Part 10

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

188.

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

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

189.

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

190.

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

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

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

191.

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

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

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

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

192.

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

193.

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

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

194.

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

195.

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

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

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

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

196.

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

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

The misunderstandings are therefore the following:--

(1) The immortality of the individual;

(2) The assumed existence of _another_ world;

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

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

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

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

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

197.

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

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

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

198.

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

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

199.

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

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

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

200.

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

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

201.

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

202.

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

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

203.

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

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

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

204.

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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.