only in Judæo-Semitic conceptions (—the eating and drinking at the last supper form part of these,—this idea which like everything Jewish has been abused so maliciously by the church). But one should guard against seeing anything more than a language of signs, semiotics, an opportunity for parables in all this. The very fact that no word is to be taken literally, is the only condition on which this Anti-realist is able to speak at all. Among Indians he would have made use of the ideas of Sankhyara, among Chinese, those of Lao-tze—and would not have been aware of any difference. With a little terminological laxity Jesus might be called a “free spirit”—he cares not a jot for anything that is established: the word _killeth,_ everything fixed _killtth._ The idea, _experience,_ “life” as he alone knows it, is, according to him, opposed to every kind of word, formula, law, faith and dogma. He speaks only of the innermost things: “life” or “truth,” or “light,” is his expression for the innermost thing,—everything else, the whole of reality, the whole of nature, language even, has only the value of a sign, of a simile for him.—It is of paramount importance not to make any mistake at this point, however great may be the temptation thereto that lies in Christian—I mean to say, ecclesiastical prejudice. Any such essential symbolism stands beyond the pale of all religion, all notions of cult, all history, all natural science, all experience of the world, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books and all Art—for his “wisdom” is precisely the complete ignorance[4] of the existence of such things. He has not even heard speak of _culture,_ he does not require to oppose it,—he does not deny it...The same holds good of the state, of the whole of civil and social order, of work and of war—he never had any reason to deny the world, he had not the vaguest notion of the ecclesiastical concept “the world.”...Denying is precisely what was quite impossible to him.—Dialectic is also quite absent, as likewise the idea that any faith, any “truth” can be proved by argument (—his proofs are inner “lights,” inward feelings of happiness and self-affirmation, a host of “proofs of power”—). Neither can such a doctrine contradict, it does not even realise the fact that there are or can be other doctrines, it is absolutely incapable of imagining a contrary judgment...Wherever it encounters such things, from a feeling of profound sympathy it bemoans such “blindness,”—for it sees the “light,”—but it raises no objections.
33 The whole psychology of the “gospels” lacks the concept of guilt and punishment, as also that of reward. “Sin,” any sort of aloofness between God and man, is done away with,—_this is precisely what constitutes the “glad tidings”._ Eternal bliss is not promised, it is not bound up with certain conditions; it is the only reality—the rest consists only of signs wherewith to speak about it...The results of such a state project themselves into a new practice of life, the actual evangelical practice. It is not a “faith” which distinguishes the Christians: the Christian acts, he distinguishes himself by means of a _different_ mode of action. He does not resist his enemy either by words or in his heart He draws no distinction between foreigners and natives, between Jews and Gentiles (“the neighbour” really means the co-religionist, the Jew). He is angry with no one, he despises no one. He neither shows himself at the tribunals nor does he acknowledge any of their claims (“Swear not at all”).
He never under any circumstances divorces his wife, even when her infidelity has been proved.—All this is at bottom one principle, it is all the outcome of one instinct— The life of the Saviour was naught else than this practice,—neither was his death. He no longer required any formulæ, any rites for his relations with God—not even prayer. He has done with all the Jewish teaching of repentance and of atonement; he alone knows the _mode_ of life which makes one feel “divine,” “saved,” “evangelical,” and forgiveness” are the roads to God: the _evangelical mode of life alone_ leads to God, it _is_ “God.”—That which the gospels abolished was the Judaism of the concepts “sin,” “forgiveness of sin,” “faith,” “salvation through faith,”—the whole doctrine of the Jewish church was denied by the “glad tidings.”
The profound instinct of how one must live in order to feel “in Heaven,” in order to feel “eternal,” while in every other respect one feels by _no_ means “in Heaven”: this alone is the psychological reality of “Salvation.”—A new life and _not_ a new faith...34 If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this that he regarded only _inner_ facts as facts, as “truths,”—that he understood the rest, everything natural, temporal, material and historical, only as signs, as opportunities for parables. The concept “the Son of Man,” is not a concrete personality belonging to history, anything individual and isolated, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol divorced from the concept of time. The same is true, and in the highest degree, of the _God_ of this typical symbolist, of the “Kingdom of God,” of the “Kingdom of Heaven,” and of the “Sonship of God.” Nothing is more un-Christlike than the _ecclesiastical crudity_ of a personal God, of a Kingdom of God that is coming, of a “Kingdom of Heaven” beyond, of a “Son of God” as the second person of the Trinity. All this, if I may be forgiven the expression, is as fitting as a square peg in a round hole—and oh!
what a hole!—the gospels: a _world-historic_ cynicism in the scorn of symbols...But what is meant by the signs “Father” and “Son,” is of course obvious—not to everybody, I admit: with the word “Son,” _entrance_ into the feeling of the general transfiguration of all things (beatitude) is expressed, with the word “Father,” _this feeling itself_ the feeling of eternity and of perfection.—I blush to have to remind you of what the Church has done with this symbolism: has it not set an Amphitryon story at the threshold of the Christian “faith”? And a dogma of immaculate conception into the bargain?..._But by so doing it defiled conception._—— The “Kingdom of Heaven” is a state of the heart—not something which exists “beyond this earth” or comes to you “after death.” The whole idea of natural death is lacking in the gospels. Death is not a bridge, not a means of access: it is absent because it belongs to quite a different and merely apparent world the only use of which is to furnish signs, similes. The “hour of death” is not a Christian idea—the “hour,” time in general, physical life and its crises do not exist for the messenger of “glad tidings.”...The “Kingdom of God” is not some thing that is expected; it has no yesterday nor any day after to-morrow, it is not going to come in a “thousand years”—it is an experience of a human heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere...35 This “messenger of glad tidings” died as he lived and as he taught—_not_ in order “to save mankind,” but in order to show how one ought to live. It was a mode of life that he bequeathed to mankind: his behaviour before his judges, his attitude towards his executioners, his accusers, and all kinds of calumny and scorn,—his demeanour on the _cross._ He offers no resistance; he does not defend his rights; he takes no step to ward off the most extreme consequences, he does more,—he provokes them. And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who treat him ill..._Not_ to defend one’s self, _not_ to show anger, not to hold anyone responsible...But to refrain from resisting even the evil one,—to _love_ him...36 —Only we spirits that have _become free,_ possess the necessary condition for understanding something which nineteen centuries have misunderstood,—that honesty which has become an instinct and a passion in us, and which wages war upon the “holy lie” with even more vigour than upon every other lie...Mankind was unspeakably far from our beneficent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the mind, which, alone, renders the solution of such strange and subtle things possible: at all times, with shameless egoism, all that people sought was their _own_ advantage in these matters, the Church was built up out of contradiction to the gospel...Whoever might seek for signs pointing to the guiding fingers of an ironical deity behind the great comedy of existence, would find no small argument in the _huge note of interrogation_ that is called Christianity. The fact that mankind is on its knees before the reverse of that which formed the origin, the meaning and the _rights_ of the gospel; the fact that, in the idea “Church,” precisely that is pronounced holy which the “messenger of glad tidings” regarded as _beneath_ him, as _behind_ him—one might seek in vain for a more 37 —Our age is proud of its historical sense: how could it allow itself to be convinced of the nonsensical idea that at the beginning Christianity consisted only of the _clumsy fable of the thaumaturgist and of the Saviour,_ and that all its spiritual and symbolic side was only developed later? On the contrary: the history of Christianity—from the death on the cross onwards—is the history of a gradual and ever coarser misunderstanding of an original symbolism.
With every extension of Christianity over ever larger and ruder masses, who were ever less able to grasp its first principles, the need of _vulgarising and barbarising it_ increased proportionately—it absorbed the teachings and rites of all the _subterranean_ cults of the _imperium Romanum,_ as well as the nonsense of every kind of morbid reasoning. The fatal feature of Christianity lies in the necessary fact that its faith had to become as morbid, base and vulgar as the needs to which it had to minister were morbid, base and vulgar. _Morbid barbarism_ at last braces itself together for power in the form of the Church—the Church, this deadly hostility to all honesty, to all loftiness of the soul, to all discipline of the mind, to all frank and kindly humanity.—_Christian_ and _noble_ values: only we spirits _who have become free have_ re-established this contrast in values which is the greatest that has ever existed on earth!— 38 —I cannot, at this point, stifle a sigh. There are days when I am visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—the _contempt of man._ And in order that I may leave you in no doubt as to what I despise, _whom_ I despise: I declare that it is the man of to-day, the man with whom I am fatally contemporaneous. The man of to-day, I am asphyxiated by his foul breath...Towards the past, like all knights of knowledge, I am profoundly tolerant,—that is to say, I exercise a sort of _generous_ self-control: with gloomy caution I pass through whole millennia of this mad-house world, and whether it take care not to hold mankind responsible for its mental disorders.
But my feeling suddenly changes, and vents itself the moment I enter the modern age, _our_ age. Our age _knows..._ That which formerly was merely morbid, is now positively indecent It is indecent nowadays to be a Christian. _And it is here that my loathing begins._ I look about me: not a word of what was formerly known as “truth” has remained standing; we can no longer endure to hear a priest even pronounce the word “truth.” Even he who makes but the most modest claims upon truth, _must_ know at present, that a theologian, a priest, or a pope, not only errs but actually _ties,_ with every word that he utters,—and that he is no longer able to lie from “innocence,” from “ignorance.”
Even the priest knows quite as well as everybody else does that there is no longer any “God,” any “sinner” or any “Saviour,” and that “free will,” and “a moral order of the universe” are _lies._ Seriousness, the profound self-conquest of the spirit no longer allows anyone to be _ignorant_ about this...All the concepts of the Church have been revealed in their true colours—that is to say, as the most vicious frauds on earth, calculated to _depreciate_ nature and all natural values. The priest himself has been recognised as what he is—that is to say, as the most dangerous kind of parasite, as the actual venomous spider of existence...At present we know, our _conscience_ knows, the real value of the gruesome inventions which the priests and the Church have made, _and what end they served._ By means of them that state of self-profanation on the part of man has been attained, the sight of which makes one heave. The concepts “Beyond,” “Last Judgment,” “Immortality of the Soul,” the “soul” itself, are merely so many instruments of torture, so many systems of cruelty, on the strength of which the priest became and remained master...Everybody knows this, _and nevertheless everything remains as it was._ Whither has the last shred of decency, of self-respect gone, if nowadays even our statesmen—a body of men who are otherwise so unembarrassed, and such thorough anti-Christians in deed—still declare themselves Christians and still flock to communion?[5]...Fancy a prince at the head of his legions, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and self-exaltation of his people,—but _shameless_ enough to acknowledge himself a Christian!...What then does Christianity deny? What does it call “world”? “The world” to Christianity means that a man is a soldier, a judge, a patriot, that he defends himself, that he values his honour, that he desires his own advantage, that he is _proud._...The conduct of every moment, every instinct, every valuation that leads to a deed, is at present anti-Christian: what an _abortion of falsehood_ modern man must be, in order to be able _without a blush_ still to call himself a Christian!—— 39 —I will retrace my steps, and will tell you the _genuine_ history of Christianity.—The very word “Christianity” is a misunderstanding,—truth to tell, there never was more than one Christian, and he _died_ on the Cross. The “gospel” _died_ on the cross. That which thenceforward was called “gospel” was the reverse of that “gospel” that Christ had lived: it was “evil tidings,” a _dysangel_ It is false to the point of nonsense to see in “faith,” in the faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing trait of the Christian: the only thing that is Christian is the Christian mode of existence, a life such as he led who died on the Cross...To this day a life of this kind is still possible; for certain men, it is even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible in all ages..._Not_ a faith, but a course of action, above all a course of inaction, non-interference, and a different life...States of consciousness, any sort of faith, a holding of certain things for true, as every psychologist knows, are indeed of absolutely no consequence, and are only of fifth-rate importance compared with the value of the instincts: more exactly, the whole concept of intellectual causality is false. To reduce the fact of being a Christian, or of Christianity, to a holding of something for true, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is tantamount to denying Christianity. _In fact there have never been any Christians._ The “Christian,” he who for two thousand years has been called a Christian, is merely a psychological misunderstanding of self. Looked at more closely, there ruled in him, _notwithstanding_ all his faith, only instincts—and _what instincts!_—“Faith” in all ages, as for instance in the case of Luther, has always been merely a cloak, a pretext, a _screen,_ behind which the instincts played their game,—a prudent form of _blindness_ in regard to the dominion of _certain_ instincts. “Faith” I have already characterised as a piece of really Christian cleverness; for people have always spoken of “faith” and acted according to their instincts...In the Christian’s world of ideas there is nothing which even touches reality: but I have already recognised in the instinctive hatred of reality the actual motive force, the only driving power at the root of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That here, even _in psychologicis_, error is fundamental,—that is to say capable of determining the spirit of things,—that is to say, _substance._ Take one idea away from the whole, and put one realistic fact in its stead,—and the whole of Christianity tumbles into nonentity!—Surveyed from above, this strangest of all facts,-a religion not only dependent upon error, but inventive and showing signs of genius only in those errors which are dangerous and which poison life and the human heart—remains a _spectacle for gods,_ for those gods who are at the same time philosophers and whom I met for instance in those celebrated dialogues on the island of Naxos. At the moment when they get rid of their _loathing (—and we do as well!_), they will be thankful for the spectacle the Christians have offered: the wretched little planet called Earth perhaps deserves on account of _this_ curious case alone, a divine glance, and divine interest...Let us not therefore underestimate the Christians: the Christian, false _to the point of innocence in falsity,_ is far above the apes,—in regard to the Christians a certain well-known theory of Descent becomes a mere good-natured compliment.
40 —The fate of the gospel was decided at the moment of the death,—it hung on the “cross.”...It was only death, this unexpected and ignominious death; it was only the cross which as a rule was reserved simply for the _canaille,_—only this appalling paradox which confronted the disciples with the actual riddle: _Who was that? what was that?_—The state produced by the excited and profoundly wounded feelings of these men, the suspicion that such a death might imply the _refutation_ of their cause, and the terrible note of interrogation: “why precisely thus?” will be understood only too well. In this case everything _must_ be necessary, everything must have meaning, a reason, the highest reason. The love of a disciple admits of no such thing as accident. Only then did the chasm yawn: “who has killed him?” “who was his natural enemy?”—this question rent the firmament like a flash of lightning. Reply: _dominant_ Judaism, its ruling class. Thenceforward the disciple felt himself in revolt _against_ established order; he understood Jesus, after the fact, as one in _revolt against established order._ Heretofore this warlike, this nay-saying and nay-doing feature in Christ had been lacking; nay more, he was its contradiction. The small primitive community had obviously understood _nothing_ of the principal factor of all, which was the example of freedom and of superiority to every form of _resentment_ which lay in this way of dying. And this shows how little they understood him altogether! At bottom Jesus could not have desired anything else by his death than to give the strongest public _example_ and _proof_ of his doctrine...But his disciples were very far from _forgiving this_ death—though if they had done so it would have been in the highest sense evangelical on their part,—neither were they prepared, with a gentle and serene calmness of heart, to _offer_ themselves for a similar death...Precisely the most unevangelical feeling, _revenge,_ became once more ascendant. It was impossible for the cause to end with this death: “compensation” and “judgment” were required (—and forsooth, what could be more unevangelical than “compensation,” “punishment,” “judgment”!)
The popular expectation of a Messiah once more became prominent; attention was fixed upon one historical moment: the “Kingdom of God” descends to sit in judgment upon his enemies. But this proves that everything was misunderstood: the “Kingdom of God” regarded as the last scene of the last act, as a promise! But the Gospel had clearly been the living, the fulfilment, the _reality_ of this “Kingdom of God.”
It was precisely a death such as Christ’s that was this “Kingdom of God.” It was only now that all the contempt for the Pharisees and the theologians, and all bitter feelings towards them, were introduced into the character of the Master,—and by this means he himself was converted into a Pharisee and a theologian! On the other hand, the savage veneration of these completely unhinged souls could no longer endure that evangelical right of every man to be the child of God, which Jesus had taught: their revenge consisted in _elevating_ Jesus in a manner devoid of all reason, and in separating him from themselves: just as, formerly, the Jews, with the view of revenging themselves on their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and placed him high above them. The Only God, and the Only Son of God:—both were products of resentment.
41 —And from this time forward an absurd problem rose into prominence: “how _could_ God allow it to happen?” To this question the disordered minds of the small community found a reply which in its absurdity was literally terrifying: God gave his Son as a _sacrifice_ for the forgiveness of sins. Alas! how prompt and sudden was the end of the gospel! Expiatory sacrifice for guilt, and indeed in its most repulsive and barbaric form,—the sacrifice of the _innocent_ for the sins of the guilty! What appalling Paganism!—For Jesus himself had done away with the concept “guilt,”—he denied any gulf between God and man, he _lived_ this unity between God and man, it was this that constituted _his_ “glad tidings.”...And he did _not_ teach it as a privilege!—Thenceforward there was gradually imported into the type of the Saviour the doctrine of the Last Judgment, and of the “second coming,” the doctrine of sacrificial death, and the doctrine of _Resurrection,_ by means of which the whole concept “blessedness,” the entire and only reality of the gospel, is conjured away—in favour of a state _after_ death!...St Paul, with that rabbinic impudence which characterises all his doings, rationalised this conception, this prostitution of a conception, as follows: “if Christ did not rise from the dead, our faith is vain.”—And, in a trice, the most contemptible of all unrealisable promises, the _impudent_ doctrine of personal immortality, was woven out of the gospel...St Paul even preached this immortality as a reward.
42 You now realise what it was that came to an end with the death on the cross: a new and thoroughly original effort towards a Buddhistic movement of peace, towards real and _not_ merely promised _happiness on earth._ For, as I have already pointed out, this remains the fundamental difference between the two religions _of decadence:_ Buddhism promises little but fulfils more, Christianity promises everything but fulfils nothing.—The “glad tidings” were followed closely by the absolutely _worst_ tidings—those of St Paul. Paul is the incarnation of a type which is the reverse of that of the Saviour; he is the genius in hatred, in the standpoint of hatred, and in the relentless logic of hatred. And alas what did this dysangelist not sacrifice to his hatred! Above all the Saviour himself: he nailed him to _his_ cross. Christ’s life, his example, his doctrine and death, the sense and the right of the gospel—not a vestige of alt this was left, once this forger, prompted by his hatred, had understood in it only that which could serve his purpose. _Not_ reality: _not_ historical truth!...And once more, the sacerdotal instinct of the Jew, perpetrated the same great crime against history,—he simply cancelled the yesterday, and the day before that, out of Christianity; he _contrived of his own accord a history of the birth of Christianity._ He did more: he once more falsified the history of Israel, so as to make it appear as a prologue to _his_ mission: all the prophets had referred to _his_ “Saviour.”...Later on the Church even distorted the history of mankind so as to convert it into a prelude to Christianity...The type of the Saviour, his teaching, his life, his death, the meaning of his death, even the sequel to his death—nothing remained untouched, nothing was left which even remotely resembled reality. St Paul simply transferred the centre of gravity of the whole of that great life, to a place _behind_ this life,—in the _lie_ of the “resuscitated” Christ. At bottom, he had no possible use for the life of the Saviour,—he needed the death on the cross, _and_ something more. To regard as honest a man like St Paul (a man whose home was the very headquarters of Stoical enlightenment) when he devises a proof of the continued existence of the Saviour out of a hallucination; or even to believe him when he declares that he had this hallucination, would amount to foolishness on the part of a psychologist: St Paul desired the end, consequently he also desired the means...Even what he himself did not believe, was believed in by the idiots among whom he spread _his_ doctrine.—What he wanted was power; with St Paul the priest again aspired to power,—he could make use only of concepts, doctrines, symbols with which masses may be tyrannised over, and with which herds are formed. What was the only part of Christianity which was subsequently borrowed by Muhamed? St Paul’s invention, his expedient for priestly tyranny and to the formation of herds: the belief in immortality—_that is to say, the doctrine of the “Last Judgment.”..._ 43 When the centre of gravity of life is laid, _not_ in life, but in a beyond—_in nonentity,_—life is utterly robbed of its balance. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all nature in the instincts,—everything in the instincts that is beneficent, that promotes life and that is a guarantee of the future, henceforward aroused suspicion. The very meaning of life is now construed as the effort to live in such a way that life no longer has any point...Why show any public spirit? Why be grateful for one’s origin and one’s forebears? Why collaborate with one’s fellows, and be confident? Why be concerned about the general weal or strive after it?...All these things are merely so many “temptations,” so many deviations from the “straight path.” “One thing only is necessary.”...That everybody, as an “immortal soul,” should have equal rank, that in the totality of beings, the “salvation” of each individual may lay claim to eternal importance, that insignificant bigots and three-quarter-lunatics may have the right to suppose that the laws of nature may be persistently _broken_ on their account,—any such magnification of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to _insolence,_ cannot be branded with sufficient contempt And yet it is to this miserable flattery of personal vanity that Christianity owes its _triumph,_—by this means it lured all the bungled and the botched, all revolting and revolted people, all abortions, the whole of the refuse and offal of humanity, over to its side. The “salvation of the soul”—in plain English: “the world revolves around me”...The poison of the doctrine “_equal_ rights for all”—has been dispensed with the greatest thoroughness by Christianity: Christianity, prompted by the most secret recesses of bad instincts, has waged a deadly war upon all feeling of reverence and distance between man and man—that is to say, the _prerequisite_ of all elevation, of every growth in culture; out of the resentment of the masses it wrought its _principal weapons_ against us, against everything noble, joyful, exalted on earth, against our happiness on earth...To grant “immortality” to every St Peter and St Paul, was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon _noble_ humanity that has ever been perpetrated.—And do not let us underestimate the fatal influence which, springing from Christianity, has insinuated itself even into politics! Nowadays no one has the courage of special rights, of rights of t dominion, of a feeling of self-respect and of respect for his equals,—of _pathos of distance._ Our politics are diseased with this lack of courage!—The aristocratic attitude of mind has been most thoroughly undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if the belief in the “privilege of the greatest number” creates and will continue _to create revolutions,_—it is Christianity, let there be no doubt about it, and Christian values, which convert every revolution into blood and crime! Christianity is the revolt of all things that crawl on their bellies against everything that is lofty: the gospel of 44 —The Gospels are invaluable as a testimony of the corruption which was already persistent _within_ the first Christian communities. That which St Paul, with the logician’s cynicism of a Rabbi, carried to its logical conclusion, was nevertheless merely the process of decay which began with the death of the Saviour.—These gospels cannot be read too cautiously; difficulties lurk behind every word they contain. I confess, and people will not take this amiss, that they are precisely on that account a joy of the first rank for a psychologist,—as the reverse of all naive perversity, as refinement _par excellence,_ as a masterpiece of art in psychological corruption. The gospels stand alone. Altogether the Bible allows of no comparison. The _first_ thing to be remembered if we do not wish to lose the scent here, is, that we are among Jews. The dissembling of holiness which, here, literally amounts to genius, and which has never been even approximately achieved elsewhere either by books or by men, this fraud in word and pose which in this book is elevated to an _Art,_ is not the accident of any individual gift, of any exceptional nature. These qualities are a matter of _race._ With Christianity, the art of telling holy lies, which constitutes the whole of Judaism, reaches its final mastership, thanks to many centuries of Jewish and most thoroughly serious training and practice. The Christian, this _ultima ratio_ of falsehood, is the Jew over again—he is even three times a Jew...The fundamental will only to make use of concepts, symbols and poses, which are demonstrated by the practice of the priests, the instinctive repudiation of every other kind of practice, every other standpoint of valuation and of utility—all this is not only tradition, it is _hereditary;_ only as an inheritance is it able to work like nature. The whole of mankind, the best brains, and even the best ages—(one man only excepted who is perhaps only a monster)—have allowed themselves to be deceived.
The gospels were read as the _book of innocence..._ this is no insignificant sign of the virtuosity with which deception has been practised here.—Of course, if we could only succeed in seeing all these amazing bigots and pretended saints, even for a moment, all would be at an end—and it is precisely because _I_ can read no single word of theirs, without seeing their pretentious poses, _that I have made an end of them_...I cannot endure a certain way they have of casting their eyes heavenwards.—Fortunately for Christianity, books are for the greatest number, merely literature. We must not let ourselves be led away: “judge not!” they say, but they dispatch all those to hell who stand in their way. Inasmuch as they let God do the judging, they themselves, judge; inasmuch as they glorify God, they glorify themselves; inasmuch as they exact those virtues of which they themselves happen to be capable—nay more, of which they are in need in order to be able to remain on top at all;—they assume the grand airs of struggling for virtue, of struggling for the dominion of virtue. “We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves for the good” (—“the Truth,” “the Light,” “the Kingdom of God”): as a matter of fact they do only what they cannot help doing. Like sneaks they have to play a humble part; sit away in corners, and remain obscurely in the shade, and they make all this appear a duty; their humble life now appears as a duty, and their humility is one proof the more of their piety!...Oh, what a humble, chaste and compassionate kind of falsity! “Virtue itself shall bear us testimony.”...Only read the gospels as books calculated to seduce by means of morality: morality is appropriated by these petty people,—they know what morality can do! The best way of leading mankind by the nose is with morality! The fact is that the most conscious _conceit_ of people who believe themselves to be _chosen,_ here simulates modesty: in this way they, the Christian community, the “good and the just” place themselves once and for all on a certain side, the side “of Truth”—and the rest of mankind, “the world” on the other...This was the most fatal kind of megalomania that had ever yet existed on earth: insignificant little abortions of bigots and liars began to lay sole claim to the concepts “God,” “Truth,” “Light,” “Spirit,” “Love,” “Wisdom,” “Life,” as if these things were, so to speak, synonyms of themselves, in order to fence themselves off from “the world”; little ultra-Jews, ripe for every kind of madhouse, twisted values round in order to suit themselves, just as if the Christian, alone, were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even the “_ultimate tribunal_” of all the rest of mankind...The whole fatality was rendered possible only because a kind of megalomania, akin to this one and allied to it in race,—the Jewish kind—was already to hand in the world: the very moment the gulf between Jews and Judæo-Christians was opened, the latter had no alternative left, but to adopt the same self-preservative measures as the Jewish instinct suggested, even _against_ the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews, theretofore, had employed these same measures only against the Gentiles. The Christian is nothing more than an anarchical Jew.
45 —Let me give you a few examples of what these paltry people have stuffed into their heads, what they have laid _on the lips of their Master_: quite a host of confessions from “beautiful souls.”— “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.” (Mark vi.
“And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.” (Mark ix. 42.)—How _evangelical!..._ “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it fa better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark ix. 47, 48.)—The eye is not precisely what is meant in this passage...“Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” (Mark ix. 1.)—Well _lied,_ lion![6]...