Chapter 8

Christianity also stands in opposition to all _intellectual_ well-being,--sick reasoning is the only sort that it _can_ use as Christian reasoning; it takes the side of everything that is idiotic; it pronounces a curse upon "intellect," upon the _superbia_ of the healthy intellect. Since sickness is inherent in Christianity, it follows that the typically Christian state of "faith" _must_ be a form of sickness too, and that all straight, straightforward and scientific paths to knowledge _must_ be banned by the church as _forbidden_ ways. Doubt is thus a sin from the start.... The complete lack of psychological cleanliness in the priest--revealed by a glance at him--is a phenomenon _resulting_ from _décadence_,--one may observe in hysterical women and in rachitic children how regularly the falsification of instincts, delight in lying for the mere sake of lying, and incapacity for looking straight and walking straight are symptoms of _décadence_. "Faith" means the will to avoid knowing what is true. The pietist, the priest of either sex, is a fraud _because_ he is sick: his instinct _demands_ that the truth shall never be allowed its rights on any point. "Whatever makes for illness is _good_; whatever issues from abundance, from superabundance, from power, is _evil_": so argues the believer. The _impulse to lie_--it is by this that I recognize every foreordained theologian.--Another characteristic of the theologian is his _unfitness for philology_. What I here mean by philology is, in a general sense, the art of reading with profit--the capacity for absorbing facts _without_ interpreting them falsely, and _without_ losing caution, patience and subtlety in the effort to understand them. Philology as _ephexis_[24] in interpretation: whether one be dealing with books, with newspaper reports, with the most fateful events or with weather statistics--not to mention the "salvation of the soul."... The way in which a theologian, whether in Berlin or in Rome, is ready to explain, say, a "passage of Scripture," or an experience, or a victory by the national army, by turning upon it the high illumination of the Psalms of David, is always so _daring_ that it is enough to make a philologian run up a wall. But what shall he do when pietists and other such cows from Suabia[25] use the "finger of God" to convert their miserably commonplace and huggermugger existence into a miracle of "grace," a "providence" and an "experience of salvation"? The most modest exercise of the intellect, not to say of decency, should certainly be enough to convince these interpreters of the perfect childishness and unworthiness of such a misuse of the divine digital dexterity. However small our piety, if we ever encountered a god who always cured us of a cold in the head at just the right time, or got us into our carriage at the very instant heavy rain began to fall, he would seem so absurd a god that he'd have to be abolished even if he existed. God as a domestic servant, as a letter carrier, as an almanac-man--at bottom, he is a mere name for the stupidest sort of chance.... "Divine Providence," which every third man in "educated Germany" still believes in, is so strong an argument against God that it would be impossible to think of a stronger. And in any case it is an argument against Germans!...

[24] That is, to say, scepticism. Among the Greeks scepticism was also occasionally called ephecticism.

[25] A reference to the University of Tübingen and its famous school of Biblical criticism. The leader of this school was F. C. Baur, and one of the men greatly influenced by it was Nietzsche's pet abomination, David F. Strauss, himself a Suabian. _Vide_ § 10 and § 28.

53.

--It is so little true that _martyrs_ offer any support to the truth of a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do with the truth at all. In the very tone in which a martyr flings what he fancies to be true at the head of the world there appears so low a grade of intellectual honesty and such _insensibility_ to the problem of "truth," that it is never necessary to refute him. Truth is not something that one man has and another man has not: at best, only peasants, or peasant-apostles like Luther, can think of truth in any such way. One may rest assured that the greater the degree of a man's intellectual conscience the greater will be his modesty, his _discretion_, on this point. To _know_ in five cases, and to refuse, with delicacy, to know anything _further_.... "Truth," as the word is understood by every prophet, every sectarian, every free-thinker, every Socialist and every churchman, is simply a complete proof that not even a beginning has been made in the intellectual discipline and self-control that are necessary to the unearthing of even the smallest truth.--The deaths of the martyrs, it may be said in passing, have been misfortunes of history: they have _misled_.... The conclusion that all idiots, women and plebeians come to, that there must be something in a cause for which any one goes to his death (or which, as under primitive Christianity, sets off epidemics of death-seeking)--this conclusion has been an unspeakable drag upon the testing of facts, upon the whole spirit of inquiry and investigation. The martyrs have _damaged_ the truth.... Even to this day the crude fact of persecution is enough to give an honourable name to the most empty sort of sectarianism.--But why? Is the worth of a cause altered by the fact that some one had laid down his life for it?--An error that becomes honourable is simply an error that has acquired one seductive charm the more: do you suppose, Messrs. Theologians, that we shall give you the chance to be martyred for your lies?--One best disposes of a cause by respectfully putting it on ice--that is also the best way to dispose of theologians.... This was precisely the world-historical stupidity of all the persecutors: that they gave the appearance of honour to the cause they opposed--that they made it a present of the fascination of martyrdom.... Women are still on their knees before an error because they have been told that some one died on the cross for it. _Is the cross, then, an argument?_--But about all these things there is one, and one only, who has said what has been needed for thousands of years--_Zarathustra_.

They made signs in blood along the way that they went, and their folly taught them that the truth is proved by blood.

But blood is the worst of all testimonies to the truth; blood poisoneth even the purest teaching and turneth it into madness and hatred in the heart.

And when one goeth through fire for his teaching--what doth that prove? Verily, it is more when one's teaching cometh out of one's own burning![26]

[26] The quotations are from "Also sprach Zarathustra" ii, 24: "Of Priests."

54.

Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are sceptical. Zarathustra is a sceptic. The strength, the _freedom_ which proceed from intellectual power, from a superabundance of intellectual power, _manifest_ themselves as scepticism. Men of fixed convictions do not count when it comes to determining what is fundamental in values and lack of values. Men of convictions are prisoners. They do not see far enough, they do not see what is _below_ them: whereas a man who would talk to any purpose about value and non-value must be able to see five hundred convictions _beneath_ him--and _behind_ him.... A mind that aspires to great things, and that wills the means thereto, is necessarily sceptical. Freedom from any sort of conviction _belongs_ to strength, and to an independent point of view.... That grand passion which is at once the foundation and the power of a sceptic's existence, and is both more enlightened and more despotic than he is himself, drafts the whole of his intellect into its service; it makes him unscrupulous; it gives him courage to employ unholy means; under certain circumstances it does not _begrudge_ him even convictions. Conviction as a means: one may achieve a good deal by means of a conviction. A grand passion makes use of and uses up convictions; it does not yield to them--it knows itself to be sovereign.--On the contrary, the need of faith, of something unconditioned by yea or nay, of Carlylism, if I may be allowed the word, is a need of _weakness_. The man of faith, the "believer" of any sort, is necessarily a dependent man--such a man cannot posit _himself_ as a goal, nor can he find goals within himself. The "believer" does not belong to himself; he can only be a means to an end; he must be _used up_; he needs some one to use him up. His instinct gives the highest honours to an ethic of self-effacement; he is prompted to embrace it by everything: his prudence, his experience, his vanity. Every sort of faith is in itself an evidence of self-effacement, of self-estrangement.... When one reflects how necessary it is to the great majority that there be regulations to restrain them from without and hold them fast, and to what extent control, or, in a higher sense, _slavery_, is the one and only condition which makes for the well-being of the weak-willed man, and especially woman, then one at once understands conviction and "faith." To the man with convictions they are his backbone. To _avoid_ seeing many things, to be impartial about nothing, to be a party man through and through, to estimate all values strictly and infallibly--these are conditions necessary to the existence of such a man. But by the same token they are _antagonists_ of the truthful man--of the truth.... The believer is not free to answer the question, "true" or "not true," according to the dictates of his own conscience: integrity on _this_ point would work his instant downfall. The pathological limitations of his vision turn the man of convictions into a fanatic--Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon--these types stand in opposition to the strong, _emancipated_ spirit. But the grandiose attitudes of these _sick_ intellects, these intellectual epileptics, are of influence upon the great masses--fanatics are picturesque, and mankind prefers observing poses to listening to _reasons_....

55.

--One step further in the psychology of conviction, of "faith." It is now a good while since I first proposed for consideration the question whether convictions are not even more dangerous enemies to truth than lies. ("Human, All-Too-Human," I, aphorism 483.)[27] This time I desire to put the question definitely: is there any actual difference between a lie and a conviction?--All the world believes that there is; but what is not believed by all the world!--Every conviction has its history, its primitive forms, its stage of tentativeness and error: it _becomes_ a conviction only after having been, for a long time, _not_ one, and then, for an even longer time, _hardly_ one. What if falsehood be also one of these embryonic forms of conviction?--Sometimes all that is needed is a change in persons: what was a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son.--I call it lying to refuse to see what one sees, or to refuse to see it _as_ it is: whether the lie be uttered before witnesses or not before witnesses is of no consequence. The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offence.--Now, this will _not_ to see what one sees, this will _not_ to see it as it is, is almost the first requisite for all who belong to a party of whatever sort: the party man becomes inevitably a liar. For example, the German historians are convinced that Rome was synonymous with despotism and that the Germanic peoples brought the spirit of liberty into the world: what is the difference between this conviction and a lie? Is it to be wondered at that all partisans, including the German historians, instinctively roll the fine phrases of morality upon their tongues--that morality almost owes its very _survival_ to the fact that the party man of every sort has need of it every moment?--"This is _our_ conviction: we publish it to the whole world; we live and die for it--let us respect all who have convictions!"--I have actually heard such sentiments from the mouths of anti-Semites. On the contrary, gentlemen! An anti-Semite surely does not become more respectable because he lies on principle.... The priests, who have more finesse in such matters, and who well understand the objection that lies against the notion of a conviction, which is to say, of a falsehood that becomes a matter of principle _because_ it serves a purpose, have borrowed from the Jews the shrewd device of sneaking in the concepts, "God," "the will of God" and "the revelation of God" at this place. Kant, too, with his categorical imperative, was on the same road: this was his _practical_ reason.[28] There are questions regarding the truth or untruth of which it is _not_ for man to decide; all the capital questions, all the capital problems of valuation, are beyond human reason.... To know the limits of reason--_that_ alone is genuine philosophy.... Why did God make a revelation to man? Would God have done anything superfluous? Man _could_ not find out for himself what was good and what was evil, so God taught him His will.... Moral: the priest does _not_ lie--the question, "true" or "untrue," has nothing to do with such things as the priest discusses; it is impossible to lie about these things. In order to lie here it would be necessary to know _what_ is true. But this is more than man _can_ know; therefore, the priest is simply the mouthpiece of God.--Such a priestly syllogism is by no means merely Jewish and Christian; the right to lie and the _shrewd dodge_ of "revelation" belong to the general priestly type--to the priest of the _décadence_ as well as to the priest of pagan times (--Pagans are all those who say yes to life, and to whom "God" is a word signifying acquiescence in all things).--The "law," the "will of God," the "holy book," and "inspiration"--all these things are merely words for the conditions _under_ which the priest comes to power and _with_ which he maintains his power,--these concepts are to be found at the bottom of all priestly organizations, and of all priestly or priestly-philosophical schemes of governments. The "holy lie"--common alike to Confucius, to the Code of Manu, to Mohammed and to the Christian church--is not even wanting in Plato. "Truth is here": this means, no matter where it is heard, _the priest lies_....

[27] The aphorism, which is headed "The Enemies of Truth," makes the direct statement: "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."

[28] A reference, of course, to Kant's "Kritik der praktischen Vernunft" (Critique of Practical Reason).

56.

--In the last analysis it comes to this: what is the _end_ of lying? The fact that, in Christianity, "holy" ends are not visible is _my_ objection to the means it employs. Only _bad_ ends appear: the poisoning, the calumniation, the denial of life, the despising of the body, the degradation and self-contamination of man by the concept of sin--_therefore_, its means are also bad.--I have a contrary feeling when I read the Code of Manu, an incomparably more intellectual and superior work, which it would be a sin against the _intelligence_ to so much as _name_ in the same breath with the Bible. It is easy to see why: there is a genuine philosophy behind it, _in_ it, not merely an evil-smelling mess of Jewish rabbinism and superstition,--it gives even the most fastidious psychologist something to sink his teeth into. And, _not_ to forget what is most important, it differs fundamentally from every kind of Bible: by means of it the _nobles_, the philosophers and the warriors keep the whip-hand over the majority; it is full of noble valuations, it shows a feeling of perfection, an acceptance of life, and triumphant feeling toward self and life--the _sun_ shines upon the whole book.--All the things on which Christianity vents its fathomless vulgarity--for example, procreation, women and marriage--are here handled earnestly, with reverence and with love and confidence. How can any one really put into the hands of children and ladies a book which contains such vile things as this: "to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband; ... it is better to marry than to burn"?[29] And is it _possible_ to be a Christian so long as the origin of man is Christianized, which is to say, _befouled_, by the doctrine of the _immaculata conceptio_?... I know of no book in which so many delicate and kindly things are said of women as in the Code of Manu; these old grey-beards and saints have a way of being gallant to women that it would be impossible, perhaps, to surpass. "The mouth of a woman," it says in one place, "the breasts of a maiden, the prayer of a child and the smoke of sacrifice are always pure." In another place: "there is nothing purer than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow, air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden." Finally, in still another place--perhaps this is also a holy lie--: "all the orifices of the body above the navel are pure, and all below are impure. Only in the maiden is the whole body pure."

[29] 1 Corinthians vii, 2, 9.

57.