _prove_ its worth for thousands of years. To this +day, nothing on a like scale _sub specie aeterni_ has been brought into +being, or even dreamed of!--This organization was strong enough to +withstand bad emperors: the accident of personality has nothing to do +with such things--the _first_ principle of all genuinely great +architecture. But it was not strong enough to stand up against the +_corruptest_ of all forms of corruption--against Christians.... These +stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity, +crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in +_real_ things, of all instinct for _reality_--this cowardly, effeminate +and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all "souls," step by step, +from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, +manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own +cause, their own serious purpose, their own _pride_. The sneakishness of +hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, +such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the _unio mystica_ in the +drinking of blood, above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of +Chandala revenge--all _that_ sort of thing became master of Rome: the +same kind of religion which, in a pre-existent form, Epicurus had +combatted. One has but to read Lucretius to know _what_ Epicurus made +war upon--_not_ paganism, but "Christianity," which is to say, the +corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment and +immortality.--He combatted the _subterranean_ cults, the whole of latent +Christianity--to deny immortality was already a form of genuine +_salvation_.--Epicurus had triumphed, and every respectable intellect in +Rome was Epicurean--_when Paul appeared_ ... Paul, the Chandala hatred +of Rome, of "the world," in the flesh and inspired by genius--the Jew, +the _eternal_ Jew _par excellence_.... What he saw was how, with the aid +of the small sectarian Christian movement that stood apart from Judaism, +a "world conflagration" might be kindled; how, with the symbol of "God +on the cross," all secret seditions, all the fruits of anarchistic +intrigues in the empire, might be amalgamated into one immense power. +"Salvation is of the Jews."--Christianity is the formula for exceeding +_and_ summing up the subterranean cults of all varieties, that of +Osiris, that of the Great Mother, that of Mithras, for instance: in his +discernment of this fact the genius of Paul showed itself. His instinct +was here so sure that, with reckless violence to the truth, he put the +ideas which lent fascination to every sort of Chandala religion into the +mouth of the "Saviour" as his own inventions, and not only into the +mouth--he _made_ out of him something that even a priest of Mithras +could understand.... This was his revelation at Damascus: he grasped the +fact that he _needed_ the belief in immortality in order to rob "the +world" of its value, that the concept of "hell" would master Rome--that +the notion of a "beyond" is the _death of life_.... Nihilist and +Christian: they rhyme in German, and they do more than rhyme.... + + +59. + +The whole labour of the ancient world gone for _naught_: I have no word +to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me.--And, +considering the fact that its labour was merely preparatory, that with +adamantine self-consciousness it laid only the foundations for a work to +go on for thousands of years, the whole _meaning_ of antiquity +disappears!... To what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans?--All the +prerequisites to a learned culture, all the _methods_ of science, were +already there; man had already perfected the great and incomparable art +of reading profitably--that first necessity to the tradition of +culture, the unity of the sciences; the natural sciences, in alliance +with mathematics and mechanics, were on the right road,--_the sense of +fact_, the last and more valuable of all the senses, had its schools, +and its traditions were already centuries old! Is all this properly +understood? Every _essential_ to the beginning of the work was +ready:--and the _most_ essential, it cannot be said too often, are +methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed +by habit and laziness. What we have today reconquered, with unspeakable +self-discipline, for ourselves--for certain bad instincts, certain +Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies--that is to say, the keen +eye for reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the +smallest things, the whole _integrity_ of knowledge--all these things +were already there, and had been there for two thousand years! _More_, +there was also a refined and excellent tact and taste! _Not_ as mere +brain-drilling! _Not_ as "German" culture, with its loutish manners! But +as body, as bearing, as instinct--in short, as reality.... _All gone for +naught!_ Overnight it became merely a memory!--The Greeks! The Romans! +Instinctive nobility, taste, methodical inquiry, genius for organization +and administration, faith in and the _will_ to secure the future of man, +a great yes to everything entering into the _imperium Romanum_ and +palpable to all the senses, a grand style that was beyond mere art, but +had become reality, truth, _life_....--All overwhelmed in a night, but +not by a convulsion of nature! Not trampled to death by Teutons and +others of heavy hoof! But brought to shame by crafty, sneaking, +invisible, anaemic vampires! Not conquered,--only sucked dry!... Hidden +vengefulness, petty envy, became _master_! Everything wretched, +intrinsically ailing, and invaded by bad feelings, the whole +_ghetto-world_ of the soul, was at once _on top_!--One needs but read +any of the Christian agitators, for example, St. Augustine, in order to +realize, in order to smell, what filthy fellows came to the top. It +would be an error, however, to assume that there was any lack of +understanding in the leaders of the Christian movement:--ah, but they +were clever, clever to the point of holiness, these fathers of the +church! What they lacked was something quite different. Nature +neglected--perhaps forgot--to give them even the most modest endowment +of respectable, of upright, of _cleanly_ instincts.... Between +ourselves, they are not even men.... If Islam despises Christianity, it +has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is +dealing with _men_.... + + +60. + +Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, +and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of _Mohammedan_ +civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was +fundamentally nearer to _us_ and appealed more to our senses and tastes +than that of Rome and Greece, was _trampled down_ (--I do not say by +what sort of feet--) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly +instincts for its origin--because it said yes to life, even to the rare +and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life!... The crusaders later made +war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them +to have grovelled in the dust--a civilization beside which even that of +our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile."--What they +wanted, of course, was booty: the orient was rich.... Let us put aside +our prejudices! The crusades were a higher form of piracy, nothing more! +The German nobility, which is fundamentally a Viking nobility, was in +its element there: the church knew only too well how the German nobility +was to be _won_.... The German noble, always the "Swiss guard" of the +church, always in the service of every bad instinct of the church--_but +well paid_.... Consider the fact that it is precisely the aid of German +swords and German blood and valour that has enabled the church to carry +through its war to the death upon everything noble on earth! At this +point a host of painful questions suggest themselves. The German +nobility stands _outside_ the history of the higher civilization: the +reason is obvious.... Christianity, alcohol--the two _great_ means of +corruption.... Intrinsically there should be no more choice between +Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The +decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. +Either a man is a Chandala or he is not.... "War to the knife with Rome! +Peace and friendship with Islam!": this was the feeling, this was the +_act_, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, +Frederick II. What! must a German first be a genius, a free spirit, +before he can feel _decently_? I can't make out how a German could ever +feel _Christian_.... + + +61. + +Here it becomes necessary to call up a memory that must be a hundred +times more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed for Europe the +last great harvest of civilization that Europe was ever to reap--the +_Renaissance_. Is it understood at last, _will_ it ever be understood, +_what_ the Renaissance was? _The transvaluation of Christian +values_,--an attempt with all available means, all instincts and all the +resources of genius to bring about a triumph of the _opposite_ values, +the more _noble_ values.... This has been the one great war of the past; +there has never been a more critical question than that of the +Renaissance--it is _my_ question too--; there has never been a form of +_attack_ more fundamental, more direct, or more violently delivered by a +whole front upon the center of the enemy! To attack at the critical +place, at the very seat of Christianity, and there enthrone the more +noble values--that is to say, to _insinuate_ them into the instincts, +into the most fundamental needs and appetites of those sitting there ... +I see before me the _possibility_ of a perfectly heavenly enchantment +and spectacle:--it seems to me to scintillate with all the vibrations of +a fine and delicate beauty, and within it there is an art so divine, so +infernally divine, that one might search in vain for thousands of years +for another such possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in significance +and at the same time so wonderfully full of paradox that it should +arouse all the gods on Olympus to immortal laughter--_Caesar Borgia as +pope!_... Am I understood?... Well then, _that_ would have been the +sort of triumph that _I_ alone am longing for today--: by it +Christianity would have been _swept away_!--What happened? A German +monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vengeful instincts +of an unsuccessful priest in him, raised a rebellion _against_ the +Renaissance in Rome.... Instead of grasping, with profound thanksgiving, +the miracle that had taken place: the conquest of Christianity at its +_capital_--instead of this, his hatred was stimulated by the spectacle. +A religious man thinks only of himself.--Luther saw only the _depravity_ +of the papacy at the very moment when the opposite was becoming +apparent: the old corruption, the _peccatum originale_, Christianity +itself, no longer occupied the papal chair! Instead there was life! +Instead there was the triumph of life! Instead there was a great yea to +all lofty, beautiful and daring things!... And Luther _restored the +church_: he attacked it.... The Renaissance--an event without meaning, a +great futility!--Ah, these Germans, what they have not cost us! +_Futility_--that has always been the work of the Germans.--The +Reformation; Leibnitz; Kant and so-called German philosophy; the war +of "liberation"; the empire--every time a futile substitute for +something that once existed, for something _irrecoverable_.... These +Germans, I confess, are my enemies: I despise all their uncleanliness +in concept and valuation, their cowardice before every honest yea +and nay. For nearly a thousand years they have tangled and confused +everything their fingers have touched; they have on their conscience +all the half-way measures, all the three-eighths-way measures, that +Europe is sick of,--they also have on their conscience the uncleanest +variety of Christianity that exists, and the most incurable and +indestructible--Protestantism.... If mankind never manages to get rid +of Christianity the _Germans_ will be to blame.... + + +62. + +--With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I +_condemn_ Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most +terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his +mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it +seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. +The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has +turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and +every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me +of its "humanitarian" blessings! Its deepest necessities range it +against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it +_creates_ distress to make _itself_ immortal.... For example, the worm +of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this +misery!--The "equality of souls before God"--this fraud, this _pretext_ +for the _rancunes_ of all the base-minded--this explosive concept, +ending in revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing +the whole social order--this is _Christian_ dynamite.... The +"humanitarian" blessings of Christianity forsooth! To breed out of +_humanitas_ a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to +lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest +instincts! All this, to me, is the "humanitarianism" of +Christianity!--Parasitism as the _only_ practice of the church; with its +anaemic and "holy" ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the +hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross +as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever +heard of,--against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, _kindness_ of +soul--_against life itself_.... + +This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all +walls, wherever walls are to be found--I have letters that even the +blind will be able to see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, +the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, +for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and +_small_ enough,--I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human +race.... + +And mankind reckons _time_ from the _dies nefastus_ when this fatality +befell--from the _first_ day of Christianity!--_Why not rather from its +last?_--_From today?_--The transvaluation of all values!... + + +THE END + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Antichrist, by F. W. 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