173. Paul: seeks power against ruling Judaism, his attempt is too weak...Revaluation of the notion " Jew ": the " race " is put aside: but that means denying the very basis of the whole struc ture. The " martyr," the " fanatic," the value of all strong belief. Christianity is fat form of decay of the old world, after the latter s collapse, and it is characterised by the fact that it brings all the most sickly and unhealthy elements and needs to the top. 144 THE WILL T0 POWER. Consequently other instincts had to step into the foreground, in order to constitute an entity, a power able to stand alone in short, a condition of tense sorrow was necessary, like that out of which the Jews had derived their instinct of self-preserva tion...The persecution of Christians was invaluable for this purpose. Unity in the face of danger; the conversion of the masses becomes the only means of putting an end to the persecution of the individual. (The notion " conversion " is therefore made as elastic as possible.)
174. The Christian Judaic life: here resentment did not prevail. The great persecutions alone could have driven out the passions to that extent as also the ardour of love and hate. When the creatures a man most loves are sacrificed before his eyes for the sake of his faith, that man becomes aggressive; the triumph of Christianity is due to its persecutors. Asceticism is not specifically Christian: this is what Schopenhauer misunderstood. It only shoots up in Christianity, wherever it would have existed without that religion. Melancholy Christianity, the torture and tor ment of the conscience, is also only a peculiarity of a particular soil, where Christian values have taken root: it is not Christianity properly speaking. Christianity has absorbed all the different kinds of diseases which grow from morbid soil: one could 145 refute it at one blow by showing that it did not know how to resist any contagion. But that precisely is the essential feature of it. Christi anity is a type of decadence.
175. The reality on which Christianity was able to build up its power consisted of the small dispersed fezvish families, with their warmth, tenderness, and peculiar readiness to help, which, to the whole of the Roman Empire, was perhaps the most incom prehensible and least familiar of their character istics; they were also united by their pride at being a " chosen people," concealed beneath a cloak of humility, and by their secret denial of all that was uppermost and that possessed power and splendour, although there was no shade of envy in their denial. To have recognized this as a power, to have regarded this blessed state as com municable, seductive, and infectious even where pagans were concerned this constituted Paul s genius: to use up the treasure of latent energy and cautious happiness for the purposes of " a Jewish Church of free confession," and to avail himself of all the Jewish experience, their propa ganda, and their expertness in the preservation of a community under a foreign power this is what he conceived to be his duty. He it was who discovered that absolutely unpolitical and isolated body of paltry people, and their art of asserting themselves and pushing themselves to the front, by means of a host of acquired virtues which are made to represent the only forms of virtue (" the self-preservative measure and weapon of success of a certain class of man "). The principle of love comes from the small community of Jewish people: a very passionate soul glows here, beneath the ashes of humility and wretchedness: it is neither Greek, Indian, nor German. The song in praise of love which Paul wrote is not Christian; it is the Jewish flare of that eternal flame which is Semitic. If Christianity has done anything essentially new in a psychological sense, it is this, that it has increased the temperature of the soul among those cooler and more noble races who were at one time at the head of affairs; it discovered that the most wretched life could be made rich and invaluable, by means of an eleva tion of the temperature of the soul...It is easily understood that a transfer of this sort could not take place among the ruling classes: the Jews and Christians were at a disadvantage owing to their bad manners spiritual strength and passion, when accompanied by Kad manners, only provoke loathing (I become aware of these bad manners while reading the New Testament). It was necessary to be related both in baseness and sorrow with this type of lower manhood in order to feel anything attractive in him...The atti tude a man maintains towards the New Testament is a test of the amount of taste he may have for the classics (see Tacitus); he who is not revolted by it, he who does not feel honestly and deeply that he is in the presence of a sort of fceda superstitio when reading it, and who does not draw his hand back so as not to soil his fingers such a man does not know what is classical. A man must feel about " the cross " as Goethe did.* 176. The reaction of paltry people: Love provides the feeling of highest power. It should be under stood to what extent, not man in general, but only a certain kind of man is speaking here. " We are godly in love, we shall be the children of God; God loves us and wants nothing from us save love "; that is to say: all morality, obedi ence, and action, do not produce the same feeling of power and freedom as love does; a man does nothing wicked from sheer love, but he does much more than if he were prompted by obedience and virtue alone. Here is the happiness of the herd, the communal feeling in big things as in small, the living senti ment of unity felt as the sum of the feeling of life. Helping, caring for, and being useful, constantly kindle the feeling of power; visible success, the * Vieles kann ich ertragen. Die meisten beschwerlichen Dinge Duld ich mit ruhigem Mut, wie es ein Gott mir gebeut. Wenige sind mir jedoch wie Gift und Schlange zuwider; Viere: Rauch des Tabaks, Wanzen, und Knoblauch und J. Goethe s Venetian Epigrams, No. 67. Much can I bear. Things the most irksome I endure with such patience as comes from a god. Four things, however, repulse me like venom: Tobacco smoke, garlic, bugs, and the cross. (TRANSLATOR S NOTE.) 148 expression of pleasure, emphasise the feeling of power; pride is not lacking either, it is felt in the form of the community, the House of God, and the " chosen people." As a matter of fact, man has once more experi enced an " alteration " of his personality: this time he called his feeling of love God. The awaken ing of such a feeling must be pictured; it is a sort of ecstasy, a strange language, a " Gospel " it was this newness which did not allow man to attribute love to himself he thought it was God leading him on and taking shape in his heart. " God descends among men," one s neighbour is trans figured and becomes a God (in so far as he provokes the sentiment of love). Jesus is the neighbour, the moment He is transfigured in thought into a God, and into a cause provoking the feeling of power.
177. Believers are aware that they owe an infinite amount to Christianity, and therefore conclude that its Founder must have been a man of the first rank...This conclusion is false, but it is typical of the reverents. Regarded objectively, it is, in the first place, just possible that they are mistaken concerning the extent of their debt to Christianity: a man s convictions prove nothing concerning the thing he is convinced about, and in religions they are more likely to give rise to suspicions...Secondly, it is possible that the debt owing to Christianity is not due to its Founder at all, but to the whole structure, the 149 whole thing to the Church, etc. The notion " Founder " is so very equivocal, that it may stand even for the accidental cause of a movement: the person of the Founder has been inflated in proportion as the Church has grown: but even this process of veneration allows of the conclusion that, at one time or other, this Founder was some thing exceedingly insecure and doubtful in the beginning...Let any one think of the free and easy way in which Paul treats the problem of the personality of Jesus, how he almost juggles with it: some one who died, who was seen after His death, some one whom the Jews delivered up to death all this was only the theme Paul wrote the music to it.
178. The founder of a religion may be quite insignificant, a wax vesta and no more.
179. Concerning the psychological problem of Christianity. The driving forces are; resentment, popular insurrection, the revolt of the bungled and the botched. (In Buddhism it is different: it is not born of resentment. It rather combats resent ment because the latter leads to action?) This party, which stands for freedom, under stands that the abandonment of antagonism in thought and deed is a condition of distinction and preservation. Here lies the psychological difficulty which has stood in the way of Christianity being understood: the force which created it, urges to a struggle against itself. Only as a party standing ior peace and innocence can this insurrectionary movement hope to be successful: it must conquer by means of excessive mildness, sweetness, softness, and its instincts are aware of this. The feat was to deny and con demn the force, of which man is the expression, and to press the reverse of that force continually to the fore, by word and deed.
180. The pretence of youthfulness. It is a mistake to imagine that, with Christianity, an ingenuous and youthful people rose against an old culture; the story goes that it was out of the lowest levels of society, where Christianity flourished and shot its roots, that the more profound source of life gushed forth afresh: but nothing can be under stood of the psychology of Christianity, if it be supposed that it was the expression of revived youth among a people, or of the resuscitated strength of a race. It is rather a typical form of decadence, of moral-softening and of hysteria, amid a general hotch-potch of races and people that had lost all aims and had grown weary and sick. The wonderful company which gathered round this master-seducer of the populace, would not be at all out of place in a Russian novel: all the diseases of the nerves seem to give one another a rendezvous in this crowd the absence of a known duty, the feeling that every- 151 thing is nearing its end, that nothing is any longer worth while, and that contentment lies in dolce far niente. The power and certainty of the future in the Jew s instinct, its monstrous will for life and for power, lies in its ruling classes; the people who upheld primitive Christianity are best dis tinguished by this exJiausted condition of their instincts. On the one hand, they are sick of every thing; on the other, they are content with each other, with themselves and for themselves.
181. Christianity regarded as emancipated Judaism (just as a nobility which is both racial and in digenous ultimately emancipates itself from these conditions, and goes in search of kindred elements...). (1) As a Church (community) on the territory of the State, as an unpolitical institution. (2) As life, breeding, practice, art of living. (3) As a religion of sin (sin committed against God, being the only recognized kind, and the only cause of all suffering), with a universal cure for it. There is no sin save against God; what is done against men, man shall not sit in judgment upon, nor call to account, except in the name of God. At the same time, all commandments (love): everything is associated with God, and all acts are performed according to God s will. Beneath this arrangement there lies exceptional intelligence (a very narrow life, such as that led by the 152 Esquimaux, can only be endured by most peaceful and indulgent people: the Judaeo-Christian dogma turns against sin in favour of the " sinner ").
182. The Jewish priesthood understood how to present everything it claimed to be right as a divine precept, as an act of obedience to God, and also to introduce all those things which conduced to preserve Israel and were the conditions of its existence (for instance: the large number of " works ": circumcision and the cult of sacrifices, as the very pivot of the national conscience), not as Nature, but as God. This process continued; within the very heart of Judaism, where the need of these " works " was not felt (that is to say, as a means of keeping a race distinct), a priestly sort of man was pictured, whose bearing towards the aristocracy was like that of " noble nature "; a sacerdotalism of the soul, which now, in order to throw its opposite into strong relief, attaches value, not to the " dutiful acts " themselves, but to the sentiment...At bottom, the problem was once again, how to make a certain kind of soul prevail: it was also a popular insurrection in the midst of a priestly people a pietistic movement coming from below (sinners, publicans, women, and children). Jesus of Nazareth was the symbol of their sect. And again, in order to believe in themselves, they were in need of a theological transfiguration: they require nothing less than " the Son of God " in 153 order to create a belief for themselves. And just as the priesthood had falsified the whole history of Israel, another attempt was made, here, to alter and falsify the whole history of mankind in such a way as to make Christianity seem like the most important event it contained. This movement could have originated only upon the soil of Judaism, the main feature of which was the confounding of guilt with sorrow and the reduction of all sin to sin against God. Of all this, Christianity is the second degree of power.
183. The symbolism of Christianity is based upon that of Judaism, which had already transfigured all reality (history, Nature) into a holy and artificial unreality which refused to recognise real history, and which showed no more interest in a natural course of things.
184. The Jews made the attempt to prevail, after two of their castes the warrior and the agri cultural castes, had disappeared from their midst. In this sense they are the " castrated people": they have their priests and then their Chandala...How easily a disturbance occurs among them an insurrection of their Chandala. This was the origin of Christianity. Owing to the fact that they had no knowledge of warriors except as their masters, they introduced 154 enmity towards the nobles, the men of honor, pride, and power, and the ruling classes, into their religion: they are pessimists from indignation...Thus they created a very important and novel position: the priests in the van of the Chandala against the noble classes...Christianity was the logical conclusion of this movement: even in the Jewish priesthood, it still scented the existence of the caste, of the privileged and noble minority it therefore did away with priests. Christ is the unit of the Chandala who removes the priest...the Chandala who redeems himself...That is why the French Revolution is the lineal descendant and the continuator of Christianity it is characterised by an instinct of hate towards castes, nobles, and the last privileges.
185. The " Christian Ideal " put on the stage with Jewish astuteness these are the fundamental psychological forces of its " nature ": Revolt against the ruling spiritual powers; The attempt to make those virtues which facili tate the happiness of the lowly, a standard of all values in fact, to call God that which is no more than the self-preservative instinct of that class of man possessed of least vitality; Obedience and absolute abstention from war and resistance, justified by this ideal; 155 The love of one another as a result of the love of God. The trick: The denial of all natural mobilia, and their transference to the spiritual world beyond...the exploitation of virtue and its veneration for wholly interested motives, gradual denial of virtue in everything that is not Christian.
186. The profound contempt with which the Christian was treated by the noble people of antiquity, is of the same order as the present instinctive aversion to Jews: it is the hatred which free and self- respecting classes feel towards those who wish to creep in secretly, and who combine an awkward bearing with foolish self-sufficiency. The New Testament is the gospel of a com pletely ignoble species of man; its pretensions to highest values yea, to all values, is, as a matter of fact, revolting even nowadays.
187. 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 in stance, 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 156 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 prof ound lack of dignity with which all life, which is not Christian, is condemned: it does not suffice them to think meanly of their actual oppon ents, 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 suchwise 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 157 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 every day 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," in-j eluding 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 acknow ledging 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 con tempt of the Arabs, Hindoos, and Chinese..,. 158 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 some thing...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 t his own life by living the life of the multitude.
195. Christianity has become something fundament ally different from what its Founder wished it to be. It is the great anti-pagan movement of anti quity, 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 (i) 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 anc 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 whicl believed in Isis, Mithras, Dionysos, and great mother," and which demanded the follow ing things of a religion: (i) hopes of a beyond, (2) the bloody phantasmagoria of animal sacrmce (the mystery), (3) holy legend and the redeeming deed (4) asceticism, denial of the world, supe: stitious "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 whicl Epicurus combated or more exactly, those l6l 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 con struction 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, every thing that Jesus of Nazareth combated; (7) The miraculous in everything and every body, 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 un learned every kind of shame: let any one imagine those impudent saints in the heart of Athens;. L 1 62 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 Testa ment. 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 them selves 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, out casts 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!6 4 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 mo dest one s demands may be concerning intellectual cleanliness, when one touches the New Testament one cannot help experiencing a sort of inexpressible feeling of dis comfort; 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," Move," "wisdom," "Holy Spirit," and thereby distinguishing themselves from the rest of the world; when such men begin to revalue 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 accent uated 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 coloring 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 pur- 167 suit 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 pro ceeds 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 "