Part 12

_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.