Chapter VII: Preface (5)

First recipe: One appropriates virtue in general, and makes it the main feature of one's ideal; the older ideal is denied and declared to be _the reverse of all ideals._ Slander has to be carried to a fine art for this purpose.

Second recipe: A type of man is set up as a general _standard_; and this is projected into all things, behind all things, and behind the destiny of all things--as God.

Third recipe: The opponents of one's ideal are declared to be the opponents of God; one arrogates to oneself a _right_ to great pathos, to power, and a right to curse and to bless.

Fourth recipe: All suffering, all gruesome, terrible, and fatal things are declared to be the results of opposition to _ones_ ideal--all suffering is _punishment_ even in the case of one's adherents (except it be a trial, etc.).

Fifth recipe: One goes so far as to regard Nature as the reverse of one's ideal, and the lengthy sojourn amid natural conditions is considered a great trial of patience--a sort of martyrdom; one studies contempt, both in one's attitudes and one's looks towards all "natural things."

Sixth recipe: The triumph of anti-naturalism and ideal castration, the triumph of the world of the pure, good, sinless, and blessed, is projected into the future as the consummation, the finale, the great hope, and the "Coming of the Kingdom of God."

I hope that one may still be allowed to _laugh_ at this artificial hoisting up of a small species of man to the position of an absolute standard of all things?

205.

What I do not at all like in Jesus of Nazareth and His Apostle Paul, is that they _stuffed so much into the heads of paltry people,_ as if their modest virtues were worth so much ado. We have had to pay dearly for it all; for they brought the most valuable qualities of both virtue and man into ill repute; they set the guilty conscience and the self-respect of noble souls at loggerheads, and they led the _braver, more magnanimous, more daring, and more excessive_ tendencies of strong souls astray--even to self-destruction.

206.

In the New Testament, and especially in the Gospels, I discern absolutely no sign of a "_Divine_" voice: but rather an _indirect form_ of the most subterranean fury, both in slander and destructiveness--one of the most dishonest forms of hatred. It lacks _all_ knowledge of the qualities of a _higher nature._ It makes an impudent abuse of all kinds of plausibilities, and the whole stock of proverbs is used up and foisted upon one in its pages. Was it necessary to make a _God_ come in order to appeal to those publicans and to say to them, etc. etc.?

Nothing could be more vulgar than this struggle with the _Pharisees,_ carried on with a host of absurd and unpractical moral pretences; the mob, of course, has always been entertained by such feats. Fancy the reproach of "hypocrisy!" coming from those lips! Nothing could be more vulgar than this treatment of one's opponents--a most insidious sign of nobility or its _reverse...._

207.

Primitive Christianity is the _abolition_ of the _State_: it prohibits oaths, military service, courts of justice, self-defence or the defence of a community, and denies the difference between fellow-countrymen and strangers, as also the _order of castes._

_Christs example_; He does not withstand those who ill-treat Him; He does not defend Himself; He does more, He "offers the left cheek" (to the demand: "Tell us whether thou be the Christ?" He replies: "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven"). He forbids His disciples to defend Him; He calls attention to the fact that He could get help if He wished to, but _will_ not.

Christianity also means the _abolition of society,_ it prizes everything that society despises, its very growth takes place among the outcasts, the condemned, and the leprous of all kinds, as also among "publicans," "sinners," prostitutes, and the most foolish of men (the "fisher folk "); it despises the rich, the scholarly, the noble, the virtuous, and the "punctilious." ...

208.

The war against the noble and the powerful, as it is waged in the New Testament, is reminiscent of Reynard the Fox and his methods: but _plus_ the Christian unction and the more absolute refusal to recognise one's own craftiness.

209.

The Gospel is the announcement that the road to happiness lies open for the lowly and the poor--that all one has to do is to emancipate one's self from all institutions, traditions, and the tutelage of the higher classes. Thus Christianity is no more than the _typical teaching of Socialists._

Property, acquisitions, mother-country, status and rank, tribunals, the police, the State, the Church, Education, Art, militarism: all these are so many obstacles in the way of happiness, so many mistakes, snares, and devil's artifices, on which the Gospel passes sentence--all this is typical of socialistic doctrines.

Behind all this there is the outburst, the explosion, of a concentrated loathing of the "masters,"--the instinct which discerns the happiness of freedom after such long oppression.... (Mostly a symptom of the fact that the inferior classes have been treated too humanely, that their tongues already taste a joy which is forbidden them.... It is not hunger that provokes revolutions, but the fact that the mob have contracted an appetite _en mangeant...._)

210.

Let the _New Testament only be read as a book of seduction_: in it virtue is appropriated, with the idea that public opinion is best won with it,--and as a matter of fact it is a very modest kind of _virtue,_ which recognises only the ideal gregarious animal and nothing more (including, of course, the herdsmen): a puny, soft, benevolent, helpful, and gushingly-satisfied kind of virtue which to the outside world is quite devoid of pretensions,--and which separates the "world" entirely from itself. The _crassest arrogance_ which fancies that the destiny of man turns around it, and it alone, and that on the one side the community of believers represents what is right, and on the other the world represents what is false and eternally to be reproved and rejected. The most _imbecile hatred_ of all things in power, which, however, never goes so far as to touch these things. A kind of _inner detachment_ which, outwardly, leaves everything as it was (servitude and slavery; and knowing how to convert _everything_ into a means of serving God and virtue).

211.

Christianity is possible as the _most private_ form of life; it presupposes the existence of a narrow, isolated, and absolutely unpolitical society--it belongs to the conventicle. On the other hand, a "Christian _State_," "Christian politics," are pieces of downright impudence; they are lies, like, for instance, a Christian leadership of an army, which in the end regards "the God of hosts" as chief of the staff. Even the Papacy has never been able to carry on politics in a Christian way...; and when Reformers indulge in politics, as Luther did, it is well known that they are just as ardent followers of Machiavelli as any other immoralists or tyrants.

212.

Christianity is still possible at any moment. It is not bound to any one of the impudent dogmas that have adorned themselves with its name: it needs neither the teaching of the _personal God,_ nor of _sin,_ nor of _immortality,_ nor of _redemption,_ nor of _faith_; it has absolutely no need whatever of metaphysics, and it needs asceticism and Christian "natural science" still less. Christianity is a _method of life,_ not a system of belief. It tells us how we should behave, not what we should believe.

He who says to-day: "I refuse to be a soldier," "I care not for tribunals," "I lay no claim to the services of the police," "I will not do anything that disturbs the peace within me: and if I must suffer on that account, nothing can so well maintain my inward peace as suffering"--such a man would be a Christian.

213.

_Concerning the history of Christianity._--Continual change of environment: Christian teaching is thus continually changing its _centre of gravity._ The favouring of _low_ and _paltry_ people.... The development of _Caritas...._ The type "Christian" gradually adopts everything that it originally rejected (_and in the rejection of which it asserted its right to exist_). The Christian becomes a citizen, a soldier, a judge, a workman, a merchant, a scholar, a theologian, a priest, a philosopher, a farmer, an artist, a patriot, a politician, a prince ... he re-enters all those _departments of active life_ which he had forsworn (he defends himself, he establishes tribunals, he punishes, he swears, he differentiates between people and people, he contemns, and he shows anger). The whole life of the Christian is ultimately exactly that life _from which Christ preached deliverance...._ The Church is just as much a factor in the _triumph_ of the Antichrist, as the modern State and modern Nationalism.... The Church is the barbarisation of Christianity.

214.

Among the powers that have mastered _Christianity_ are: Judaism (_Paul_); Platonism (Augustine); The cult of mystery (the teaching of salvation, the emblem of the "cross"); Asceticism (hostility towards "Nature," "Reason," the "senses,"--the Orient ...).

215.

Christianity is a denaturalisation of gregarious morality: under the power of the most complete misapprehensions and self-deceptions. Democracy is a more natural form of it, and less sown with falsehood. It is a fact that the oppressed, the low, and whole mob of slaves and half-castes, _will prevail._

First step: they make themselves free--they detach themselves, at first in fancy only; they recognise each other; they make themselves paramount.

Second step: they enter the lists, they demand acknowledgment, equal rights, "Justice."

Third step: they demand privileges (they draw the representatives of power over to their side).

Fourth step: they _alone_ want all power, and they _have_ it.

There are _three elements_ in Christianity which must be distinguished: _(a)_ the oppressed of all kinds, _(b)_ the mediocre of all kinds, _(c)_ the dissatisfied and diseased of all kinds. The _first_ struggle against the politically noble and their ideal; the second contend with the exceptions and those who are in any way privileged (mentally or physically); the third oppose the _natural instinct_ of the happy and the sound.

Whenever a triumph is achieved, the second element steps to the fore; for then Christianity has won over the sound and happy to its side (as warriors in its cause), likewise the powerful (interested to this extent in the conquest of the crowd)--and now it is the _gregarious instinct,_ that _mediocre nature_ which is valuable in every respect, that now gets its highest sanction through Christianity. This mediocre nature ultimately becomes so conscious of itself (gains such courage in regard to its own opinions), that it arrogates to itself even _political power_....

Democracy is Christianity _made natural_: a sort of "return to Nature," once Christianity, owing to extreme anti-naturalness, might have been overcome by the opposite valuation. Result: the aristocratic ideal begins to _lose its natural character_ ("the higher man," "noble," "artist," "passion," "knowledge"; Romanticism as the cult of the exceptional, genius, etc. etc.).

216.

_When the "masters" may also become Christians._--It is of the nature of a _community_ (race, family, herd, tribe) to regard all those conditions and aspirations which favour its survival, as in themselves _valuable_; for instance: obedience, mutual assistance, respect, moderation, pity--as also, to _suppress_ everything that happens to stand in the way of the above.

It is likewise of the nature of the _rulers_ (whether they are individuals or classes) to patronise and applaud those virtues which make their subjects _amenable_ and _submissive_--conditions and passions which may be utterly different from their own.

The _gregarious instinct_ and the _instinct of the rulers_ sometimes _agree_ in approving of a certain number of qualities and conditions,--but for different reasons: the first do so out of direct egoism, the second out of indirect egoism.

_The submission to Christianity on the part of master races_ is essentially the result of the conviction that Christianity is a _religion for the herd,_ that it teaches obedience: in short, that Christians are more easily ruled than non-Christians. With a hint of this nature, the Pope, even nowadays, recommends Christian propaganda to the ruling Sovereign of China.

It should also be added that the seductive power of the Christian ideal works most strongly upon natures that love danger, adventure, and contrasts; that love everything _that entails a risk,_ and wherewith a _non plus ultra_ of powerful feeling may be attained. In this respect, one has only to think of Saint Theresa, surrounded by the heroic instincts of her brothers:--Christianity appears in those circumstances as a dissipation of the will, as strength of will, as a will that is Quixotic.

3. CHRISTIAN IDEALS.

217.

War against the _Christian ideal,_ against the doctrine of "blessedness" and "salvation" as the aims of life, against the supremacy of the fools, of the pure in heart, of the suffering and of the botched!

When and where has any man, _of any note at all,_ resembled the Christian ideal?--at least in the eyes of those who are psychologists and triers of the heart and reins. Look at all Plutarch's heroes!

218.

_Our claim to superiority_: we live in an age of _Comparisons_; we are able to calculate as men have never yet calculated; in every way we are history become self-conscious. We enjoy things in a different way; we suffer in a different way: our instinctive activity is the comparison of an enormous variety of things. We understand everything; we experience everything, we no longer have a hostile feeling left within us. However disastrous the results may be to ourselves, our plunging and almost lustful inquisitiveness, attacks, unabashed, the most dangerous of subjects....

"Everything is good"--it gives us pain to say "nay" to anything. We suffer when we feel that we are sufficiently foolish to make a definite stand against anything.... At bottom, it is we scholars who to-day are fulfilling Christ's teaching most thoroughly.

219.

We cannot suppress a certain irony when we contemplate those who think they have overcome Christianity by means of modern natural science. Christian values are by no means overcome by such people. "Christ on the cross" is still the most sublime symbol--even now....

220.

The two great Nihilistic movements are: _(a)_ Buddhism, _(b)_ Christianity. The latter has only just about reached a state of culture in which it can fulfil its original object,--it has found its _level,_--and now it can manifest itself _without disguise_.....

221.

We have _re-established_ the Christian ideal, it now only remains _to determine_ its value.

(1) Which values does it _deny_? What does _the ideal that opposes it_ stand for?--Pride, pathos of distance, great responsibility, exuberant spirits, splendid animalism, the instincts of war and of conquest; the deification of passion, revenge, cunning, anger, voluptuousness, adventure, knowledge--the _noble ideal_ is denied: the beauty, wisdom, power, pomp, and awfulness of the type man: the man who postulates aims, the "future" man (here Christianity presents itself as the _logical result_ of _Judaism_).

(2) _Can it be realised?_--Yes, of course, when the climatic conditions are favourable--as in the case of the Indian ideal. Both neglect the factor _work._--It separates a creature from a people, a state, a civilised community, and jurisdiction; it rejects education, wisdom, the cultivation of good manners, acquisition and commerce; it cuts adrift everything which is of use and value to men--by means of an idiosyncrasy of sentiment it _isolates_ a man. It is non-political, anti-national, neither aggressive nor defensive,--and only possible within a strictly-ordered State or state of society, which allows these _holy parasites_ to flourish at the cost of their neighbours.....

(3) It has now become the will to be _happy_--and nothing else! "Blessedness" stands for something self-evident, that no longer requires any justification--everything else (the way to live and let live) is only a means to an end....

But what follows is the result of a _low order of thought,_ the fear of pain, of defilement, of corruption, is great enough to provide ample grounds for allowing everything to go to the dogs.... This is a _poor_ way of thinking, and is the sign of an exhausted race; we _must_ not allow ourselves to be deceived. ("Become as little children." Natures _of the same order_: Francis of Assisi, neurotic, epileptic, visionary, like Jesus.)

222.

The _higher_ man distinguishes himself from the _lower_ by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune: it is a sign of _degeneration_ when eudemonistic values begin to prevail (physiological fatigue and enfeeblement of will-power). Christianity, with its prospect of "blessedness," is the typical attitude of mind of a suffering and impoverished species of man. Abundant strength will be active, will suffer, and will go under: to it the bigotry of Christian salvation is bad music and hieratic posing and vexation.

223.

_Poverty, humility, and chastity_ are dangerous and slanderous ideals; but like poisons, which are useful cures in the case of certain diseases, they were also necessary in the time of the Roman Empire.

All ideals are dangerous: because they lower and brand realities; they are all poisons, but occasionally indispensable as cures.

224.

God created man, happy, idle, innocent, and immortal: our actual life is a false, decadent, and sinful existence, a punishment.... Suffering, struggle, work, and death are raised as objections against life, they make life questionable, unnatural--something that must cease, and for which one not only requires but also _has_--remedies!

Since the time of Adam, man has been in an abnormal state: God Himself delivered up His Son for Adam's sin, in order to put an end to the abnormal condition of things: the natural character of life is a _curse_; to those who believe in Him, Christ restores normal life: He makes them happy, idle, and innocent. But the world did not become fruitful without labour; women do not bear children without pain; illness has not ceased: believers are served just as badly as unbelievers in this respect. All that has happened is, that man is delivered from _death_ and _sin--_two assertions which allow of no verification, and which are therefore emphasised by the Church with more than usual heartiness. "He is free from sin,"--not owing to his own efforts, not owing to a vigorous struggle on his part, but _redeemed by the death of the Saviour,_--consequently, perfectly innocent and paradisaical.

_Actual_ life is nothing more than an illusion (that is to say, a deception, an insanity). The whole of struggling, fighting, and real existence--so full of light and shade, is only bad and false: everybody's duty is to be _delivered_ from it.

"Man, innocent, idle, immortal, and happy"--this concept, which is the object of the "most supreme desires," must be criticised before anything else. Why should guilt, work, death, and pain (_and,_ from the Christian point of view, also _knowledge_ ...) be _contrary_ to all supreme desires?--The lazy Christian notions: "blessedness," "innocence," "immortality."

225.

The eccentric concept "holiness" does not exist--"God" and "man" have not been divorced from each other. "Miracles" do not exist--such spheres do not exist: the only one to be considered is the "intellectual" (that is to say, the symbolically-psychological). As decadence: a counterpart to "Epicureanism." ... Paradise according to Greek notions was only "Epicurus' Garden."

A life of this sort lacks a purpose: it _strives after_ nothing;--a form of the "Epicurean gods"--there is no longer any reason to aim at anything,--not even at having children:--everything has been done.

226.

They despised the body: they did not reckon with it: nay, more--they treated it as an enemy. It was their delirium to think that a man could carry a "beautiful soul" about in a body that was a cadaverous abortion.... In order to inoculate others with this insanity they had to present the concept "beautiful soul" in a different way, and to transvalue the natural value, until, at last, a pale, sickly, idiotically exalted creature, something angelic, some extreme perfection and transfiguration was declared to be the higher man.

227.

Ignorance in matters psychological.--The Christian has no nervous system;--contempt for, and deliberate and wilful turning away from, the demands of the body, and the _naked_ body; it is assumed that all this is in keeping with man's nature, and _must perforce work the ultimate good of the soul_;--all functions of the body are systematically reduced to moral values; illness itself is regarded as determined by morality, it is held to be the result of sin, or it is a trial or a state of salvation, through which man becomes more perfect than he could become in a state of health (Pascal's idea); under certain circumstances, there are wilful attempts at inducing illness.

228.

What in sooth is this struggle "against Nature" on the part of the Christian? We shall not, of course, let ourselves be deceived by his words and explanations. It is Nature against something which is also Nature. With many, it is fear; with others, it is loathing; with yet others, it is the sign of a certain intellectuality, the love of a bloodless and passionless ideal; and in the case of the most superior men, it is love of an abstract Nature--these try to live up to their ideal. It is easily understood that humiliation in the place of self-esteem, anxious cautiousness towards the passions, emancipation from the usual duties (whereby, a higher notion of rank is created), the incitement to constant war on behalf of enormous issues, habituation to effusiveness of feelings--all this goes to constitute a type: in such a type the _hypersensitiveness_ of a perishing body preponderates; but the nervousness and the inspirations it engenders are _interpreted_ differently. The _taste_ of this kind of creature tends either (1) to subtilise, (2) to indulge in bombastic eloquence, or (3) to go in for extreme feelings. The natural inclinations _do_ get satisfied, but they are interpreted in a new way; for instance, as "justification before God," "the feeling of redemption through grace," every undeniable _feeling of pleasure_ becomes (interpreted in this way!) pride, voluptuousness, etc. General problem: what will become of the man who slanders and practically denies and belittles what is natural? As a matter of fact, the Christian is an example of exaggerated self-control: in order to tame his passions, he seems to find it necessary to extirpate or crucify them.

229.

Man did not know himself physiologically throughout the ages his history covers; he does not even know himself now. The knowledge, for instance, that man has a nervous system (but no "soul") is still the privilege of the most educated people. But man is not satisfied, in this respect, to say he does not know. A man must be very superior to be able to say: "I do not know this,"--that is to say, to be able to admit his ignorance.

Suppose he is in pain or in a good mood, he never questions that he can find the reason of either condition if only he seeks.... In truth, he cannot find the reason; for he does not even suspect where it lies.... What happens?... He takes the _result_ of his condition for its _cause_; for instance, if he should undertake some work (really undertaken because his good mood gave him the courage to do so) and carry it through successfully: behold, the work itself is the _reason_ of his good mood.... As a matter of fact, his success was determined by the same cause as that which brought about his good mood--that is to say, the happy co-ordination of physiological powers and functions.

He feels bad: _consequently_ he cannot overcome a care, a scruple, or an attitude of self-criticism.... He really fancies that his disagreeable condition is the result of his scruple, of his "sin," or of his "self-criticism."

But after profound exhaustion and prostration, a state of recovery sets in. "How is it possible that I can feel so free, so happy? It is a miracle; only a God could have effected this change."--Conclusion: "He has forgiven my sin." ...

From this follow certain practices: in order to provoke feelings of sinfulness and to prepare the way for crushed spirits it is necessary to induce a condition of morbidity and nervousness in the body. The methods of doing this are well known. Of course, nobody suspects the causal logic of the fact: the _maceration_ of the _flesh_ is interpreted religiously, it seems like an end in itself, whereas it is no more than a _means_ of bringing about that morbid state of indigestion which is known as repentance (the "fixed idea" of sin, the hypnotising of the hen by-means of the chalk-line "sin").

The mishandling of the body prepares the ground for the required range of "guilty feelings"--that is to say, for that general state of pain which _demands an explanation...._

On the other hand, the _method_ of "salvation" may also develop from the above: every dissipation of the feelings, whether prayers, movements, attitudes, or oaths, has been provoked, and exhaustion follows; very often it is acute, or it appears in the form of epilepsy. And behind this condition of deep somnolence there come signs of recovery--or, in religious parlance, "Salvation."

230.

Formerly, the conditions and results of _physiological exhaustion_ were considered more important than healthy conditions and their results, and this was owing to the suddenness, fearfulness, and mysteriousness of the former. Men were terrified by themselves, and postulated the existence of a _higher_ world. People have ascribed the origin of the idea of two worlds--one this side of the grave and the other beyond it--to sleep and dreams, to shadows, to night, and to the fear of Nature: but the symptoms of physiological exhaustion should, above all, have been considered.

Ancient religions have quite special methods of disciplining the pious into states of exhaustion, in which they _must_ experience such things.... The idea was, that one entered into a new order of things, where everything ceases to be known.--The _semblance_ of a higher power....

231.

Sleep is the result of every kind of exhaustion; exhaustion follows upon all excessive excitement....

In all pessimistic religions and philosophies there is a yearning for sleep; the very notion "sleep" is deified and worshipped.

In this case the exhaustion is racial; sleep regarded psychologically is only a symbol of a much deeper and longer _compulsion to rest.... In praxi_ it is death which rules here in the seductive image of its brother sleep....

232.

The whole of the Christian training in repentance and redemption may be regarded as a _folie circulaire_ arbitrarily produced; though, of course, it can be produced only in people who are predisposed to it--that is to say, who have morbid tendencies in their constitutions.

233.

_Against remorse and its purely psychical treatment._--To be unable to have done with an experience is already a sign of decadence. This reopening of old wounds, this wallowing in self-contempt and depression, is an additional form of disease; no "salvation of the soul" ever results from it, but only a new kind of spiritual illness....

These "conditions of salvation" of which the Christian is conscious are merely variations of the same diseased state--the interpretation of an attack of epilepsy by means of a particular formula which is provided, _not_ by science, but by religious mania.

When a man is ill his very _goodness_ is sickly.... By far the greatest portion of the psychical apparatus which Christianity has used, is now classed among the various forms of hysteria and epilepsy.

The whole process of spiritual healing must be remodelled on a physiological basis: the "sting of conscience" as such is an obstacle in the way of recovery--as soon as possible the attempt must be made to counterbalance everything by means of new actions, so that there may be an escape from the morbidness of _self-torture...._ The purely psychical practices of the Church and of the various sects should be decried as dangerous to the health. No invalid is ever cured by prayers or by the exorcising of evil spirits: the states of "repose" which follow upon such methods of treatment, by no means inspire confidence, in the psychological sense....

A man is _healthy_ when he can laugh at the seriousness and ardour with which he has allowed himself to be _hypnotised_ to any extent by any detail in his life--when his remorse seems to him like the action of a dog biting a stone--when he is ashamed of his repentance.

The purely psychological and religious practices, which have existed hitherto, only led to an _alteration in the symptoms_: according to them a man had recovered when he bowed before the cross, and swore that in future he would be a good man.... But a criminal, who, with a certain gloomy seriousness cleaves to his fate and refuses to malign his deed once it is done, has more _spiritual health...._ The criminals with whom Dostoiewsky associated in prison, were all, without exception, unbroken natures,--are they not a hundred times more valuable than a "broken-spirited" Christian?

(For the treatment of pangs of conscience I recommend Mitchell's Treatment.[2])

[Footnote 2: TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.--In _The New Sydenham Society's Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences,_ the following description of Mitchell's treatment is to be found: "A method of treating cases of neurasthenia and hysteria ... by removal from home, rest in bed, massage twice a day, electrical excitation of the muscles, and excessive feeding, at first with milk."]

234.

A _pang of conscience_ in a man is a sign that his character is not yet equal to his _deed._ There is such a thing as a pang of conscience after _good deeds_: in this case it is their unfamiliarity, their incompatibility with an old environment.

235.

_Against remorse._--I do not like this form of cowardice in regard to one's own actions, one must not leave one's self in the lurch under the pressure of sudden shame or distress. Extreme pride is much more fitting here. What is the good of it all in the end! No deed gets undone because it is regretted, no more than because it is "forgiven" or "expiated." A man must be a theologian in order to believe in a power that erases faults: we immoralists prefer to disbelieve in "faults." We believe that all deeds, of what kind soever, are identically the same at root; just as deeds which turn _against_ us may be useful from an economical point of view, and even _generally desirable._ In certain individual cases, we admit that we might well have been _spared_ a given action; the circumstances alone predisposed us in its favour. Which of us, if _favoured_ by circumstances, would not already have committed every possible crime?... That is why one should never say: "Thou shouldst never have done such and such a thing," but only: "How strange it is that I have not done such and such a thing hundreds of times already!"--As a matter of fact, only a very small number of acts are _typical_ acts and real epitomes of a personality, and seeing what a small number of people really are personalities, a single act very rarely _characterises_ a man. Acts are mostly dictated by circumstances; they are superficial or merely reflex movements performed in response to a stimulus, long before the depths of our beings are affected or consulted in the matter. A fit of temper, a gesture, a blow with a knife: how little of the individual resides in these acts!--A deed very often brings a sort of stupor or feeling of constraint in its wake: so that the agent feels almost spellbound at its recollection, or as though he _belonged to it,_ and were not an independent creature. This mental disorder, which is a form of hypnotism, must be resisted at all costs: surely a single deed, whatever it be, when it is compared with all one has done, is _nothing,_ and may be deducted from the sum without making the account wrong. The unfair interest which society manifests in controlling the whole of our lives in one direction, as though the very purpose of its existence were to cultivate a certain individual act, should not infect the man of action: but unfortunately this happens almost continually. The reason of this is, that every deed, if followed by unexpected consequences, leads to a certain mental disturbance, no matter whether the consequences be good or bad. Behold a lover who has been given a promise, or a poet while he is receiving applause from an audience: as far as _intellectual torpor_ is concerned, these men are in no way different from the anarchist who is suddenly confronted by a detective bearing a search warrant.

There are some acts which are _unworthy_ of us: acts which, if they were regarded as typical, would set us down as belonging to a lower class of man. The one fault that has to be avoided here, is to regard them as typical. There is another kind of act of which _we_ are unworthy: exceptional acts, born of a particular abundance of happiness and health; they are the highest waves of our spring tides, driven to an unusual height by a storm--an accident: such acts and "deeds" are also not typical. An artist should never be judged according to the measure of his works.

236.

A. In proportion as Christianity seems necessary to-day, man is still wild and fatal....

B. In another sense, it is not necessary, but extremely dangerous, though it is captivating and seductive, because it corresponds with the _morbid_ character of whole classes and types of modern humanity, ... they simply follow their inclinations when they aspire to Christianity--they are decadents of all kinds.

A and B must be kept very sharply apart. In the _case of A,_ Christianity is a cure, or at least a taming process (under certain circumstances it serves the purpose of making people ill: and this is sometimes useful as a means of subduing savage and brutal natures). In the _case of B,_ it is a symptom of illness itself, it renders the state of decadence _more acute_; in this case it stands opposed to a _corroborating_ system of treatment, it is the invalid's instinct standing _against_ that which would be most salutary to him.

237.

On one side there are the _serious,_ the _dignified,_ and _reflective_ people: and on the other the barbarous, the unclean, and the irresponsible beasts: it is merely a question of _taming animals_--and in this case the tamer must be hard, terrible, and awe-inspiring, at least to his beasts.

All essential requirements must be imposed upon the unruly creatures with almost brutal distinctness--that is to say, magnified a thousand times.

Even the fulfilment of the requirement must be presented in the coarsest way possible, so that it may command respect, as in the case of the spiritualisation of the Brahmins. _The struggle with the rabble and the herd._ If any degree of tameness and order has been reached, the chasm separating these _purified_ and _regenerated_ people from the terrible _remainder_ must have been bridged....

This chasm is a means of increasing self-respect in higher castes, and of confirming their belief in _that_ which they represent--hence the _Chandala._ Contempt and its excess are perfectly correct psychologically--that is to say, magnified a hundred times, so that it may at least be felt.

238.

The struggle against _brutal_ instincts is quite different from the struggle against _morbid_ instincts; it may even be a means of overcoming brutality by making the brutes _ill._ The psychical treatment practised by Christianity is often nothing more than the process of converting a brute into a sick and _therefore_ tame animal.

The struggle against raw and savage natures must be a struggle with weapons which are able to affect such natures: _superstitions_ and such means are therefore indispensable and essential.

239.

Our age, in a certain sense, is _mature_ (that is to say, decadent), just as Buddha's was.... That is why a sort of Christianity is possible without all the absurd dogmas (the most repulsive offshoots of ancient hybridism).

240.

Supposing it were impossible to disprove Christianity, Pascal thinks, in view of the _terrible_ possibility that it may be true, that it is in the highest degree prudent to be a Christian. As a proof of how much Christianity has lost of its terrible nature, to-day we find that other attempt to justify it, which consists in asserting, that even if it were a mistake, it nevertheless provides the greatest advantages and pleasures for its adherents throughout their lives:--it therefore seems that this belief should be upheld owing to the peace and quiet it ensures--not owing to the terror of a threatening possibility, but rather out of fear of a life that has lost its charm. This hedonistic turn of thought, which uses happiness as a proof, is a symptom of decline: it takes the place of the proof resulting from power or from that which to the Christian mind is most terrible--namely, _fear._ With this new interpretation, Christianity is, as a matter of fact, nearing its stage of exhaustion. People are satisfied with a Christianity which is an _opiate,_ because they no longer have the strength to seek, to struggle, to dare, to stand alone, nor to take up Pascal's position and to share that gloomily brooding self-contempt, that belief in human unworthiness, and that anxiety which believes that it "may be damned." But a Christianity the chief object of which is to soothe diseased nerves, does _not require_ the terrible solution consisting of a "God on the cross"; that is why Buddhism is secretly gaining ground all over Europe.

241.

The humour of European culture: people regard one thing as true, but do _the other._ For instance, what is the use of all the art of reading and criticising, if the ecclesiastical interpretation of the Bible, whether according to Catholics or Protestants, is still upheld!

242.

No one is sufficiently aware of the barbarity of the notions among which we Europeans still live. To think that men have been able to believe that the "Salvation of the soul" depended upon a book!... And I am told that this is still believed.

What is the good of all scientific education, all criticism and all hermeneutics, if such nonsense as the Church's interpretation of the Bible has not yet turned the colours of our bodies permanently into the red of shame?

243.

_Subject for reflection_: To what extent does the fatal belief in "Divine Providence"--the most _paralysing_ belief for both the hand and the understanding that has ever existed--continue to prevail; to what extent have the Christian hypothesis and interpretation of Life continued their lives under the cover of terms like "Nature," "Progress," "perfectionment," "Darwinism," or beneath the superstition that there is a certain relation between happiness and virtue, unhappiness and sin? That absurd _belief_ in the course of things, in "Life" and in the "instinct of Life"; that foolish _resignation_ which arises from the notion that if only every one did his duty _all_ would go well--all this sort of thing can only have a meaning if one assumes that there is a direction of things _sub specie boni._ Even _fatalism,_ our present form of philosophical sensibility, is the result of a _long_ belief in Divine Providence, an unconscious result: as though it were nothing to do with us how everything goes! (As though we _might_ let things take their own course; the individual being only a _modus_ of the absolute reality.)

244.

It is the height of psychological falsity on the part of man to imagine a being according to his own petty standard, who is a beginning, a "thing-in-itself," and who appears to him good, wise, mighty, and precious; for thus he suppresses in thoughts _all the causality_ by means of which every kind of goodness, wisdom, and power comes into existence and has value. In short, elements of the most recent and most conditional origin were regarded not as evolved, but as spontaneously generated and "things-in-themselves," and perhaps as the cause of all things.... Experience teaches us that, in every case in which a man has means elevated the interests of the species above those of the individual. Its real _historical_ effect, its fatal effect, remains precisely the _increase of egotism,_ of individual egotism, to excess (to the extreme which consists in the belief in individual immortality). The individual was made so important and so absolute, by means of Christian values, that he could no longer be _sacrificed,_ despite the fact that the species can only be maintained by human sacrifices. All "souls" became _equal_ before God: but this is the most pernicious of all valuations! If one regards individuals as equals, the demands of the species are ignored, and a process is initiated which ultimately leads to its ruin. Christianity is the _reverse of the_ principle of _selection._ If the degenerate and sick man ("the Christian") is to be of the same value as the healthy man ("the pagan"), or if he is even to be valued higher than the latter, as Pascal's view of health and sickness would have us value him, the natural course of evolution is thwarted and the _unnatural_ becomes law.... In practice this general love of mankind is nothing more than deliberately favouring all the suffering, the botched, and the degenerate: it is this love that has reduced and weakened the power, responsibility, and lofty duty of sacrificing men. According to the scheme of Christian values, all that remained was the alternative of self-sacrifice, but this _vestige_ of human sacrifice, which Christianity conceded and even recommended, has no meaning when regarded in the light of rearing a whole species. The prosperity of the species is by no means affected by the sacrifice of one individual (whether in the monastic and ascetic manner, or by means of crosses, stakes, and scaffolds, as the "martyrs" of error). What the species requires is the suppression of the physiologically botched, the weak and the degenerate: but it was precisely to these people that Christianity appealed as a _preservative_ force, it simply strengthened that natural and very strong instinct of all the weak which bids them protect, maintain, and mutually support each other. What is Christian "virtue" and "love of men," if not precisely this mutual assistance with a view to survival, this solidarity of the weak, this thwarting of selection? What is Christian altruism, if it is not the mob-egotism of the weak which divines that, if everybody looks after everybody else, every individual will be preserved for a longer period of time?... He who does not consider this attitude of mind as _immoral,_ as a crime against life, himself belongs to the sickly crowd, and also shares their instincts.... Genuine love of mankind exacts sacrifice for the good of the species--it is hard, full of self-control, because it needs human sacrifices. And this pseudo-humanity which is called Christianity, would fain establish the rule that nobody should be sacrificed.

247.

Nothing could be more useful and deserves more promotion than systematic _Nihilism in action._--As I understand the phenomena of Christianity and pessimism, this is what they say: "We are ripe for nonentity, for us it is reasonable not to be." This hint from "reason" in this case, is simply the voice of _selective Nature._

On the other hand, what deserves the most rigorous condemnation, is the ambiguous and cowardly infirmity of purpose of a religion like _Christianity,_--or rather like the _Church,_--which, instead of recommending death and self-destruction, actually protects all the botched and bungled, and encourages them to propagate their kind.

Problem: with what kind of means could one lead up to a severe form of really contagious Nihilism--a Nihilism which would teach and practise voluntary death with scientific conscientiousness (and not the feeble continuation of a vegetative sort of life with false hopes of a life after death)?

Christianity cannot be sufficiently condemned for having depreciated the _value_ of a great _cleansing_ Nihilistic movement (like the one which was probably in the process of formation), by its teaching of the immortality of the private individual, as also by the hopes of resurrection which it held out: that is to say, by dissuading people from performing the _deed of Nihilism_ which is suicide.... In the latter's place it puts lingering suicide, and gradually a puny, meagre, but durable life; gradually a perfectly ordinary, bourgeois, mediocre life, etc.

248.

_Christian moral quackery._--Pity and contempt succeed each other at short intervals, and at the sight of them I feel as indignant as if I were in the presence of the most despicable crime. Here error is made a duty--a virtue, misapprehension has become a knack, the destructive instinct is systematised under the name of "redemption"; here every operation becomes a wound, an amputation of those very organs whose energy would be the prerequisite to a return of health. And in the best of cases no cure is effected; all that is done is to exchange one set of evil symptoms for another set.... And this pernicious nonsense, this systematised profanation and castration of life, passes for holy and sacred; to be in its service, to be an instrument of this art of healing--that is to say, to be a priest, is to be rendered distinguished, reverent, holy, and sacred. God alone could have been the Author of this supreme art of healing; redemption is only possible as a revelation, as an act of grace, as an unearned gift, made by the Creator Himself.

Proposition I.: Spiritual healthiness is regarded as morbid, and creates suspicion....

Proposition II.: The prerequisites of a strong, exuberant life--strong desires and passions--are reckoned as objections against strong and exuberant life.

Proposition III.: Everything which threatens danger to man, and which can overcome and ruin him, is evil--and should be torn root and branch from his soul.

Proposition IV.: Man converted into a weak creature, inoffensive to himself and others, crushed by humility and modesty, and conscious of his weakness,--in fact, the "sinner,"--this is the desirable type, and one which one can _produce_ by means of a little spiritual surgery....

249.

What is it I protest against? That people should regard this paltry and peaceful mediocrity, this spiritual equilibrium which knows nothing of the fine impulses of great accumulations of strength, as something high, or possibly as the standard of all things.

_Bacon of Verulam_ says: _Infimarum virtutum apud vulgus laus est, mediarum admiratio, supremarum sensus nullus._ Christianity as a religion, however, belongs to the _vulgus_: it has no feeling for the highest kind of _virtus_.

250.

Let us see what the "genuine Christian" does of all the things which his instincts forbid him to do:--he covers beauty, pride, riches, self-reliance, brilliancy, knowledge, and power with suspicion and _mud_--in short, _all culture_: his object is to deprive the latter of its _clean conscience._

251.

The attacks made upon Christianity, hitherto, have been not only timid but false. So long as Christian morality was not felt to be a _capital crime against Life,_ its apologists had a good time. The question concerning the mere "truth" of Christianity--whether in regard to the existence of its God, or to the legendary history of its origin, not to speak of its astronomy and natural science--is quite beside the point so long as no inquiry is made into the value of Christian _morality._ Are Christian morals _worth anything,_ or are they a profanation and an outrage, despite all the arts of holiness and seduction with which they are enforced? The question concerning the truth of the religion may be met by all sorts of subterfuges; and the most fervent believers can, in the end, avail themselves of the logic used by their opponents, in order to create a right for their side to assert that certain things are irrefutable--that is to say, they _transcend_ the means employed to refute them (nowadays this trick of dialectics is called "Kantian Criticism").

252.

Christianity should never be forgiven for having ruined such men as Pascal. This is precisely what should be combated in Christianity, namely, that it has the will to break the spirit of the strongest and noblest natures. One should take no rest until this thing is utterly destroyed:--the ideal of mankind which Christianity advances, the demands it makes upon men, and its "Nay" and "Yea" relative to humanity. The whole of the remaining absurdities, that is to say, Christian fable, Christian cobweb-spinning in ideas and principles, and Christian theology, do not concern us; they might be a thousand times more absurd and we should not raise a finger to destroy them. But what we do stand up against, is that ideal which, thanks to its morbid beauty and feminine seductiveness, thanks to its insidious and slanderous eloquence, appeals to all the cowardices and vanities of wearied souls,--and the strongest have their moments of fatigue,--as though all that which seems most useful and desirable at such moments--that is to say, confidence, artlessness, modesty, patience, love of one's like, resignation, submission to God, and a sort of self-surrender--were useful and desirable _per se_; as though the puny, modest abortion which in these creatures takes the place of a soul, this virtuous, mediocre animal and sheep of the flock--which deigns to call itself man, were not only to take precedence of the stronger, more evil, more passionate, more defiant, and more prodigal type of man, who by virtue of these very qualities is exposed to a hundred times more dangers than the former, but were actually to stand as an ideal for man in general, as a goal, a measure--the highest desideratum. The creation of _this_ ideal was the most appalling temptation that had ever been put in the way of mankind; for, with it, the stronger and more successful exceptions, the lucky cases among men, in which the will to power and to growth leads the whole species "man" one step farther forward, this type was threatened with disaster. By means of the values of this ideal, the growth of such higher men would be checked at the root. For these men, owing to their superior demands and duties, readily accept a more dangerous life (speaking economically, it is a case of an increase in the costs of the undertaking coinciding with a greater chance of failure). What is it we combat in Christianity? That it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness and debility, at converting their proud assurance into anxiety and conscience-trouble; that it knows how to poison the noblest instincts and to infect them with disease, until their strength, their will to power, turns inwards, against themselves--until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt and self-immolation: that gruesome way of perishing, of which _Pascal_ is the most famous example.

II.

A CRITICISM OF MORALITY.

1. THE ORIGIN OF MORAL VALUATIONS.

253.

This is an attempt at investigating morality without being affected by its charm, and not without some mistrust in regard to the beguiling beauty of its attitudes and looks. A world which we can admire, which is in keeping with our capacity for worship--which is continually _demonstrating_ itself--in small things or in large: this is the Christian standpoint which is common to us all.

But owing to an increase in our astuteness, in our mistrust, and in our scientific spirit (also through a more developed instinct for truth, which again is due to Christian influence), this interpretation has grown ever less and less tenable for us.

The craftiest of subterfuges: Kantian criticism. The intellect not only denies itself every right to interpret things in that way, but also to reject the interpretation once it has been made. People are satisfied with a _greater_ demand upon their credulity and faith, with a renunciation of all right to reason concerning the proof of their creed, with an intangible and superior "Ideal" (God) as a stop-gap.

The Hegelian subterfuge, a continuation of the Platonic, a piece of romanticism and reaction, and at the same time a symptom of the historical sense of a new _power_: "Spirit" itself is the "self-revealing and self-realising ideal": we believe that in the "process of, development" an ever greater proportion of this ideal is being manifested--thus the ideal is being realised, faith is vested in the _future_ into which all its noble needs are projected and in which they are being worshipped.

In short:--

(1) God is unknowable to us and not to be demonstrated by us (the concealed meaning behind the whole of the epistemological movement);

(2) God may be demonstrated, but as something evolving, and we are part of it, as our pressing desire for an ideal proves (the concealed meaning behind the historical movement).

It should be observed that criticism is _never_ levelled at the ideal itself, but only at the problem which gives rise to a controversy concerning the ideal--that is to say, why it has not yet been realised, or why it is not demonstrable in small things as in great.

***

It makes all the difference: whether a man recognises this state of distress as such owing to a passion or to a yearning in himself, or whether it comes home to him as a problem which he arrives at only by straining his thinking powers and his historical imagination to the utmost.

Away from the religious and philosophical points of view we find the same phenomena. Utilitarianism (socialism and democracy) criticises the origin of moral valuations, though it believes in them just as much as the Christian does. (What guilelessness! As if morality could remain when the sanctioning _deity_ is no longer present! The belief in a "Beyond" is absolutely necessary, if the faith in morality is to be maintained.)