Chapter 3

Christianity is called the religion of _pity_.--Pity stands in opposition to all the tonic passions that augment the energy of the feeling of aliveness: it is a depressant. A man loses power when he pities. Through pity that drain upon strength which suffering works is multiplied a thousandfold. Suffering is made contagious by pity; under certain circumstances it may lead to a total sacrifice of life and living energy--a loss out of all proportion to the magnitude of the cause (--the case of the death of the Nazarene). This is the first view of it; there is, however, a still more important one. If one measures the effects of pity by the gravity of the reactions it sets up, its character as a menace to life appears in a much clearer light. Pity thwarts the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; it fights on the side of those disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining life in so many of the botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a gloomy and dubious aspect. Mankind has ventured to call pity a virtue (--in every _superior_ moral system it appears as a weakness--); going still further, it has been called _the_ virtue, the source and foundation of all other virtues--but let us always bear in mind that this was from the standpoint of a philosophy that was nihilistic, and upon whose shield _the denial of life_ was inscribed. Schopenhauer was right in this: that by means of pity life is denied, and made _worthy of denial_--pity is the technic of nihilism. Let me repeat: this depressing and contagious instinct stands against all those instincts which work for the preservation and enhancement of life: in the rôle of _protector_ of the miserable, it is a prime agent in the promotion of _décadence_--pity persuades to extinction.... Of course, one doesn't say "extinction": one says "the other world," or "God," or "the _true_ life," or Nirvana, salvation, blessedness.... This innocent rhetoric, from the realm of religious-ethical balderdash, appears _a good deal less innocent_ when one reflects upon the tendency that it conceals beneath sublime words: the tendency to _destroy life_. Schopenhauer was hostile to life: that is why pity appeared to him as a virtue.... Aristotle, as every one knows, saw in pity a sickly and dangerous state of mind, the remedy for which was an occasional purgative: he regarded tragedy as that purgative. The instinct of life should prompt us to seek some means of puncturing any such pathological and dangerous accumulation of pity as that appearing in Schopenhauer's case (and also, alack, in that of our whole literary _décadence_, from St. Petersburg to Paris, from Tolstoi to Wagner), that it may burst and be discharged.... Nothing is more unhealthy, amid all our unhealthy modernism, than Christian pity. To be the doctors _here_, to be unmerciful _here_, to wield the knife _here_--all this is _our_ business, all this is _our_ sort of humanity, by this sign we are philosophers, we Hyperboreans!--

8.

It is necessary to say just _whom_ we regard as our antagonists: theologians and all who have any theological blood in their veins--this is our whole philosophy.... One must have faced that menace at close hand, better still, one must have had experience of it directly and almost succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly (--the alleged free-thinking of our naturalists and physiologists seems to me to be a joke--they have no passion about such things; they have not suffered--). This poisoning goes a great deal further than most people think: I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard themselves as "idealists"--among all who, by virtue of a higher point of departure, claim a right to rise above reality, and to look upon it with suspicion.... The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (--and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the senses," "honor," "good living," "science"; he sees such things as _beneath_ him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which "the soul" soars as a pure thing-in-itself--as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, _holiness_, had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices.... The pure soul is a pure lie.... So long as the priest, that _professional_ denier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is accepted as a _higher_ variety of man, there can be no answer to the question, What _is_ truth? Truth has already been stood on its head when the obvious attorney of mere emptiness is mistaken for its representative....

9.

Upon this theological instinct I make war: I find the tracks of it everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is shifty and dishonourable in all things. The pathetic thing that grows out of this condition is called _faith_: in other words, closing one's eyes upon one's self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood. People erect a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon faulty vision; they argue that no _other_ sort of vision has value any more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation" and "eternity." I unearth this theological instinct in all directions: it is the most widespread and the most _subterranean_ form of falsehood to be found on earth. Whatever a theologian regards as true _must_ be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth. His profound instinct of self-preservation stands against truth ever coming into honour in any way, or even getting stated. Wherever the influence of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the concepts "true" and "false" are forced to change places: whatever is most damaging to life is there called "true," and whatever exalts it, intensifies it, approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is there called "false."... When theologians, working through the "consciences" of princes (or of peoples--), stretch out their hands for _power_, there is never any doubt as to the fundamental issue: the will to make an end, the _nihilistic_ will exerts that power....

10.

Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say that theological blood is the ruin of philosophy. The Protestant pastor is the grandfather of German philosophy; Protestantism itself is its _peccatum originale_. Definition of Protestantism: hemiplegic paralysis of Christianity--_and_ of reason.... One need only utter the words "Tübingen School" to get an understanding of what German philosophy is at bottom--a very artful form of theology.... The Suabians are the best liars in Germany; they lie innocently.... Why all the rejoicing over the appearance of Kant that went through the learned world of Germany, three-fourths of which is made up of the sons of preachers and teachers--why the German conviction still echoing, that with Kant came a change for the _better_? The theological instinct of German scholars made them see clearly just _what_ had become possible again.... A backstairs leading to the old ideal stood open; the concept of the "true world," the concept of morality as the _essence_ of the world (--the two most vicious errors that ever existed!), were once more, thanks to a subtle and wily scepticism, if not actually demonstrable, then _at least_ no longer _refutable_.... _Reason_, the _prerogative_ of reason, does not go so far.... Out of reality there had been made "appearance"; an absolutely false world, that of being, had been turned into reality.... The success of Kant is merely a theological success; he was, like Luther and Leibnitz, but one more impediment to German integrity, already far from steady.--

11.

A word now against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be _our_ invention; it must spring out of _our_ personal need and defence. In every other case it is a source of danger. That which does not belong to our life _menaces_ it; a virtue which has its roots in mere respect for the concept of "virtue," as Kant would have it, is pernicious. "Virtue," "duty," "good for its own sake," goodness grounded upon impersonality or a notion of universal validity--these are all chimeras, and in them one finds only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life, the Chinese spirit of Königsberg. Quite the contrary is demanded by the most profound laws of self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man find his _own_ virtue, his _own_ categorical imperative. A nation goes to pieces when it confounds _its_ duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every "impersonal" duty, every sacrifice before the Moloch of abstraction.--To think that no one has thought of Kant's categorical imperative as _dangerous to life_!... The theological instinct alone took it under protection!--An action prompted by the life-instinct proves that it is a _right_ action by the amount of pleasure that goes with it: and yet that Nihilist, with his bowels of Christian dogmatism, regarded pleasure as an _objection_.... What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire, without pleasure--as a mere automaton of duty? That is the recipe for _décadence_, and no less for idiocy.... Kant became an idiot.--And such a man was the contemporary of Goethe! This calamitous spinner of cobwebs passed for _the_ German philosopher--still passes today!... I forbid myself to say what I think of the Germans.... Didn't Kant see in the French Revolution the transformation of the state from the inorganic form to the _organic_? Didn't he ask himself if there was a single event that could be explained save on the assumption of a moral faculty in man, so that on the basis of it, "the tendency of mankind toward the good" could be _explained_, once and for all time? Kant's answer: "That is revolution." Instinct at fault in everything and anything, instinct as a revolt against nature, German _décadence_ as a philosophy--_that is Kant_!--

12.

I put aside a few sceptics, the types of decency in the history of philosophy: the rest haven't the slightest conception of intellectual integrity. They behave like women, all these great enthusiasts and prodigies--they regard "beautiful feelings" as arguments, the "heaving breast" as the bellows of divine inspiration, conviction as the _criterion_ of truth. In the end, with "German" innocence, Kant tried to give a scientific flavour to this form of corruption, this dearth of intellectual conscience, by calling it "practical reason." He deliberately invented a variety of reasons for use on occasions when it was desirable not to trouble with reason--that is, when morality, when the sublime command "thou shalt," was heard. When one recalls the fact that, among all peoples, the philosopher is no more than a development from the old type of priest, this inheritance from the priest, this _fraud upon self_, ceases to be remarkable. When a man feels that he has a divine mission, say to lift up, to save or to liberate mankind--when a man feels the divine spark in his heart and believes that he is the mouthpiece of supernatural imperatives--when such a mission inflames him, it is only natural that he should stand beyond all merely reasonable standards of judgment. He feels that he is _himself_ sanctified by this mission, that he is himself a type of a higher order!... What has a priest to do with philosophy! He stands far above it!--And hitherto the priest has _ruled_!--He has determined the meaning of "true" and "not true"!...

13.

Let us not underestimate this fact: that _we ourselves_, we free spirits, are already a "transvaluation of all values," a _visualized_ declaration of war and victory against all the old concepts of "true" and "not true." The most valuable intuitions are the last to be attained; the most valuable of all are those which determine _methods_. All the methods, all the principles of the scientific spirit of today, were the targets for thousands of years of the most profound contempt; if a man inclined to them he was excluded from the society of "decent" people--he passed as "an enemy of God," as a scoffer at the truth, as one "possessed." As a man of science, he belonged to the Chandala[2].... We have had the whole pathetic stupidity of mankind against us--their every notion of what the truth _ought_ to be, of what the service of the truth _ought_ to be--their every "thou shalt" was launched against us.... Our objectives, our methods, our quiet, cautious, distrustful manner--all appeared to them as absolutely discreditable and contemptible.--Looking back, one may almost ask one's self with reason if it was not actually an _aesthetic_ sense that kept men blind so long: what they demanded of the truth was picturesque effectiveness, and of the learned a strong appeal to their senses. It was our _modesty_ that stood out longest against their taste.... How well they guessed that, these turkey-cocks of God!

[2] The lowest of the Hindu castes.

14.

We have unlearned something. We have become more modest in every way. We no longer derive man from the "spirit," from the "godhead"; we have dropped him back among the beasts. We regard him as the strongest of the beasts because he is the craftiest; one of the results thereof is his intellectuality. On the other hand, we guard ourselves against a conceit which would assert itself even here: that man is the great second thought in the process of organic evolution. He is, in truth, anything but the crown of creation: beside him stand many other animals, all at similar stages of development.... And even when we say that we say a bit too much, for man, relatively speaking, is the most botched of all the animals and the sickliest, and he has wandered the most dangerously from his instincts--though for all that, to be sure, he remains the most _interesting_!--As regards the lower animals, it was Descartes who first had the really admirable daring to describe them as _machina_; the whole of our physiology is directed toward proving the truth of this doctrine. Moreover, it is illogical to set man apart, as Descartes did: what we know of man today is limited precisely by the extent to which we have regarded him, too, as a machine. Formerly we accorded to man, as his inheritance from some higher order of beings, what was called "free will"; now we have taken even this will from him, for the term no longer describes anything that we can understand. The old word "will" now connotes only a sort of result, an individual reaction, that follows inevitably upon a series of partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli--the will no longer "acts," or "moves."... Formerly it was thought that man's consciousness, his "spirit," offered evidence of his high origin, his divinity. That he might be _perfected_, he was advised, tortoise-like, to draw his senses in, to have no traffic with earthly things, to shuffle off his mortal coil--then only the important part of him, the "pure spirit," would remain. Here again we have thought out the thing better: to us consciousness, or "the spirit," appears as a symptom of a relative imperfection of the organism, as an experiment, a groping, a misunderstanding, as an affliction which uses up nervous force unnecessarily--we deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as it is done consciously. The "pure spirit" is a piece of pure stupidity: take away the nervous system and the senses, the so-called "mortal shell," and _the rest is miscalculation_--that is all!...

15.

Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary _causes_ ("God," "soul," "ego," "spirit," "free will"--or even "unfree"), and purely imaginary _effects_ ("sin," "salvation," "grace," "punishment," "forgiveness of sins"). Intercourse between imaginary _beings_ ("God," "spirits," "souls"); an imaginary _natural history_ (anthropocentric; a total denial of the concept of natural causes); an imaginary _psychology_ (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings--for example, of the states of the _nervus sympathicus_ with the help of the sign-language of religio-ethical balderdash--, "repentance," "pangs of conscience," "temptation by the devil," "the presence of God"); an imaginary _teleology_ (the "kingdom of God," "the last judgment," "eternal life").--This purely _fictitious world_, greatly to its disadvantage, is to be differentiated from the world of dreams; the latter at least reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and denies it. Once the concept of "nature" had been opposed to the concept of "God," the word "natural" necessarily took on the meaning of "abominable"--the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (--the real!--), and is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of reality.... _This explains everything._ Who alone has any reason for living his way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a _botched_ reality.... The preponderance of pains over pleasures is the cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such a preponderance also supplies the formula for _décadence_....

16.

A criticism of the _Christian concept of God_ leads inevitably to the same conclusion.--A nation that still believes in itself holds fast to its own god. In him it does honour to the conditions which enable it to survive, to its virtues--it projects its joy in itself, its feeling of power, into a being to whom one may offer thanks. He who is rich will give of his riches; a proud people need a god to whom they can make _sacrifices_.... Religion, within these limits, is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence: to that end he needs a god.--Such a god must be able to work both benefits and injuries; he must be able to play either friend or foe--he is wondered at for the good he does as well as for the evil he does. But the castration, against all nature, of such a god, making him a god of goodness alone, would be contrary to human inclination. Mankind has just as much need for an evil god as for a good god; it doesn't have to thank mere tolerance and humanitarianism for its own existence.... What would be the value of a god who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn, cunning, violence? who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous _ardeurs_ of victory and of destruction? No one would understand such a god: why should any one want him?--True enough, when a nation is on the downward path, when it feels its belief in its own future, its hope of freedom slipping from it, when it begins to see submission as a first necessity and the virtues of submission as measures of self-preservation, then it _must_ overhaul its god. He then becomes a hypocrite, timorous and demure; he counsels "peace of soul," hate-no-more, leniency, "love" of friend and foe. He moralizes endlessly; he creeps into every private virtue; he becomes the god of every man; he becomes a private citizen, a cosmopolitan.... Formerly he represented a people, the strength of a people, everything aggressive and thirsty for power in the soul of a people; now he is simply _the good god_.... The truth is that there is no other alternative for gods: _either_ they are the will to power--in which case they are national gods--_or_ incapacity for power--in which case they have to be good....

17.

Wherever the will to power begins to decline, in whatever form, there is always an accompanying decline physiologically, a _décadence_. The divinity of this _décadence_, shorn of its masculine virtues and passions, is converted perforce into a god of the physiologically degraded, of the weak. Of course, they do not _call_ themselves the weak; they call themselves "the good."... No hint is needed to indicate the moments in history at which the dualistic fiction of a good and an evil god first became possible. The same instinct which prompts the inferior to reduce their own god to "goodness-in-itself" also prompts them to eliminate all good qualities from the god of their superiors; they make revenge on their masters by making a _devil_ of the latter's god.--The _good_ god, and the devil like him--both are abortions of _décadence_.--How can we be so tolerant of the naïveté of Christian theologians as to join in their doctrine that the evolution of the concept of god from "the god of Israel," the god of a people, to the Christian god, the essence of all goodness, is to be described as _progress_?--But even Renan does this. As if Renan had a right to be naïve! The contrary actually stares one in the face. When everything necessary to _ascending_ life; when all that is strong, courageous, masterful and proud has been eliminated from the concept of a god; when he has sunk step by step to the level of a staff for the weary, a sheet-anchor for the drowning; when he becomes the poor man's god, the sinner's god, the invalid's god _par excellence_, and the attribute of "saviour" or "redeemer" remains as the one essential attribute of divinity--just _what_ is the significance of such a metamorphosis? what does such a _reduction_ of the godhead imply?--To be sure, the "kingdom of God" has thus grown larger. Formerly he had only his own people, his "chosen" people. But since then he has gone wandering, like his people themselves, into foreign parts; he has given up settling down quietly anywhere; finally he has come to feel at home everywhere, and is the great cosmopolitan--until now he has the "great majority" on his side, and half the earth. But this god of the "great majority," this democrat among gods, has not become a proud heathen god: on the contrary, he remains a Jew, he remains a god in a corner, a god of all the dark nooks and crevices, of all the noisesome quarters of the world!... His earthly kingdom, now as always, is a kingdom of the underworld, a _souterrain_ kingdom, a ghetto kingdom.... And he himself is so pale, so weak, so _décadent_.... Even the palest of the pale are able to master him--messieurs the metaphysicians, those albinos of the intellect. They spun their webs around him for so long that finally he was hypnotized, and began to spin himself, and became another metaphysician. Thereafter he resumed once more his old business of spinning the world out of his inmost being _sub specie Spinozae_; thereafter he became ever thinner and paler--became the "ideal," became "pure spirit," became "the absolute," became "the thing-in-itself."... _The collapse of a god_: he became a "thing-in-itself."

18.

The Christian concept of a god--the god as the patron of the sick, the god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts that has ever been set up in the world: it probably touches low-water mark in the ebbing evolution of the god-type. God degenerated into the _contradiction of life_. Instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yea! In him war is declared on life, on nature, on the will to live! God becomes the formula for every slander upon the "here and now," and for every lie about the "beyond"! In him nothingness is deified, and the will to nothingness is made holy!...

19.