Chapter VI: Preface (4)

In Buddhism this thought prevails: "All passions, everything which creates emotions and leads to blood, is a call to action"--to this extent alone are its believers _warned_ against evil. For action has no sense, it merely binds one to existence. All existence, however, has no sense. Evil is interpreted as that which leads to irrationalism: to the affirmation of means whose end is denied. A road to nonentity is the desideratum, _hence all_ emotional impulses are regarded with horror. For instance: "On no account seek after revenge! Be the enemy of no one!"--The Hedonism of the weary finds its highest expression here. Nothing is more utterly foreign to Buddhism than the Jewish fanaticism of St. Paul: nothing could be more contrary to its instinct than the tension, fire, and unrest of the religious man, and, above all, that form of sensuality which sanctifies Christianity with the name "Love." Moreover, it is the cultured and very intellectual classes who find blessedness in Buddhism: a race wearied and besotted by centuries of philosophical quarrels, but not _beneath all culture_ as those classes were from which Christianity sprang.... In the Buddhistic ideal, there is essentially an emancipation from good and evil: a very subtle suggestion of a Beyond to all morality is thought out in its teaching, and this Beyond is supposed to be compatible with perfection,--the condition being, that even good actions are only needed _pro tem.,_ merely as a means,--that is to say, in order to be free from _all_ action.

156.

_How very curious_ it is to see a _Nihilistic_ religion such as Christianity, sprung from, and in keeping with, a decrepit and worn-out people, who have outlived all strong instincts, being transferred step by step to another environment--that is to say, to a land of young people, _who have not yet lived at all._ The joy of the final chapter, of the fold and of the evening, preached to barbarians and Germans! How thoroughly all of it must first have been barbarised, Germanised! To those who had dreamed of a _Walhalla_: who found happiness only in war!--A _super_national religion preached in the midst of chaos, where _no nations yet existed even._

157.

The only way to refute priests and religions is this: to show that their errors are no longer _beneficent_--that they are rather harmful; in short, that their own "proof of power" no longer holds good....

2. CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY.

158.

Christianity as an _historical reality_ should not be confounded with that one root which its name recalls. The _other_ roots, from which it has sprung, are by far the more important. It is an unprecedented abuse of names to identify such manifestations of decay and such abortions as the "Christian Church," "Christian belief," and "Christian life," with that Holy Name. What did Christ _deny_?--Everything which to-day is called Christian.

159.

The whole of the Christian _creed_--all Christian "truth," is idle falsehood and deception, and is precisely the reverse of that which was at the bottom of the first Christian movement.

All that which in the _ecclesiastical_ sense is Christian, is just exactly what is most radically _anti-Christian_: crowds of things and people appear instead of symbols, history takes the place of eternal facts, it is all forms, rites, and dogmas instead of a "practice" of life. To be really Christian would mean to be absolutely indifferent to dogmas, cults, priests, church, and theology.

The practice of Christianity is no more an impossible phantasy than the practice of Buddhism is: it is merely a means to happiness.

160.

Jesus goes straight to the point, the "Kingdom of Heaven" in the heart, and He does _not_ find the means in duty to the Jewish Church; He even regards the reality of Judaism (its need to maintain itself) as nothing; He is concerned purely with the _inner_ man.

Neither does He make anything of all the coarse forms relating to man's intercourse with God: He is opposed to the whole of the teaching of repentance and atonement; He points out how man ought to live in order to feel himself "deified," and how futile it is on his part to hope to live properly by showing repentance and contrition for his sins. "Sin is of no account" is practically his chief standpoint.

Sin, repentance, forgiveness,--all this does not belong to Christianity ... it is Judaism or Paganism which has become mixed up with Christ's teaching.

161.

The _Kingdom of Heaven_ is a state of the heart (of children it is written, "for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven"): it has nothing to do with superterrestrial things. The Kingdom of God "cometh," not chronologically or historically, not on a certain day in the calendar; it is not something which one day appears and was not previously there; it is a "change of feeling in the individual," it is something which may come at any time and which may be absent at any time....

162.

_The thief on the cross_;--When the criminal himself, who endures a painful death, declares: "the way this Jesus suffers and dies, without a murmur of revolt or enmity, graciously and resignedly, is the only right way," he assents to the gospel; and by this very fact _he is in Paradise...._

163.

Jesus bids us:--not to resist, either by deeds or in our heart, him who ill-treats us;

He bids us admit of no grounds for separating ourselves from our wives;

He bids us make no distinction between foreigners and fellow-countrymen, strangers and familiars;

He bids us show anger to no one, and treat no one with contempt;--give alms secretly; not to desire to become rich;--not to swear;--not to stand in judgment;--become reconciled with our enemies and forgive offences;--not to worship in public.

"Blessedness" is nothing promised: it is here, with us, if we only wish to live and act in a particular way.

164.

_Subsequent Additions_;--The whole of the prophet- and thaumaturgist-attitudes and the bad temper; while the conjuring-up of a supreme tribunal of justice is an abominable corruption (see Mark vi. 11: "And whosoever shall not receive you.... Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha," etc.). The "fig tree" (Matt. xxi. 18, 19): "Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away."

165.

The teaching of rewards and punishments has become mixed up with Christianity in a way which is quite absurd; everything is thereby spoilt. In the same way, the practice of the first _ecclesia militans,_ of the Apostle Paul and his attitude, is put forward as if it had been _commanded_ or predetermined.

The subsequent glorification of the actual _life_ and _teaching_ of the first Christians: as if everything had been _prescribed beforehand_ and had been only a matter of _following_ directions----And as for the _fulfilment of scriptural prophecies_: how much of all that is more than forgery and cooking?

166.

Jesus opposed a real life, a life in truth, to ordinary life: nothing could have been more foreign to His mind than the somewhat heavy nonsense of an "eternal Peter,"--of the eternal duration of a single person. Precisely what He combats is the exaggerated importance of the "person": how can He wish to immortalise it?

He likewise combats the hierarchy within the community; He never promises a certain proportion of reward for a certain proportion of deserts: how can He have meant to teach the doctrine of punishment and reward in a Beyond?

167.

Christianity is an ingenuous attempt at bringing about a _Buddhistic movement in favour of peace,_ sprung from the very heart of the resenting masses ... but transformed by _Paul_ into a mysterious pagan cult, which was ultimately able to accord with the whole of _State organisation_ ... and which carries on war, condemns, tortures, conjures, and hates.

Paul bases his teaching upon the need of mystery felt by the great masses capable of religious emotions: he seeks a _victim,_ a bloody phantasmagoria, which may be equal to a contest with the images of a secret cult: God on the cross, the drinking of blood, the _unio mystica_ with the "victim."

He seeks the prolongation of life after death (the blessed and atoned after-life of the individual soul) which he puts in causal relation with the _victim_ already referred to (according to the type of Dionysos, Mithras, Osiris).

He feels the necessity of bringing notions of _guilt_ and _sin_ into the foreground, _not_ a new practice of life (as Jesus Himself demonstrated and taught), but a new cult, a new belief, a belief in a miraculous metamorphosis ("Salvation" through belief).

He understood the _great needs of the pagan worlds_ and he gave quite an absolutely arbitrary picture of those two plain facts, Christ's life and death. He gave the whole a new accent, altering the equilibrium everywhere ... he was one of the most active destroyers of primitive Christianity.

The attempt made on the life of _priests and theologians_ culminated, thanks to Paul, in a new priesthood and theology--a _ruling_ caste and a _Church._

The attempt made to suppress the fussy importance of the "person," culminated in the belief in the eternal "personality" (and in the anxiety concerning "eternal salvation" ...), and in the most paradoxical exaggeration of individual egoism.

This is the humorous side of the question--tragic humour: Paul again set up on a large scale precisely what Jesus had overthrown by His life. At last, when the Church edifice was complete, it even sanctioned the _existence_ of the _State._

168.

The Church is precisely that against which Jesus inveighed--and against which He taught His disciples to fight.

169.

A God who died for our sins, salvation through faith, resurrection after death--all these things are the counterfeit coins of real Christianity, for which that pernicious blockhead Paul must be held responsible.

The _life which must serve as an example_ consists in love and humility; in the abundance of hearty emotion which does not even exclude the lowliest; in the formal renunciation of all desire of making its rights felt; in conquest, in the sense of triumph over oneself; in the belief in salvation in this world, despite all sorrow, opposition, and death; in forgiveness and the absence of anger and contempt; in the absence of a desire to be rewarded; in the refusal to be bound to anybody; abandonment to all that is most spiritual and intellectual;--in fact, a very proud life controlled by the will of a servile and poor life.

Once the Church had allowed itself to take over _all the Christian practice,_ and had formally sanctioned the State,--that kind of life which Jesus combats and condemns,--it was obliged to lay the sense of Christianity in other things than early Christian ideals--that is to say, in the _faith_ in incredible things, in the ceremonial of prayers, worship, feasts, etc. etc. The notions "sin," "forgiveness," "punishment," "reward"--everything, in fact, which had nothing in common with, and was quite _absent_ from, primitive Christianity, now comes into the foreground.

An appalling stew of Greek philosophy and Judaism; asceticism; continual judgments and condemnations; the order of rank, etc.

170.

Christianity has, from the first, always transformed the symbolical into crude realities:

(1) The antitheses "true life" and "false life" were misunderstood and changed into "life here" and "life beyond."

(2) The notion "eternal life," as opposed to the personal life which is ephemeral, is translated into "personal immortality";

(3) The process of fraternising by means of sharing the same food and drink, after the Hebrew-Arabian manner, is interpreted as the "miracle of transubstantiation."

(4) "Resurrection" which was intended to mean the entrance to the "true life," in the sense of being intellectually "born again," becomes an historical contingency, supposed to take place at some moment after death;

(5) The teaching of the Son of man as the "Son of God,"--that is to say, the life-relationship between man and God,--becomes the "second person of the Trinity," and thus the filial relationship of every man--even the lowest--to God, is _done away with_;

(6) Salvation through faith (that is to say, that there is no other way to this filial relationship to God, save through the _practice of life_ taught by Christ) becomes transformed into the belief that there is a miraculous way of _atoning_ for all _sin_; though not through our own endeavours, but by means of Christ:

For all these purposes, "Christ on the Cross" had to be interpreted afresh. The _death_ itself would certainly not be the principal feature of the event ... it was only another sign pointing to the way in which one should behave towards the authorities and the laws of the world--_that one was not to defend oneself--this was the exemplary life._

171.

Concerning the psychology of _Paul._--The important fact is Christ's death. This remains to be _explained ..._. That there may be truth or error in an explanation never entered these people's heads: one day a sublime possibility strikes them, "His death _might_ mean so and so" --and it forthwith _becomes_ so and so. An hypothesis is proved by the sublime _ardour_ it lends to its discoverer....

"The proof of strength": _i.e.,_ a thought is demonstrated by its _effects_ ("by their fruits," as the Bible ingenuously says); that which fires enthusiasm must be _true,_--what one loses one's blood for must be _true--_

In every department of this world of thought, the sudden feeling of power which an idea imparts to him who is responsible for it, is placed to the _credit_ of that idea:--and as there seems no other way of honouring an idea than by calling it true, the first epithet it is honoured with is the word _true._ ... How could it have any effect otherwise? It was imagined by some power: if that power were not real, it could not be the cause of anything.... The thought is then understood as _inspired_: the effect it causes has something of the violent nature of a demoniacal influence--

A thought which a decadent like Paul could not resist and to which he completely yields, is thus "proved" _true_!!!

All these holy epileptics and visionaries did not possess a thousandth part of the honesty in self-criticism with which a philologist, nowadays, reads a text, or tests the truth of an historical event.... Beside us, such people were moral cretins.

172.

It matters little _whether a thing be true,_ provided it be _effective_: total _absence of intellectual uprightness._ Everything is good, whether it be lying, slander, or shameless "cooking," provided it serve to heighten the degree of heat to the point at which people "believe."

We are face to face with an actual school for the teaching of _the means wherewith_ men are _seduced_ to a belief: we see systematic _contempt_ for those spheres whence contradiction might come (that is to say, for reason, philosophy, wisdom, doubt, and caution); a shameless praising and glorification of the teaching, with continual references to the fact that it was God who presented us with it--that the apostle signifies nothing--that no criticism is brooked, but only faith, acceptance; that it is the greatest blessing and favour to receive such a doctrine of salvation; that the state in which one should receive it, ought to be one of the profoundest thankfulness and humility....

The resentment which the lowly feel against all those in high places, is continually turned to account: the fact that this teaching is revealed to them as the reverse of the wisdom of the world, against the power of the world, seduces them to it. This teaching convinces the outcasts and the botched of all sorts and conditions; it promises blessedness, advantages, and privileges to the most insignificant and most humble men; it fanaticises the poor, the small, and the foolish, and fills them with insane vanity, as though _they_ were the meaning and salt of the earth.

Again, I say, all this cannot be sufficiently contemned, we spare ourselves a criticism of the teaching; it is sufficient to take note of the means it uses in order to be aware of the nature of the phenomenon one is examining. It identified itself with _virtue,_ it appropriated the whole of the _fascinating power of virtue,_ shamelessly, for its own purposes ... it availed itself of the power of paradox, and of the need, manifested by old civilisation, for pepper and absurdity; it amazed and revolted at the same time; it provoked persecutions and ill-treatment.

It is the same kind of _well-thought-out meanness_ with which the Jewish priesthood established their power and built up their Church....

One must be able to discern: (1) that warmth of passion "love" (resting on a base of ardent sensuality); (2) the thoroughly _ignoble character_ of Christianity:--the continual exaggeration and verbosity;--the lack of cool intellectuality and irony;--the unmilitary character of all its instincts;--the priestly prejudices against manly pride, sensuality, the sciences, the arts.

173.

_Paul_: seeks power _against_ ruling Judaism,--his attempt is too weak.... Transvaluation of the notion "Jew": the "race" is put aside: but that means denying the very basis of the whole structure. The "martyr," the "fanatic," the value of all _strong_ belief. Christianity is the _form of decay_ of the old world, after the latter's collapse, and it is characterised by the fact that it brings all the most sickly and unhealthy elements and needs to the top.

_Consequently other_ instincts had to step into the foreground, in order to _constitute_ an entity, a power able to stand alone--in short, a condition of tense sorrow was necessary, like that out of which the Jews had derived their _instinct of self-preservation...._

The persecution of Christians was invaluable for this purpose.

Unity in the face of danger; the conversion of the masses becomes the only means of putting an end to the persecution of the individual. (The notion "conversion" is therefore made as elastic as possible.)

174.

The _Christian Judaic_ life: here resentment did not prevail. The great persecutions alone could have driven out the passions to that extent--as also the _ardour of love_ and _hate._

When the creatures a man most loves are sacrificed before his eyes for the sake of his faith, that man becomes _aggressive_; the triumph of Christianity is due to its persecutors.

_Asceticism_ is not specifically Christian: this is what Schopenhauer misunderstood. It only shoots up in Christianity, wherever it would have existed without that religion.

Melancholy Christianity, the torture and torment of the conscience, also only a peculiarity of a particular soil, where Christian values have taken root: it is not Christianity properly speaking. Christianity has absorbed all the different kinds of diseases which grow from morbid soil: one could refute it at one blow by showing that it did not know how to resist any contagion. But _that_ precisely is the essential feature of it. Christianity is a type of decadence.

175.

The reality on which Christianity was able to build up its power consisted of the small dispersed _Jewish families,_ with their warmth, tenderness, and peculiar readiness to help, which, to the whole of the Roman Empire, was perhaps the most incomprehensible and least familiar of their characteristics; they were also united by their pride at being a "chosen people," concealed beneath a cloak of humility, and by their secret denial of all that was uppermost and that possessed power and splendour, although there was no shade of envy in their denial. _To have recognised this as a power,_ to have regarded this _blessed_ state as communicable, seductive, and infectious even where pagans were concerned--this constituted Paul's genius: to use up the treasure of latent energy and cautious happiness for the purposes of "a Jewish Church of free confession," and to avail himself of all the Jewish experience, their propaganda, and their expertness in _the preservation of a community_ under a foreign power--this is what he conceived to be his duty. He it was who discovered that absolutely unpolitical and isolated body of _paltry people,_ and their art of asserting themselves and pushing themselves to the front, by means of a host of acquired virtues which are made to represent the only forms of virtue ("the self-preservative measure and weapon of success of a certain class of man").

The principle of _love_ comes from the small community of Jewish people: a _very passionate_ soul glows here, beneath the ashes of humility and wretchedness: it is neither Greek, Indian, nor German. The song in praise of love which Paul wrote is not Christian; it is the Jewish flare of that eternal flame which is Semitic. If Christianity has done anything essentially new in a psychological sense, it is this, that it has _increased the temperature of the soul_ among those cooler and more noble races who were at one time at the head of affairs; it discovered that the most wretched life could be made rich and invaluable, by means of an elevation of the temperature of the soul....

It is easily understood that a transfer of this sort could _not_ take place among the ruling classes: the Jews and Christians were at a disadvantage owing to their bad manners--spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by bad manners, only provoke loathing (I become aware of these bad manners while reading the New Testament). It was necessary to be related both in baseness and sorrow with this type of lower manhood in order to feel anything attractive in him.... The attitude a man maintains towards the New Testament is a test of the amount of taste he may have for the classics (see Tacitus); he who is not revolted by it, he who does not feel honestly and deeply that he is in the presence of a sort of _fœda superstitio_ when reading it, and who does not draw his hand back so as not to soil his fingers--such a man does not know what is classical. A man must feel about "the cross" as Goethe did.[1]

[Footnote 1:

Vieles kann ich ertragen. Die meisten beschwerlichen Dinge Duld' ich mit ruhigem Mut, wie es ein Gott mir gebeut. Wenige sind mir jedoch wie Gift und Schlange zuwider; Viere: Rauch des Tabaks, Wanzen, und Knoblauch und Goethe's _Venetian Epigrams,_ No. 67.

Much can I bear. Things the most irksome I endure with such patience as comes from a god. Four things, however, repulse me like venom:--Tobacco smoke, garlic, bugs, and the cross.

(TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.) ]

176.

_The reaction of paltry people_:--Love provides the feeling of highest power. It should be understood to what extent, not man in general, but only a certain kind of man is speaking here.

"We are godly in love, we shall be 'the children of God'; God loves us and wants nothing from us save love"; that is to say: all morality, obedience, and action, do not produce the same feeling of power and freedom as love does;--a man does nothing wicked from sheer love, but he does much more than if he were prompted by obedience and virtue alone.

Here is the happiness of the herd, the communal feeling in big things as in small, the living sentiment of unity felt as the _sum of the feeling of life._ Helping, caring for, and being useful, constantly kindle the feeling of power; visible success, the expression of pleasure, emphasise the feeling of power; pride is not lacking either, it is felt in the form of the community, the House of God, and the "chosen people."

As a matter of fact, man has once more experienced an "_altération" of his personality_: this time he called his feeling of love--God. The awakening of such a feeling must be pictured; it is a sort of ecstasy, a strange language, a "Gospel"--it was this newness which did not allow man to attribute love to himself--he thought it was God leading him on and taking shape in his heart. "God descends among men," one's neighbour is transfigured and becomes a God (in so far as he provokes the sentiment of love), _Jesus is the neighbour,_ the moment He is transfigured in thought into a God, and into a cause _provoking the feeling of power._

177.

Believers are aware that they owe an infinite amount to Christianity, and therefore conclude that its Founder must have been a man of the first rank.... This conclusion is false, but it is typical of the reverents. Regarded objectively, it is, _in the first place,_ just possible that they are mistaken concerning the extent of their debt to Christianity: a man's convictions prove nothing concerning the thing he is convinced about, and in religions they are more likely to give rise to suspicions.... Secondly, it is possible that the debt owing to Christianity is not due to its Founder at all, but to the whole structure, the whole thing--to the Church, etc. The notion "Founder" is so very equivocal, that it may stand even for the accidental cause of a movement: the person of the Founder has been inflated in proportion as the Church has grown: but even this process of veneration allows of the conclusion that, at one time or other, this Founder was something exceedingly insecure and doubtful--in the beginning.... Let any one think of the _free and easy way_ in which Paul treats the problem of the personality of Jesus, how he almost juggles with it: some one who died, who was seen after His death,--some one whom the Jews delivered up to death--all this was only the theme--_Paul_ wrote the music to it.

178.

The founder of a religion _may_ be quite insignificant--a wax vesta and no _more_!

179.

_Concerning the psychological problem of Christianity.--The driving forces are_: resentment, popular insurrection, the revolt of the bungled and the botched. (In Buddhism it is different: it is not _born_ of _resentment._ It rather combats resentment because the latter leads to _action_!)

This party, which stands for freedom, understands that the _abandonment of antagonism in thought and deed_ is a condition of distinction and preservation. Here lies the psychological difficulty which has stood in the way of Christianity being understood: the force which created it, urges to a struggle against itself.

Only as a party standing _for peace_ and _innocence_ can this insurrectionary movement hope to be successful: it must conquer by means of excessive mildness, sweetness, softness, and its instincts are aware of this. The _feat_ was to deny and condemn the force, of which man is the expression, and to press the reverse of that force continually to the fore, by word and deed.

180.

_The pretence of youthfulness._--It is a mistake to imagine that, with Christianity, an ingenuous and youthful people rose against an old culture; the story goes that it was out of the lowest levels of society, where Christianity flourished and shot its roots, that the more profound source of life gushed forth afresh: but nothing can be understood of the psychology of Christianity, if it be supposed that it was the expression of revived youth among a people, or of the resuscitated strength of a race. It is rather a typical form of decadence, of moral-softening and of hysteria, amid a general hotch-potch of races and people that had lost all aims and had grown weary and sick. The wonderful company which gathered round this master-seducer of the populace, would not be at all out of place in a Russian novel: all the diseases of the nerves seem to give one another a rendezvous in this crowd--the absence of a known duty, the feeling that everything is nearing its end, that nothing is any longer worth while, and that contentment lies in _dolce far niente_.

The power and certainty of the future in the Jew's instinct, its monstrous will for life and for power, lies in its ruling classes; the people who upheld primitive Christianity are best distinguished by this _exhausted condition_ of their instincts. On the one hand, they are sick of everything; on the other, they are content with each other, with themselves and for themselves.

181.

Christianity regarded as _emancipated Judaism_ (just as a nobility which is both racial and indigenous ultimately emancipates itself from these conditions, and _goes in search of_ kindred elements....).

(1) As a Church (community) on the territory of the State, as an unpolitical institution.

(2) As life, breeding, practice, art of living.

(3) As a _religion of sin_ (sin committed against _God, being the only recognised kind,_ and the only cause of all suffering), with a universal cure for it. There is no sin save against God; what is done against men, man shall not sit in judgment upon, nor call to account, except in the name of God. At the same time, all commandments (love): everything is associated with God, and all acts are performed according to God's will. Beneath this arrangement there lies exceptional intelligence (a very narrow life, such as that led by the Esquimaux, can only be endured by most peaceful and indulgent people: the Judæo-Christian dogma turns against sin in favour of the "sinner").

182.

The Jewish priesthood understood how to present everything it claimed to be right as a _divine precept,_ as an act of obedience to God, and also to introduce all those things which conduced to _preserve Israel_ and were the _conditions_ of its existence (for instance: the large number of "_works_": circumcision and the cult of sacrifices, as the very pivot of the national conscience), not as Nature, but as God.

_This process continued; within the very heart_ of Judaism, where the need of these "works" was not felt (that is to say, as a means of keeping a race distinct), a priestly sort of man was pictured, whose bearing towards the aristocracy was like that of "noble nature"; a sacerdotalism of the soul, which now, in order to throw its opposite into strong relief, attaches value, not to the "dutiful acts" themselves, but to the sentiment....

At bottom, the problem was once again, how to make a certain kind of soul _prevail_: it was also _a popular insurrection in the midst of a priestly people_--a pietistic movement coming from below (sinners, publicans, women, and children). Jesus of Nazareth was the symbol of their sect. And again, in order to believe in themselves, they were in need of a _theological transfiguration_: they require nothing less than "the Son of God" in order to create a belief for themselves. And just as the priesthood had falsified the whole history of Israel, another attempt was made, here, to _alter and falsify_ the whole history of mankind in such a way as to make Christianity seem like the most important event it contained. This movement could have originated only upon the soil of Judaism, the main feature of which was the confounding of _guilt with sorrow_ and the reduction of all _sin_ to _sin against God._ Of all this, Christianity is the _second degree of power._

183.

The symbolism of Christianity is based upon that of _Judaism,_ which had already transfigured all reality (history, Nature) into a holy and artificial unreality--which refused to recognise real history, and which showed no more interest in a natural course of things.

184.

The Jews made the attempt to prevail, after two of their castes--the warrior and the agricultural castes, had disappeared from their midst.

In this sense they are the "castrated people": they have their priests and then--their Chandala....

How easily a disturbance occurs among them--an insurrection of their Chandala. This was the origin of _Christianity._

Owing to the fact that they had no knowledge of warriors except as their masters, they introduced enmity towards the nobles, the men of honour, pride, and power, and the _ruling_ classes, into their religion: they are pessimists from _indignation...._

Thus they created a very important and novel position: the priests in the van of the Chandala--against the _noble classes...._

Christianity was the logical conclusion of this movement: even in the Jewish priesthood, it still scented the existence of the caste, of the privileged and noble minority--_it therefore did away with priests._

Christ is the unit of the Chandala who removes the priest ... the Chandala who redeems himself....

That is why the _French_ Revolution is the lineal descendant and the continuator of _Christianity--_ it is characterised by an instinct of hate towards castes, nobles, and the last privileges.

185.

The "_Christian Ideal_" put on the stage with Jewish astuteness--these are the fundamental _psychological forces_ of its "nature":--

Revolt against the ruling spiritual powers;

The attempt to make those virtues which facilitate the _happiness of the lowly,_ a standard of all values--in fact, to call _God_ that which is no more than the self-preservative instinct of that class of man possessed of least vitality;

Obedience and absolute _abstention_ from war and resistance, justified by this ideal;

The love of one another as a result of the love of God.

_The trick_: The _denial_ of all _natural mobilia,_ and their transference to the spiritual world beyond ... the exploitation of _virtue_ and its _veneration_ for wholly interested motives, gradual _denial_ of virtue in everything that is not Christian.

186.

The _profound contempt_ with which the Christian was treated by the noble people of antiquity, is of the same order as the present instinctive aversion to Jews: it is the hatred which free and self-respecting classes feel towards those _who wish to creep in secretly,_ and who combine an awkward bearing with foolish self-sufficiency.

The New Testament is the gospel of a completely _ignoble_ species of man; its pretensions to highest values--_yea, to all_ values, is, as a matter of fact, revolting--even nowadays.

187.

How little the subject matters! It is the spirit which gives the thing life! What a quantity of stuffy and sick-room air there is in all that chatter about "redemption," "love," "blessedness," "faith," "truth," "eternal life"! Let any one look into a really pagan book and compare the two; for instance, in Petronius, nothing at all is done, said, desired, and valued, which, according to a bigoted Christian estimate, is not sin, or even deadly sin. And yet how happy one feels with the purer air, the superior intellectuality, the quicker pace, and the free overflowing strength which is certain of the future! In the whole of the New Testament there is not one _bouffonnerie_: but that fact alone would suffice to refute any book....

188.

The _profound lack of dignity_ with which all life, which is not Christian, is condemned: it does not suffice them to think meanly of their actual opponents, they cannot do with less than a general slander of everything that is not _themselves...._ An abject and crafty soul is in the most perfect harmony with the arrogance of piety, as witness the early Christians.

The _future_: they see that _they are heavily paid for it.... Theirs is the muddiest kind of spirit that exists._ The whole of Christ's life is so arranged as to confirm the prophecies of the Scriptures: He behaves in such wise _in order that_ they may be right....

189.

The deceptive interpretation of the words, the doings, and the condition of _dying people_; the natural fear of death, for instance, is systematically confounded with the supposed fear of what is to happen "after death." ...

190.

The _Christians_ have done exactly what the Jews did before them. They introduced what they conceived to be an innovation and a thing necessary to self-preservation into their Master's teaching, and wove His life into it They likewise credited Him with all the wisdom of a maker of proverbs--_in short,_ they represented their everyday life and activity as an act of obedience, and thus sanctified their propaganda.

What it all depends upon, may be gathered from Paul: it is _not much._ What remains is the development of a type of saint, out of the values which these people regarded as saintly.

The whole of the "doctrine of miracles," including the resurrection, is the result of self-glorification on the part of the community, which ascribed to its Master those qualities it ascribed to itself, but in a higher degree (or, better still, it derived its strength from Him....)

191.

The Christians have never led the life which Jesus commanded them to lead, and the impudent fable of the "justification by faith," and its unique and transcendental significance, is only the result of the Church's lack of courage and will in acknowledging those "_works_" which Jesus commanded.

The Buddhist behaves differently from the non-Buddhist; but _the Christian behaves as all the rest of the world does,_ and possesses a Christianity of ceremonies and _states of the soul._

The profound and contemptible falsehood of Christianity in Europe makes us deserve the contempt of the Arabs, Hindoos, and Chinese....

Let any one listen to the words of the first German statesman, concerning that which has preoccupied Europe for the last forty years.

192.

"_Faith_" or "_works_"?--But that the "works," the habit of particular works may engender a certain _set of values or thoughts,_ is just as natural as it would be unnatural for "works" to proceed from mere valuations. Man must practise, _not_ how to strengthen feelings of value, but how to strengthen action: first of all, one must be able _to do something...._ Luther's Christian Dilettantism. Faith is an asses' bridge. The background consists of a profound conviction on the part of Luther and his peers, that they are enabled to accomplish Christian "works," a personal fact, disguised under an extreme doubt as to whether _all_ action is not sin and devil's work, so that the worth of life depends upon isolated and highly-strained conditions of _inactivity_ (prayer, effusion, etc.).--Ultimately, Luther would be right: the instincts which are expressed by the whole bearing of the reformers are the most brutal that exist. Only in _turning absolutely away_ from themselves, and in becoming absorbed in the _opposite_ of themselves, only by means of an _illusion_ ("faith") was existence endurable to them.

193.

"What was to be done in order to believe?"--an absurd question. That which is wrong with Christianity is, that it does none of the things that Christ _commanded._

It is a mean life, but _seen_ through the eye of contempt.

194.

The entrance into the _real_ life--_a man saves his own life by living the life of the multitude._

195.

Christianity has become something fundamentally different from what its Founder wished it to be. It is the great _anti-pagan movement_ of antiquity, formulated with the use of the life, teaching, and "words" of the Founder of Christianity, but interpreted quite _arbitrarily,_ according to a scheme embodying _profoundly different needs_: translated into the language of all the _subterranean religions_ then existing.

It is the rise of Pessimism (whereas Jesus wished to bring the peace and the happiness of the lambs): and moreover the Pessimism of the weak, of the inferior, of the suffering, and of the oppressed.

Its mortal enemies are (1) _Power,_ whether in the form of character, intellect, or taste, and "worldliness"; (2) the "good cheer" of classical times, the noble levity and scepticism, hard pride, eccentric dissipation, and cold frugality of the sage, Greek refinement in manners, words, and form. Its mortal enemy is as much the _Roman_ as the _Greek._

The attempt on the part of _anti-paganism_ to establish itself on a philosophical basis, and to make its tenets possible: it shows a taste for the ambiguous figures of antique culture, and above all for Plato, who was, more than any other, an anti-Hellene and Semite in instinct.... It also shows a taste for Stoicism, which is essentially the work of Semites ("dignity" is regarded as severity, law; virtue is held to be greatness, self-responsibility, authority, greatest sovereignty over oneself--this is Semitic.) The Stoic is an Arabian sheik wrapped in Greek togas and notions.

196.

Christianity only resumes the fight which had already been begun against the _classical_ ideal and _noble_ religion.

As a matter of fact, the whole process of _transformation_ is only an adaptation to the needs and to the level of intelligence of _religious_ masses then existing:--those masses which believed in Isis, Mithras, Dionysos, and the "great mother," and which demanded the following things of a religion: (1) hopes of a beyond, (2) the bloody phantasmagoria of animal sacrifice (the mystery), (3) holy legend and the redeeming _deed,_ (4) asceticism, denial of the world, superstitious "purification," (5) a hierarchy as a part of the community. In short, Christianity everywhere fitted the already prevailing and increasing _anti-pagan tendency_--those cults which Epicurus combated,--or more exactly, those _religions proper to the lower herd, women, slaves, and ignoble classes._

The misunderstandings are therefore the following:--

(1) The immortality of the individual;

(2) The assumed existence of _another_ world;

(3) The absurd notion of punishment and expiation in the heart of the interpretation of existence;

(4) The profanation of the divine nature of man, instead of its accentuation, and the construction of a very profound chasm, which can only be crossed by the help of a miracle or by means of the most thorough self-contempt;

(5) The whole world of corrupted imagination and morbid passion, instead of a simple and loving life of action, instead of Buddhistic happiness attainable on earth;

(6) An ecclesiastical order with a priesthood, theology, cults, and sacraments; in short, everything that Jesus of Nazareth _combated_;

(7) The _miraculous_ in everything and everybody, superstition too: while precisely the trait which distinguished Judaism and primitive Christianity was their _repugnance to_ miracles and their relative _rationalism._

197.

_The psychological pre-requisites:--Ignorance_ and _lack of culture,_--the sort of ignorance which has unlearned every kind of shame: let any one imagine those impudent saints in the heart of Athens;

The _Jewish instinct of a chosen people_: they appropriate _all the virtues,_ without further ado, as their own, and regard the rest of the world as their opposite; this is a profound sign of _spiritual depravity_;

_The total lack of real aims_ and real _duties,_ for which other virtues are required than those of the bigot--_the State undertook this work for them_: and the impudent people still behaved as though they had no need of the State. "Except ye become as little children" --oh, how far we are from this psychological ingenuousness!

198.

The Founder of Christianity had to pay dearly for having directed His teaching at the lowest classes of Jewish society and intelligence. They understood Him only according to the limitations of their own spirit. ... It was a disgrace to concoct a history of salvation, a personal God, a personal Saviour, a personal immortality, and to have retained all the meanness of the "person," and of the "history" of a doctrine which denies the reality of all that is personal and historical.

The legend of salvation takes the place of the symbolic "now" and "all time," of the symbolic "here" and "everywhere"; and miracles appear instead of the psychological symbol.

199.

Nothing is less innocent than the New Testament. The soil from which it sprang is known.

These people, possessed of an inflexible will to assert themselves, and who, once they had lost all natural hold on life, and had long existed without any right to existence, still knew how to prevail by means of hypotheses which were as unnatural as they were imaginary (calling themselves the chosen people, the community of saints, the people of the promised land, and the "Church"): these people made use of their _pia fraus_ with such skill, and with such "clean consciences," that one cannot be too cautious when they preach morality. When Jews step forward as the personification of innocence, the danger must be great. While reading the New Testament a man should have his small fund of intelligence, mistrust, and wickedness constantly at hand.

People of the lowest origin, partly mob, outcasts not only from good society, but also from respectable society; grown away from the _atmosphere_ of culture, and free from discipline; ignorant, without even a suspicion of the fact that conscience can also rule in spiritual matters; in a word--the Jews: an instinctively crafty people, able to create an advantage, a means of _seduction_ out of every conceivable hypothesis of superstition, even out of ignorance itself.

200.

I regard Christianity as the most fatal and seductive lie that has ever yet existed--as the greatest and most _impious lie_: I can discern the last sprouts and branches of its ideal beneath every form of disguise, I decline to enter into any compromise or false position in reference to it--I urge people to declare open war with it.

The _morality of paltry people_ as the measure of all things: this is the most repugnant kind of degeneracy that civilisation has ever yet brought into existence. And this _kind of ideal_ is hanging still, under the name of "God," over men's heads!!

201.

However modest one's demands may be concerning intellectual cleanliness, when one touches the New Testament one cannot help experiencing a sort of inexpressible feeling of discomfort; for the unbounded cheek with which the least qualified people will have their say in its pages, in regard to the greatest problems of existence, and claim to sit in judgment on such matters, exceeds all limits. The impudent levity with which the most unwieldy problems are spoken of here (life, the world, God, the purpose of life), as if they were not problems at all, but the most simple things which these little bigots _know all about_!!!

202.

This was the most fatal form of insanity that has ever yet existed on earth:--when these little lying abortions of bigotry begin laying claim to the words "God," "last judgment," "truth," "love," "wisdom," "Holy Spirit," and thereby distinguishing themselves from the rest of the world; when such men begin to transvalue values to suit themselves, as though they were the sense, the salt, the standard, and the measure of all things; then all that one should do is this: build lunatic asylums for their incarceration. To _persecute_ them was an egregious act of antique folly: this was taking them too seriously; it was making them serious.

The whole fatality was made possible by the fact that a similar form of megalomania was already _in existence,_ the _Jewish_ form (once the gulf separating the Jews from the Christian-Jews was bridged, the Christian-Jews _were compelled_ to employ those self-preservative measures afresh which were discovered by the Jewish instinct, for their own self-preservation, after having accentuated them); and again through the fact that Greek moral philosophy had done everything that could be done to prepare the way for moral-fanaticism, even among Greeks and Romans, and to render it palatable.... Plato, the great importer of corruption, who was the first who refused to see Nature in morality, and who had already deprived the Greek gods of all their worth by his notion "_good_" was already tainted with _Jewish bigotry_ (in Egypt?).

203.

These small virtues of gregarious animals do not by any means lead to "eternal life": to put them on the stage in such a way, and to use them for one's own purpose is perhaps very smart; but to him who keeps his eyes open, even here, it remains, in spite of all, the most ludicrous performance. A man by no means deserves privileges, either on earth or in heaven, because he happens to have attained to perfection in the art of behaving like a good-natured little sheep; at best, he only remains a dear, absurd little ram with horns--provided, of course, he does not burst with vanity or excite indignation by assuming the airs of a supreme judge.

What a terrible glow of false colouring here floods the meanest virtues--as though they were the reflection of divine qualities!

The _natural_ purpose and utility of every virtue is systematically _hushed up_; it can only be valuable in the light of a _divine_ command or model, or in the light of the good which belongs to a beyond or a spiritual world. (This is magnificent!--As if it were a question of the _salvation of the soul_: but it was a means of making things bearable here with as many beautiful sentiments as possible.)

204.

The _law,_ which is the fundamentally realistic formula of certain self-preservative measures of a community, forbids certain actions that have a definite tendency to jeopardise the welfare of that community: it does _not_ forbid the attitude of mind which gives rise to these actions--for in the pursuit of other ends the community requires these forbidden actions, namely, when it is a matter of opposing its _enemies._ The moral idealist now steps forward and says: "God sees into men's hearts: the action itself counts for nothing; the reprehensible attitude of mind from which it proceeds must be extirpated ..." In normal conditions men laugh at such things; it is only in exceptional cases, when a community lives _quite_ beyond the need of waging war in order to maintain itself, that an ear is lent to such things. Any attitude of mind is abandoned, the utility of which cannot be conceived.

This was the case, for example, when Buddha appeared among a people that was both peaceable and afflicted with great intellectual weariness.

This was also the case in regard to the first Christian community (as also the Jewish), the primary condition of which was the absolutely _unpolitical_ Jewish society. Christianity could grow only upon the soil of Judaism--that is to say, among a people that had already renounced the political life, and which led a sort of parasitic existence within the Roman sphere of government, Christianity goes a step _farther_: it allows men to "emasculate" themselves even more; the circumstances actually favour their doing so.--_Nature_ is _expelled_ from morality when it is said, "Love ye your enemies": for _Nature's_ injunction, "Ye shall _love_ your neighbour and _hate_ your enemy," has now become senseless in the law (in instinct); now, even _the love a man feels for his neighbour_ must first be based upon something (_a sort of love of God_). _God_ is introduced everywhere, and _utility_ is withdrawn; the natural _origin_ of morality is denied everywhere: the _veneration of Nature,_ which lies in _acknowledging a natural morality,_ is _destroyed_ to the roots....

Whence comes the _seductive charm_ of this emasculate ideal of man? Why are we not _disgusted_ by it, just as we are disgusted at the thought of a eunuch?... The answer is obvious: it is not the voice of the eunuch that revolts us, despite the cruel mutilation of which it is the result; for, as a matter of fact, it has grown sweeter.... And owing to the very fact that the "male organ" has been amputated from virtue, its voice now has a feminine ring, which, formerly, was not to be discerned.

On the other hand, we have only to think of the terrible hardness, dangers, and accidents to which a life of manly virtues leads--the life of a Corsican, even at the present day, or that of a heathen Arab (which resembles the Corsican's life even to the smallest detail: the Arab's songs might have been written by Corsicans)--in order to perceive how the most robust type of man was fascinated and moved by the voluptuous ring of this "goodness" and "purity." ... A pastoral melody ... an idyll ... the "good man": such things have most effect in ages when tragedy is abroad.

***

With this, we have realised to what extent the "idealist" (the ideal eunuch) also proceeds from a definite reality and is not merely a visionary.... He has perceived precisely that, for his kind of reality, a brutal injunction of the sort which prohibits certain actions has no sense (because the instinct which would urge him to these actions is _weakened,_ thanks to a long need of practice, and of compulsion to practise). The castrator formulates a host of new self-preservative measures for a perfectly definite species of men: in this sense he is a realist. The _means_ to which he has recourse for establishing his legislation, are the same as those of ancient legislators: he appeals to all authorities, to "God," and he exploits the notions "guilt and punishment"--that is to say, he avails himself of the whole of the older ideal, but interprets it differently; for instance: punishment is given a place in the inner self (it is called the pang of conscience).

In practice this kind of man _meets with his end_ the moment the exceptional conditions favouring his existence cease to prevail--a sort of insular happiness, like that of Tahiti, and of the little Jews in the Roman provinces. Their only _natural_ foe is the soil from which they spring: they must wage war against that, and once more give their _offensive_ and _defensive_ passions rope in order to be equal to it: their opponents are the adherents of the old ideal (this kind of hostility is shown on a grand scale by Paul in relation to Judaism, and by Luther in relation to the priestly ascetic ideal). The mildest form of this antagonism is certainly that of the first Buddhists; perhaps nothing has given rise to so much work, as the enfeeblement and discouragement of the feeling of _antagonism._ The struggle against resentment almost seems the Buddhist's first duty; thus only is his _peace_ of soul secured. To isolate oneself without bitterness, this presupposes the existence of a surprisingly mild and sweet order of men,--saints....

***

The _Astuteness of moral castration._--How is war waged against the virile passions and valuations? No violent physical means are available; the war must therefore be one of ruses, spells, and lies--in short, a "spiritual war."