“Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. _For_...” (_A psychologist’s comment._ Christian morality is refuted by its “For’s”: its “reasons” refute,—this is Christian.) (Mark viii. 34.)
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.” (Matthew vii. I, 2.)—What a strange notion of justice on the part of a “just” judge!...“For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more _than others?_ do not even the publicans so?” (Matthew v. 46, 47.)
The principle of “Christian love”: it insists upon being _well paid_...“But if ye forgive not men their trespasses neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew vi. 15.)—Very compromising for the “Father” in question.
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew vi. 33)—“All these things”—that is to say, food, clothing, all the necessities of life.
To use a moderate expression, this is an _error..._. Shortly before this God appears as a tailor, at least in certain cases...“Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward _is_ great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.” (Luke vi. 23.)—_Impudent_ rabble! They dare to compare themselves with the prophets...“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God and _that_ the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, _him shall God destroy;_ for the temple of God is holy, which _temple ye are._” (St Paul, I Corinthians iii. 16, 17.)—One cannot have too much contempt for this sort of thing...“Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?”
(St Paul, I Corinthians vi. 2.)—Unfortunately this is not merely the ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?”
“Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe...not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble _are called;_ But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen; _yea,_ and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.” (St Paul, I Corinthians i. 20 _et seq._)—In order to _understand_ this passage, which is of the highest importance as an example of the psychology of every Chandala morality, the reader should refer to my _Genealogy of Morals:_ in this book, the contrast between a _noble_ and a Chandala morality born of _resentment_ and impotent revengefulness, is brought to light for the first time. St Paul was the greatest of all the apostles of revenge...46 _What follows from this?_ That one does well to put on one’s gloves when reading the New Testament The proximity of so much pitch almost defiles one. We should feel just as little inclined to hobnob with “the first Christians” as with Polish Jews: not that we need explain our objections...They simply smell bad.—In vain have I sought for a single sympathetic feature in the New Testament; there is not a trace of freedom, kindliness, open-heartedness and honesty to be found in it. Humaneness has not even made a start in this book, while _cleanly_ instincts are entirely absent from it...Only evil instincts are to be found in the New Testament, it shows no sign of courage, these people lack even the courage of their evil instincts. All is cowardice, all is a closing of one’s eyes and self-deception. Every book becomes clean, after one has just read the New Testament: for instance, immediately after laying down St Paul, I read with particular delight that most charming and most wanton of scoffers, Petronius, of whom someone might say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote to the Duke of Parma about Cæsar Borgia: “_è tutto festo_”—immortally healthy, immortally cheerful and well-constituted...These petty bigots err in their calculations and in the most important thing of all. They certainly attack; but everything they assail is, by that very fact alone, _distinguished._ He whom a “primitive Christian” attacks, is _not_ thereby sullied...
Conversely it is an honour to be opposed by “primitive Christians.”
One cannot read the New Testament without feeling a preference for everything in it which is the subject of abuse—not to speak of the “wisdom of this world,” which an impudent windbag tries in vain to confound “by the foolishness of preaching.” Even the Pharisees and the Scribes derive advantage from such opposition: they must certainly have been worth something in order to have been hated in such a disreputable way. Hypocrisy—as if this were a reproach which the “first Christians” _were at liberty_ to make!—After all the Scribes and Pharisees were the _privileged ones;_ this was quite enough, the hatred of the Chandala requires no other reasons. I very much fear that the “first Christian”—as also the “_last Christian” whom I may yet be able to meet,—_ is in his deepest instincts a rebel against everything privileged; he lives and struggles unremittingly for “equal rights”!...Regarded more closely, he has no alternative...If one’s desire be personally to represent “one of the chosen of God”—or a “temple of God,” or “a judge of angels,”—then every _other_ principle of selection, for instance that based upon a standard of honesty, intellect, manliness and pride, or upon beauty and freedom of heart, becomes the “world,”—_evil in itself._ Moral: every word on the lips of a “first Christian” is a lie, every action he does is an instinctive falsehood,—all his values, all his aims are pernicious; but the man he, hates, _the thing_ he hates, _has value._...The Christian, more particularly the Christian priest, is a _criterion of values_—Do I require to add that in the whole of the New Testament only _one_ figure appears which we cannot help respecting? Pilate, the Roman Governor. To take a Jewish quarrel _seriously_ was a thing he could not get himself to do. One Jew more or less—what did it matter?...The noble scorn of a Roman, in whose presence the word “truth” had been shamelessly abused, has enriched the New Testament with the only saying which _is of value,_—and this saying is not only the criticism, but actually the shattering of that Testament: “What is truth!”...47 —That which separates us from other people is not the fact that we can discover no God, either in history, or in nature, or behind nature,—but that we regard what has been revered as “God,” not as “divine,” but as wretched, absurd, pernicious; not as an error, but as a _crime against life._...We deny God as God...If the existence of this Christian God were _proved_ to us, we should feel even less able to believe in him.—In a formula: _deus qualem Paulus creavit, dei negatio._—A religion such as Christianity which never once comes in touch with reality, and which collapses the very moment reality asserts its rights even on one single point, must naturally be a mortal enemy of the “wisdom of this world”—that is to say, _science._ It will call all those means good with which mental discipline, lucidity and severity in intellectual matters, nobility and freedom of the intellect may be poisoned, calumniated and _decried_. “Faith” as an imperative is a _veto_ against science,—_in praxi,_ it means lies at any price. St Paul _understood_ that falsehood—that “faith” was necessary; subsequently the Church understood St Paul.—That “God” which St Paul invented for himself, a God who “confounds” the “wisdom of this world” (in a narrower sense, the two great opponents of all superstition, philology and medicine), means, in very truth, simply St Paul’s firm _resolve_ to do so: to call his own will “God”, _thora,_ that is arch-Jewish. St Paul insists upon confounding the “wisdom of this world”: his enemies are the _good old_ philologists and doctors of the Alexandrine schools; it is on them that he wages war. As a matter of fact no one is either a philologist or a doctor, who is not also an _Antichrist._ As a philologist, for instance, a man sees _behind_ the “holy books,” as a doctor he sees _behind_ the physiological rottenness of the typical Christian. The doctor says “incurable,” the philologist says “forgery.”
48 —Has anybody ever really understood the celebrated story which stands at the beginning of the Bible,—concerning God’s deadly panic over _science?_...Nobody has understood it This essentially sacerdotal book naturally begins with the great inner difficulty of the priest: _he_ knows only one great danger, _consequently_ “God” has only one great danger.— The old God, entirely “spirit,” a high-priest through and through, and wholly perfect, is wandering in a leisurely fashion round his garden; but he is bored. Against boredom even the gods themselves struggle in vain.[7] What does he do? He invents man,—man is entertaining...But, behold, even man begins to be bored. God’s compassion for the only form of misery which is peculiar to all paradises, exceeds all bounds: so forthwith he creates yet other animals. God’s _first_ mistake: man did not think animals entertaining,—he dominated them, he did not even wish to be an “animal.” Consequently God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment,—but many other things ceased as well!
Woman was God’s _second_ mistake.—“Woman in her innermost nature is a serpent, Heva”—every priest knows this: “all evil came into this world through woman,”—every priest knows this too. “_Consequently science_ also comes from woman.”...Only through woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.—What had happened? Panic had seized the old God Man himself had been his _greatest_ mistake, he had created a rival for himself, science makes you _equal to God,_—it is all up with priests and gods when man becomes scientific!—Moral: science is the most prohibited thing of all,—it alone, is forbidden. Science is the _first,_ the germ of all sins, the original sin. _This alone is morality._—“Thou shalt _not_ know”:—the rest follows as a matter of course, God’s panic did not deprive him of his intelligence. How can one _guard_ against science? For ages this was his principal problem.
Reply: man must be kicked out of paradise! Happiness, leisure leads to thinking,—all thoughts are bad thoughts...Man _must_ not think.—And the “priest-per-se” proceeds to invent distress, death, the vital danger of pregnancy, every kind of misery, decrepitude, and affliction, and above all _disease,_—all these are but weapons employed in the struggle with science! Trouble prevents man from thinking...And notwithstanding all these precautions! Oh, horror! the work of science towers aloft, it storms heaven itself, it rings the death-knell of the gods,—what’s to be done?—The old God invents _war;_ he separates the nations, and contrives to make men destroy each other mutually (—the priests have always been in need of war...) War, among other things, is a great disturber of science!—Incredible! Knowledge, _the rejection of the sacerdotal yoke,_ nevertheless increases.—So the old God arrives at this final decision: “Man has become scientific,—_there is no help for it, he must be drowned!_”...49 You have understood me The beginning of the Bible contains the whole psychology of the priest—The priest knows only one great danger, and that is science,—the healthy concept of cause and effect But, on the whole, science flourishes onlyunder happy conditions,—a man must have time, he must also have superfluous mental energy in order to “pursue knowledge”...“_Consequently_ man must be made unhappy,”—this has been the argument of the priest of all ages.—You have already divined what, in accordance with such a manner of arguing, must first have come into the world:—“sin.”...The notion of guilt and punishment, the whole “moral order of the universe,” was invented against science,—against the deliverance of man from the priest...Man must _not_ cast his glance upon the outer world, he must turn it inwards into himself; he must not as a learner look cleverly and cautiously _into_ things; he must not see at all: he must _suffer._...And he must suffer, so that he may be in need of the priest every minute.—Away with doctors! What is needed is a Saviour!—The notion of guilt and punishment, including the doctrine of “grace,” of “salvation” and of “forgiveness”—all _lies_ through and through without a shred of psychological reality—were invented in order to destroy man’s _sense of causality:_ they are an attack on the concept of cause and effect!—And _not_ an attack with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But one actuated by the most cowardly, most crafty, and most ignoble instincts! A _priests_ attack! A _parasite’s_ attack! A vampyrism of pale subterranean leeches!—...When the natural consequences of an act are no longer “natural,” but are thought to be conjured up by phantom concepts of superstition, by “God,” by “spirits,” and by “souls,” as merely moral consequences, in the form of rewards, punishments, hints, and educational means,—then the whole basis of knowledge is destroyed,—_then the greatest crime against man has been perpetrated._—Sin, I repeat, this form of self-pollution _par excellence_ on the part of man, was invented in order to make science, culture and every elevation and noble trait in man quite impossible; by means of the invention of sin the priest is able to _rule._ 50 —I cannot here dispense with a psychology of “faith” and of the “faithful,” which will naturally be to the advantage of the “faithful.”
If to-day there are still many who do not know how very _indecent_ it is to be a “believer”—_or_ to what extent such a state is the sign of decadence, and of the broken will to Life,—they will know it no later than to-morrow. My voice can make even those hear who are hard of hearing.—If perchance my ears have not deceived me, it seems that among Christians there is such a thing as a kind of criterion of truth, which is called “the proof of power.” “Faith saveth; _therefore_ it is true.”—It might be objected here that it is precisely salvation which is not proved but only _promised:_ salvation is bound up with the condition “faith,”—one _shall_ be saved, _because_ one has faith...But how prove _that_ that which the priest promises to the faithful really will take place, to wit: the “Beyond” which defies all demonstration?—The assumed “proof of power” is at bottom once again only a belief in the fact that the effect which faith promises will not fail to take place. In a formula: “I believe that faith saveth;—_consequently_ it is true.”—But with this we are at the end of our tether. This “consequently” would be the _absurdum_ itself as a criterion of truth.—Let us be indulgent enough to assume, however, that salvation is proved by faith (—_not_ only desired, and _not_ merely promised by the somewhat suspicious lips of a priest): could salvation—or, in technical terminology, _happiness_—ever be a proof of truth? So little is it so that, when pleasurable sensations make their influence felt in replying to the question “what is true,” they furnish almost the contradiction of truth, or at any rate they make it in the highest degree suspicious. The proof through “happiness,” is a proof of happiness—and nothing else; why in the world should we take it for granted that _true_ judgments cause more pleasure than false ones, and that in accordance with a pre-established harmony, they necessarily bring pleasant feelings in their wake?—The experience of all strict and profound minds teaches the _reverse._ Every inch of truth has been conquered only after a struggle, almost everything to which our heart, our love and our trust in life cleaves, has had to be sacrificed for it Greatness of soul is necessary for this: the service of truth is the hardest of all services.—What then is meant by honesty in things intellectual? It means that a man is severe towards his own heart, that he scorns “beautiful feelings,” and that he makes a matter of conscience out of every Yea and Nay!—-Faith saveth: _consequently_ it lies...51 The fact that faith may in certain circumstances save, the fact that salvation as the result of an _idée fixe_ does not constitute a true idea, the fact that faith moves _no_ mountains, but may very readily raise them where previously they did not exist—all these things are made sufficiently clear by a mere casual stroll through a _lunatic asylum._ Of course _no_ priest would find this sufficient: for he instinctively denies that illness is illness or that lunatic asylums are lunatic asylums. Christianity is in _need_ of illness, just as Ancient Greece was in need of a superabundance of health. The actual ulterior motive of the whole of the Church’s system of salvation is to _make people ill._ And is not the Church itself the Catholic madhouse as an ultimate ideal?—The earth as a whole converted into a madhouse?—The kind of religious man which the Church aims at producing is a typical _decadent_ The moment of time at which a religious crisis attains the ascendancy over a people, is always characterised by nerve-epidemics; the “inner world” of the religious man is ridiculously like the “inner world” of over-irritable and exhausted people; the “highest” states which Christianity holds up to mankind as the value of values, are epileptic in character,—the Church has pronounced only madmen _or_ great swindlers _in majorem dei honorem_ holy. Once I ventured to characterise the whole of the Christian training of penance and salvation (which nowadays is best studied in England) as a _folie circulaire_ methodically generated upon a soil which, of course, is already prepared for it,—that is to say, which is thoroughly morbid.
Not every one who likes can be a Christian: no man is “converted” to Christianity,—he must be sick enough for it...We others who possess enough courage both for health and for contempt, how rightly _we_ may despise a religion which taught men to misunderstand the body I which would not rid itself of the superstitions of the soul!
which made a virtue of taking inadequate nourishment! which in health combats a sort of enemy, devil, temptation! which persuaded itself that it was possible to bear a perfect soul about in a cadaverous body, and which, to this end, had to make up for itself a new concept of “perfection,” a pale, sickly, idiotically gushing ideal,—so-called “holiness,”—holiness, which in itself is simply a symptom of an impoverished, enervated and incurably deteriorated body!...The movement of Christianity, as a European movement, was from first to last, a general accumulation of the ruck and scum of all sorts and kinds (—and these, by means of Christianity, aspire to power). It does _not_ express the downfall of a race, it is rather a conglomerate assembly of all the decadent elements from everywhere which seek each other and crowd together. It was not, as some believe, the corruption of antiquity, of _noble_ antiquity, which made Christianity possible: the learned idiocy which nowadays tries to support such a notion cannot be too severely contradicted. At the time when the morbid and corrupted Chandala classes became Christianised in the whole of the _imperium,_ the very _contrary type,_ nobility, was extant in its finest and maturest forms. The greatest number became master; the democracy of Christian instincts triumphed...Christianity was not “national,” it was not determined by race,—it appealed to all the disinherited forms of life, it had its allies everywhere. Christianity is built upon the rancour of the sick; its instinct is directed _against_ the sound, against health. Everything well-constituted, proud, high-spirited, and beautiful is offensive to its ears and eyes. Again I remind you of St Paul’s priceless words: “And God hath chosen the _weak_ things of the world, the _foolish_ things of the world; and _base_ things of the world, and things which are _despised”_: this was the formula, _in hoc signo_ decadence triumphed.—_God on the Cross_—does no one yet understand the terrible ulterior motive of this symbol?—Everything that suffers, everything that hangs on the cross, is _divine..._ All of us hang on the cross, consequently we are _divine..._. We alone are divine...Christianity was a victory; a _nobler_ type of character perished through it,—Christianity has been humanity’s greatest misfortune hitherto.—— 52 Christianity also stands opposed to everything happily constituted in the _mind,_—it can make use only of morbid reason as Christian reason; it takes the side of everything idiotic, it utters a curse upon “intellect,” upon the _superbia_ of the healthy intellect. Since illness belongs to the essence of Christianity, the typically Christian state, “faith,” _must_ also be a form of illness, and all straight, honest and scientific roads to knowledge must be repudiated by the Church as forbidden...Doubt in itself is already a sin...The total lack of psychological cleanliness in the priest, which reveals itself in his look, is a _result_ of decadence. Hysterical women, as also children with scrofulous constitutions, should be observed as a proof of how invariably instinctive falsity, the love of lying for the sake of lying, and the in ability either to look or to walk straight, are the expression of decadence. “Faith” simply means the refusal to know what is true. The pious person, the priest of both sexes, is false because he is ill: his instinct _demands_ that truth should not assert its right anywhere. “That which makes ill is good: that which proceeds from abundance, from superabundance and from power, is evil”: that is the view of the faithful. The _constraint to lie_—that is the sign by which I recognise every predetermined theologian.—Another characteristic of the theologian is his lack of _capacity_ for _philology._ What I mean here by the word philology is, in a general sense to be understood as the art of reading well, of being able to take account of facts _without_ falsifying them by interpretation, without losing either caution, patience or subtlety owing to one’s desire to understand. Philology as _ephexis_[8] in interpretation, whether one be dealing with books, newspaper reports, human destinies or meteorological records,—not to speak of the “salvation of the soul.”...The manner in which a theologian, whether in Berlin or in Rome, interprets a verse from the “Scriptures,” or an experience, or the triumph of his nation’s army for instance, under the superior guiding light of David’s Psalms, is always so exceedingly _daring,_ that it is enough to make a philologist’s hair stand on end. And what is he to do, when pietists and other cows from Swabia explain their miserable every-day lives in their smoky hovels by means of the “Finger of God,” a miracle of “grace,” of “Providence,” of experiences of “salvation”! The most modest effort of the intellect, not to speak of decent feeling, ought at least to lead these interpreters to convince themselves of the absolute childishness and unworthiness of any such abuse of the dexterity of God’s fingers. However small an amount of loving piety we might possess, a god who cured us in time of a cold in the nose, or who arranged for us to enter a carriage just at the moment when a cloud burst over our heads, would be such an absurd God, that he would have to be abolished, even if he existed.[9] God as a domestic servant, as a postman, as a general provider,—in short, merely a word for the most foolish kind of accidents...“Divine Providence,” as it is believed in to-day by almost every third man in “cultured Germany,” would be an argument against God, in fact it would be the strongest argument against God that could be Imagined. And in any case it is an argument against the Germans.
53 —The notion that martyrs prove anything at all in favour of a thing, is so exceedingly doubtful, that I would fain deny that there has ever yet existed a martyr who had anything to do with truth. In the very manner in which a martyr flings his little parcel of truth at the head of the world, such a low degree of intellectual honesty and such obtuseness in regard to the question “truth” makes itself felt, that one never requires to refute a martyr. Truth is not a thing which one might have and another be without: only peasants or peasant-apostles, after the style of Luther, can think like this about truth. You may be quite sure, that the greater a man’s degree of conscientiousness may be in matters intellectual, the more modest he will show himself on this point To _know_ about five things, and with a subtle wave of the hand to refuse to know _others._...“Truth” as it is understood by every prophet, every sectarian, every free thinker, every socialist and every church-man, is an absolute proof of the fact that these people haven’t even begun that discipline of the mind and that process of self-mastery, which is necessary for the discovery of any small, even exceedingly small truth.—Incidentally, the deaths of martyrs have been a great misfortune in the history of the world: they led people astray...The conclusion which all idiots, women and common people come to, that there must be something in a cause for which someone lays down his life (or which, as in the case of primitive Christianity, provokes an epidemic of sacrifices),—this conclusion put a tremendous check upon all investigation, upon the spirit of investigation and of caution. Martyrs have _harmed_ the cause of truth...Even to this day it only requires the crude fact of persecution, in order to create an honourable name for any obscure sect who does not matter in the least What? is a cause actually changed in any way by the fact that some one has laid down his life for it? An error which becomes honourable, is simply an error that possesses one seductive charm the more: do you suppose, dear theologians, that we shall give you the chance of acting the martyrs for your lies?—A thing is refuted by being laid respectfully on ice, and theologians are refuted in the same way. This was precisely the world-historic foolishness of all persecutors; they lent the thing they combated a semblance of honour by conferring the fascination of martyrdom upon it...Women still lie prostrate before an error to-day, because they have been told that some one died on the cross for it _Is the cross then an argument?_—But concerning all these things, one person alone has said what mankind has been in need of for thousands of years,—_Zarathustra._ “Letters of blood did they write on the way they went, and their folly taught that truth is proved by blood.
“But blood is the very worst testimony of truth; blood poisoneth even the purest teaching, and turneth it into delusion and into blood feuds.
“And when a man goeth through fire for his teaching—what does that prove? Verily, it is more when out of one’s own burning springeth one’s own teaching.”[10] 54 Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: great minds are sceptical.
Zarathustra is a sceptic. Strength and the _freedom_ which proceeds from the power and excessive power of the mind, _manifests_ itself through scepticism. Men of conviction are of no account whatever in regard to any principles of value or of non-value. Convictions are prisons. They never see far enough, they do not look down from a sufficient height: but in order to have any say in questions of value and non-value, a man must see five hundred convictions _beneath_ him,—_behind_ him...A spirit who desires great things, and who also desires the means thereto, is necessarily a sceptic. Freedom from every kind of conviction _belongs_ to strength, to the _ability_ to open one’s eyes freely...The great passion of a sceptic, the basis and power of his being, which is more enlightened and more despotic than he is himself, enlists all his intellect into its service; it makes him unscrupulous; it even gives him the courage to employ unholy means; in certain circumstances it even allows him convictions. Conviction as a _means:_ much is achieved merely by means of a conviction. Great passion makes use of and consumes convictions, it does not submit to them—it knows that it is a sovereign power. Conversely; the need of faith, of anything either absolutely affirmative or negative, Carlylism (if I may be allowed this expression), is the need of _weakness._ The man of beliefs, the “believer” of every sort and condition, is necessarily a dependent man;—he is one who cannot regard _himself_ as an aim, who cannot postulate aims from the promptings of his own heart The “believer” does not belong to himself, he can be only a means, he must be _used up,_ he is in need of someone who uses him up. His instinct accords the highest honour to a morality of self-abnegation: everything in him, his prudence, his experience, his vanity, persuade him to adopt this morality. Every sort of belief is in itself an expression of self-denial, of self-estrangement...If one considers how necessary a regulating code of conduct is to the majority of people, a code of conduct which constrains them and fixes them from outside; and how control, or in a higher sense, _slavery,_ is the only and ultimate condition under which the weak-willed man, and especially woman, flourish; one also understands conviction, “faith.” The man of conviction finds in the latter his _backbone._ To be _blind_ to many things, to be impartial about nothing, to belong always to a particular side, to hold a strict and necessary point of view in all matters of values—these are the only conditions under which such a man can survive at all. But all this is the reverse of, the _antagonist_ of, the truthful man,—of truth...The believer is not at liberty to have a conscience for the question “true” and “untrue”: to be upright on _this_ point would mean his immediate downfall. The pathological limitations of his standpoint convert the convinced man into the fanatic—Savonarola, Luther Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon,—these are the reverse type of the strong spirit that has become _free._ But the grandiose poses of these _morbid_ spirits, of these epileptics of ideas, exercise an influence over the masses,—fanatics are picturesque, mankind prefers to look at poses than to listen to reason.
55 One step further in the psychology of conviction of “faith.” It is already some time since I first thought of considering whether convictions were not perhaps more dangerous enemies of truth than lies (“Human All-too-Human,” Part I, Aphs. 54 and 483). Now I would fain put the decisive question: is there any difference at all between a lie and a conviction?—All the world believes that there is, but what in Heaven’s name does not all the world believe! Every conviction has its history, its preliminary stages, its period of groping and of mistakes: it becomes a conviction only after it has _not_ been one for a long time, only after it has _scarcely_ been one for a long time. What?
might not falsehood be the embryonic form of conviction?—At times all that is required is a change of personality: very often what was a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son.—I call a lie, to refuse to see something that one sees, to refuse to see it exactly _as_ one sees it: whether a lie is perpetrated before witnesses or not is beside the point.—The most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one’s self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional. Now this refusal to see what one sees, this refusal to see a thing exactly as one sees it, is almost the first condition for all those who belong to a _party_ in any sense whatsoever: the man who belongs to a party perforce becomes a liar. German historians, for instance, are convinced that Rome stood for despotism, whereas the Teutons introduced the spirit of freedom into the world: what difference is there between this conviction and a lie? After this is it to be wondered at, that all parties, including German historians, instinctively adopt the grandiloquent phraseology of morality,—that morality almost owes its _survival_ to the fact that the man who belongs to a party, no matter what it may be, is in need of morality every moment?—“This is our conviction: we confess it to the whole world, we live and die for it,—let us respect every thing that has a conviction!”—I have actually heard antisemites speak in this way. On the contrary, my dear sirs! An antisemite does not become the least bit more respectable because he lies on principle...Priests, who in such matters are more subtle, and who perfectly understand the objection to which the idea of a conviction lies open—that is to say of a falsehood which is perpetrated on principle _because_ it serves a purpose, borrowed from the Jews the prudent measure of setting the concept “God,” “Will of God,” “Revelation of God,” at this place. Kant, too, with his categorical imperative, was on the same road: this was his _practical_ reason.—There are some questions in which it is _not_ given to man to decide between true and false; all the principal questions, all the principal problems of value, stand beyond human reason...To comprehend the limits of reason—this alone is genuine philosophy. For what purpose did God give man revelation? Would God have done anything superfluous? Man cannot of his own accord know what is good and what is evil, that is why God taught man his will...Moral: the priest does _not_ lie, such questions as “truth” or “falseness” have nothing to do with the things concerning which the priest speaks; such things do not allow of lying. For, in order to lie, it would be necessary to know _what_ is true in this respect. But that is precisely what man cannot know: hence the priest is only the mouthpiece of God.—This sort of sacerdotal syllogism is by no means exclusively Judaic or Christian; the right to lie and the _prudent measure_ of “revelation” belongs to the priestly type, whether of decadent periods or of Pagan times (—Pagans are all those who say yea to life, and to whom “God” is the word for the great yea to 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 attains to power, and with which he maintains his power,—these concepts are to be found at the base of all sacerdotal organisations, of all priestly or philosophical