232. The whole of the Christian training in repent ance and redemption may be regarded as a folie circulaire arbitrarily produced; though, of course, it can be produced only in people who are pre disposed to it that is to say, who have morbid tendencies in their constitutions.
233. Against remorse and its purely psychical treat ment. To be unable to have done with an ex perience is already a sign of decadence. This reopening of old wounds, this wallowing in self- contempt and depression, is an additional form of disease; no " salvation of the soul " ever results from it, but only a new kind of spiritual illness...These " conditions of salvation " of which the Christian is conscious are merely variations of the same diseased state the interpretation of an attack of epilepsy by means of a particular formula which is provided, not by science, but by religious mania. When a man is ill his very goodness is sickly...By far the greatest portion of the psychical apparatus which Christianity has used, is now classed among the various forms of hysteria and epilepsy. 191 The whole process of spiritual healing must be remodelled on a physiological basis: the " sting of conscience " as such is an obstacle in the way of recovery as soon as possible the attempt must be made to counterbalance everything by means of new actions, so that there may be an escape from the morbidness of self-torture...The purely psychical practices of the Church and of the various sects should be decried as dangerous to the health. No invalid is ever cured by prayers or by the exorcising of evil spirits: the states of " repose " which follow upon such methods of treatment, by no means inspire confidence, in the psychological sense...A man is healthy when he can laugh at the seriousness and ardour with which he has allowed himself to be hypnotised to any extent by any detail in his life when his remorse seems to him like the action of a dog biting a stone when he is ashamed of his repentance. The purely psychological and religious practices, which have existed hitherto, only led to an altera tion in the symptoms: according to them a man had recovered when he bowed before the cross, and swore that in future he would be a good man...But a criminal, who, with a certain gloomy seriousness cleaves to his fate and refuses to malign his deed once it is done, has more spiritual health...The criminals with whom Dostoiewsky associated in prison, were all, without exception, unbroken natures, are they not a hundred times more valuable than a " broken-spirited " Christian? 1 92 (For the treatment of pangs of conscience I recommend Mitchell s Treatment.*) 234. A pang of conscience in a man is a sign that his character is not yet equal to his deed. There is such a thing as a pang of conscience after good deeds: in this case it is their unfamiliarity, their incompatibility with an old environment.
235. Against remorse. I do not like this form of cowardice in regard to one s own actions, one must not leave one s self in the lurch under the pressure of sudden shame or distress. Extreme pride is much more fitting here. What is the good of it all in the end! No deed gets undone because it is regretted, no more than because it is " forgiven " or " expiated." A man must be a theologian in order to believe in a power that erases faults: we immoralists prefer to dis believe in " faults." We believe that all deeds, of what kind soever, are identically the same at root; just as deeds which turn against us may * TRANSLATOR S NOTE. In The New Sydenham Society s Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences, the following description of Mitchell s treatment is to be found: " A method of treating cases of neurasthenia and hysteria...by removal from home, rest in bed, massage twice a day, electrical excitation of the muscles, and excessive feeding, at first with milk." 193 be useful from an economical point of view, and even generally desirable. In certain individual cases, we admit that we might well have been spared a given action; the circumstances alone predisposed us in its favour. Which of us, if favoured by circumstances, would not already have committed every possible crime?...That is why one should never say: " Thou shouldst never have done such and such a thing," but only: " How strange it is that I have not done such and such a thing hundreds of times already! " As a matter of fact, only a very small number of acts are typical acts and real epitomes of a personality, and seeing what a small number of people really are personalities, a single act very rarely character ises a man. Acts are mostly dictated by circum stances; they are superficial or merely reflex movements performed in response to a stimulus, long before the depths of our beings are affected or consulted in the matter. A fit of temper, a gesture, a blow with a knife: how little of the individual resides in these acts! A deed very often brings a sort of stupor or feeling of con straint in its wake: so that the agent feels almost spellbound at its recollection, or as though he belonged to it, and were not an independent creature. This mental disorder, which is a form of hypnotism, must be resisted at all costs: surely a single deed, whatever it be, when it is compared with all one has done, is nothing; and may be deducted from the sum without making the account wrong. The unfair interest which society manifests in controlling the whole of our lives. N 194 in one direction, as though the very purpose of its existence were to cultivate a certain individual act, should not infect the man of action: but unfortunately this happens almost continually. The reason of this is, that every deed, if followed by unexpected consequences, leads to a certain mental disturbance, no matter whether the con sequences be good or bad. Behold a lover who has been given a promise, or a poet while he is receiving applause from an audience: as far as intellectual torpor is concerned, these men are in no way different from the anarchist who is suddenly confronted by a detective bearing a search warrant. There are some acts which are unworthy of us: acts which, if they were regarded as typical, would set us down as belonging to a lower class of man. The one fault that has to be avoided here, is to regard them as typical. There is another kind of act of which we are unworthy: exceptional acts, born of a particular abundance of happiness and health; they are the highest waves of our spring tides, driven to an unusual height by a storm an accident: such acts and " deeds " are also not typical. An artist should never be judged according to the measure of his works.
236. A. In proportion as Christianity seems necessary today, man is still wild and fatal...B. In another sense, it is not necessary, but extremely dangerous, though it is captivating and 195 seductive, because it corresponds with the morbid character of whole classes and types of modern humanity,...they simply follow their inclinations when they aspire to Christianity they are de cadents of all kinds. A and B must be kept very sharply apart. In the case of A, Christianity is a cure, or at least a taming process (under certain circumstances it serves the purpose of making people ill: and this is sometimes useful as a means of subduing savage and brutal natures). In the case of B, it is a symptom of illness itself, it renders the state of decadence more acute; in this case it stands opposed to a corroborating system of treatment, it is the invalid s instinct standing against that which would be most salutary to him.
237. On one side there are the serious, the dignified, and reflective people: and on the other the bar barous, the unclean, and the irresponsible beasts: it is merely a question of taming animals and in this case the tamer must be hard, terrible, and awe-inspiring, at least to his beasts. All essential requirements must be imposed upon the unruly creatures with almost brutal distinct ness that is to say, magnified a thousand times. Even the fulfilment of the requirement must be presented in the coarsest way possible, so that it may command respect, as in the case of the spiritualisation of the Brahmins. 196 The struggle with the rabble and the herd. If any degree of tameness and order has been reached, the chasm separating these purified and regenerated people from the terrible remainder must have been bridged...This chasm is a means of increasing self-respect in higher castes, and of confirming their belief in that which they represent hence the Chandala. Contempt and its excess are perfectly correct psychologically that is to say, magnified a hundred times, so that it may at least be felt.
238. The struggle against brutal instincts is quite different from the struggle against morbid instincts; it may even be a means of overcoming brutality by making the brutes ill. The psychical treatment practiced by Christianity is often nothing more than the process of converting a brute into a sick and therefore tame animal. The struggle against raw and savage natures must be a struggle with weapons which are able to affect such natures: superstitions and such means are therefore indispensable and essential.
239. Our age, in a certain sense, is mature (that is to say, decadent), just as Buddha s was...That is why a sort of Christianity is possible without all the absurd dogmas (the most repulsive offshoots of ancient hybridism).
240. Supposing it were impossible to disprove Chris tianity, Pascal thinks, in view of the terrible possibility that it may be true, that it is in the highest degree prudent to be a Christian. As a proof of how much Christianity has lost of its terrible nature, today we find that other attempt to justify it, which consists in asserting, that even if it were a mistake, it nevertheless provides the greatest advantages and pleasures for its adherents throughout their lives: it therefore seems that this belief should be upheld owing to the peace and quiet it ensures not owing to the terror of a threatening possibility, but rather out of fear of a life that has lost its charm. This hedonistic turn of thought, which uses happiness as a proof, is a symptom of decline: it takes the place of the proof resulting from power or from that which to the Christian mind is most terrible namely, fear. With this new interpretation, Christianity is, as a matter of fact, nearing its stage of exhaustion. People are satisfied with a Christianity which is an opiate, because they no longer have the strength to seek, to struggle, to dare, to stand alone, nor to take up Pascal s position and to share that gloomily brooding self-contempt, that belief in human unworthiness, and that anxiety which believes that it " may be damned." But a Christianity the chief object of which is to soothe diseased nerves, does not require the terrible solution consisting of a " God on the cross "; that 198 is why Buddhism is secretly gaining ground all over Europe.
241. The humour of European culture: people regard one thing as true, but do the other. For instance, what is the use of all the art of reading and criticising, if the ecclesiastical interpretation of the Bible, whether according to Catholics or Protestants, is still upheld!
242. No one is sufficiently aware of the barbarity ot the notions among which we Europeans still live. To think that men have been able to believe that the " Salvation of the soul " depended upon a I book!...And I am told that this is still j believed. What is the good of all scientific education, all criticism and all hermeneutics, if such nonsense as the Church s interpretation of the Bible has not yet turned the colors of our bodies permanently into the red of shame?
243. Subject for reflection: To what extent does the fatal belief in " Divine Providence " the most paralysing belief for both the hand and the under standing that has ever existed continue to pre vail; to what extent have the Christian hypothesis and interpretation of Life continued their lives under the cover of terms like " Nature," " Progress," " perfectionment," " Darwinism," or beneath the superstition that there is a certain relation between happiness and virtue, unhappiness and sin? That absurd belief in the course of things, in " Life " and in the " instinct of Life "; that foolish resig nation which arises from the notion that if only every one did his duty all would go well all this sort of thing can only have a meaning if one assumes that there is a direction of things sub specie boni. Even fatalism, our present form of philosophical sensibility, is the result of a long belief in Divine Providence, an unconscious result:. as though it were nothing to do with us how everything goes! (As though we might let things take their own course; the individual being only a modus of the absolute reality.)
244. It is the height of psychological falsity on the part of man to imagine a being according to his own petty standard, who is a beginning, a " thing- in-itself," and who appears to him good, wise, mighty, and precious; for thus he suppresses in thought all the causality by means of which every kind of goodness, wisdom, and power comes into existence and has value. In short, elements of the most recent and most conditional origin were regarded not as evolved, but as spontaneously generated and " things-in-themselves," and perhaps as the cause of all things...Experience teaches us that, in every case in which a man has elevated himself to ny great extent above the average of his fellows, every degree of power always involves a corresponding degree of freedom from good and evil as also from "true" and "false," and cannot take into account what goodness dictates: the same holds good of a high degree of wisdom--in this case goodness is just as much suppressed as truthfulness, justice, virtue, and other popular whims in valuations. In fact, is it not obvious that every high degree of goodness itself presupposes a certain intellectua myopia and obtuseness? As also an inability to distinguish at a great distance between true and false, useful and harmful? Not to mention the fact that a high degree of power in the hands of the highest goodness might lead to the baleful consequences ("the suppression of evil"). In sooth it is enough to perceive with what aspirations the "God of Love" inspires His believers: they ruin mankind for the benefit of "good men." In practice, this same God has shown Himself to be God of the most acute myopia, devilry, and impotence, in the face of the actual arrangement of the universe, and from this the value of His conception may be estimated. Knowledge and wisdom can have no value in themselves, any more than goodness can: the goal they are striving after must be known first, for then only can their value or worthlessness be judged--a goal might be imagined which would make excessive wisdom a great disadvantage (if, for instance, complete deception were a prerequisite to the enhancement of life; likewise, if goodness were able to paralyze and depress the mainsprings of the great passions)...Taking our human life as it is, it cannot be denied that all "truth," "goodness," "holiness," and "Godliness" in the Christian sense, have hitherto shown themselves to be great dangers--even now mankind is in danger of persihing owing to an ideal which is hostile to life.
246. By pressing the doctrine of disinterestedness and love into the foreground, Christianity by no means elevated the interests of the species above those of the individual. Its real historical effect, its fatal effect, remains precisely the increase of egotism, of individual egotism, to excess (to the extreme which consists in the belief in individual immortality). The individual was made so important and so absolute, by means of Christian values, that he could no longer be sacrificed, despite the fact that the species can only be maintained by human sacrifices. All " souls " became equal before God: but this is the most pernicious of all valuations! If one regards individuals as equals, the demands of the species are ignored, and a process is initiated which ultimately leads to its ruin. Christianity is the reverse of the principle of selection. If the degenerate and sick man (" the Christian ") is to be of the same value as the healthy man (" the pagan "), or if he is even to be valued higher than the latter, as Pascal s view of health and sickness would have us value him, the natural course of evolution is thwarted and the unnatural becomes law...In practice this general love of mankind is nothing more than deliberately favouring all the suffering, the botched, and the degenerate: it is this love that has reduced and weakened the power, responsibility, and lofty duty of sacrificing men. According to the scheme of Christian values, all that remained was the alternative of self-sacrifice, but this vestige of human sacrifice, which Christianity conceded and even recommended, has no meaning when regarded in the light of rearing a whole species. The pro sperity of the species is by no means affected by the sacrifice of one individual (whether in the monastic and ascetic manner,or by means of crosses, stakes, and scaffolds, as the " martyrs " of error). What the species requires is the suppression of the physiologically botched, the weak and the degenerate: but it was precisely to these people that Christianity appealed as a preservative force, it simply strengthened that natural and very strong instinct of all the weak which bids them protect, maintain, and mutually support each other. What is Christian " virtue " and " love of men," if not precisely this mutual assistance with a view to survival, this solidarity of the weak, this thwarting of selection? What is Christian altruism, if it is not the mob-egotism of the weak which divines that, if everybody looks after everybody else, every individual will be preserved for a longer period of time?...He who does not consider this attitude of mind as immoral, as a crime against life, himself belongs to the sickly crowd, and also shares their instincts...Genuine love of man kind exacts sacrifice for the good of the species it is hard, full of self-control, because it needs human sacrifices. And this pseudo-humanity which is called Christianity, would fain establish the rule that nobody should be sacrificed.
247. Nothing could be more useful and deserves more promotion than systematic Nihilism in action. As I understand the phenomena of Christianity and pessimism, this is what they say: " We are ripe for nonentity, for us it is reasonable not to be." This hint from " reason " in this case, is simply the voice of selective Nature. On the other hand, what deserves the most rigorous condemnation, is the ambiguous and cowardly infirmity of purpose of a religion like Christianity, or rather like the Chtircti, which, instead of recommending death and self-destruction, actually protects all the botched and bungled, and encourages them to propagate their kind. Problem: with what kind of means could one lead up to a severe form of really contagious Nihilism a Nihilism which would teach and prac tise voluntary death with scientific conscientious ness (and not the feeble continuation of a vegetative sort of life with false hopes of a life after death)? Christianity cannot be sufficiently condemned for having depreciated the value of a great cleansing Nihilistic movement (like the one which was pro bably in the process of formation), by its teaching of the immortality of the private individual, as also by the hopes of resurrection which it held out: that is to say, by dissuading people from perform ing the deed of Nihilism which is suicide...In the latter s place it puts lingering suicide, and gradually a puny, meagre, but durable life; gradu ally a perfectly ordinary, bourgeois, mediocre life, etc.
248. Christian moral quackery. Pity and contempt succeed each other at short intervals, and at the sight of them I feel as indignant as if I were in 205 the presence of the most despicable crime. Here error is made a duty a virtue, misapprehension has become a knack, the destructive instinct is systematised under the name of " redemption "; here every operation becomes a wound, an amputa tion of those very organs whose energy would be the prerequisite to a return of health. And in the best of cases no cure is effected; all that is done is to exchange one set of evil symptoms for another set...And this pernicious nonsense, this system atised profanation and castration of life, passes for holy and sacred; to be in its service, to be an instrument of this art of healing that is to say, to be a priest, is to be rendered distinguished, reverent, holy, and sacred. God alone could have been the Author of this supreme art of healing; redemption is only possible as a revelation, as an act of grace, as an unearned gift, made by the Creator Himself. Proposition I.: Spiritual healthiness is regarded as morbid, and creates suspicion...Proposition II.: The prerequisites of a strong, exuberant life strong desires and passions are reckoned as objections against strong and ex uberant life. Proposition III.: Everything which threatens danger to man, and which can overcome and ruin him, is evil and should be torn root and branch from his soul. Proposition IV.: Man converted into a weak creature, inoffensive to himself and others, crushed by humility and modesty, and conscious of his weakness, in fact, the " sinner," this is the 206 desirable type, and one which one can produce by means of a little spiritual surgery...
249. What is it I protest against? That people should regard this paltry and peaceful mediocrity, this spiritual equilibrium which knows nothing of the fine impulses of great accumulations of strength, as something high, or possibly as the standard of all things. Bacon of Verulam says: Infimarum virtutum apud vulgus laus est, mediarum admiratio, supre- marum sensus nullus. Christianity as a religion, however, belongs to the vulgus: it has no feeling for the highest kind of virtus.
250. Let us see what the " genuine Christian " does of all the things which his instincts forbid him to do: he covers beauty, pride, riches, self-reliance, brilliancy, knowledge, and power with suspicion and mud in short, all culture: his object is to deprive the latter of its clean conscience.
251. The attacks made upon Christianity, hitherto, have been not only timid but false. So long as Christian morality was not felt to be a capital crime against Life, its apologists had a good time. The question concerning the mere " truth " of 207 Christianity whether in regard to the existence of its God, or to the legendary history of its origin, not to speak of its astronomy and natural science is quite beside the point so long as no inquiry is made into the value of Christian morality. Are Christian morals worth anything or are they a profanation and an outrage, despite all the arts of holiness and seduction with which they are en forced? The question concerning the truth of the religion may be met by all sorts of subterfuges; and the most fervent believers can, in the end, avail themselves of the logic used by their opponents, in order to create a right for their side to assert that certain things are irrefutable that is to say, they transcend the means employed to refute them (nowadays this trick of dialectics is called " Kantian Criticism ").
252. Christianity should never be forgiven for having ruined such men as Pascal. This is precisely, what should be combated in Christianity, namely, that it has the will to break the spirit of the strongest and noblest natures. One should take no rest until this thing is utterly destroyed: the ideal of mankind which Christianity advances, the demands it makes upon men, and its " Nay " and " Yea " relative to humanity. The whole of the remaining absurdities, that is to say, Christian fable, Christian cobweb-spinning in ideas and principles, and Christian theology, do not concern us; they might be a thousand times more absurd 2O8 and we should not raise a finger to destroy them. But what we do stand up against, is that ideal which, thanks to its morbid beauty and feminine seductiveness, thanks to its insidious and slanderous eloquence, appeals to all the cowardices and vanities of wearied souls, and the strongest have their moments of fatigue, as though all that which seems most useful and desirable at such moments that is to say, confidence, artlessness, modesty, patience, love of one s like, resignation, submission to God, and a sort of self-surrender were useful and desirable per se; as though the puny, modest abortion which in these creatures takes the place of a soul, this virtuous, mediocre animal and sheep of the flock which deigns to call itself man, were not only to take precedence of the stronger, more evil, more passionate, more defiant, and more prodigal type of man, who by virtue of these very qualities is exposed to a hundred times more dangers than the former, but were actually to stand as an ideal for man in general, as a goal, a measure the highest de sideratum. The creation of this ideal was the most appalling temptation that had ever been put in the way of mankind; for, with it, the stronger and more successful exceptions, the lucky cases among men, in which the will to power and to growth leads the whole species " man " one step farther forward, this type was threatened with disaster. By means of the values of this ideal, the growth of such higher men would be checked at the root. For these men, owing to their superior demands and duties, readily accept a 209 more dangerous life (speaking economically, it is a case of an increase in the costs of the under taking coinciding with a greater chance of failure). What is it we combat in Christianity? That it aims at destroying the strong, at breaking their spirit, at exploiting their moments of weariness and debility, at converting their proud assurance into anxiety and conscience-trouble; that it knows how to poison the noblest instincts and to infect them with disease, until their strength, their will to power, turns inwards, against themselves until the strong perish through their excessive self-contempt and self-immolation: that gruesome way of perishing, of which Pascal is the most famous example..
II. I. THE ORIGIN OF MORAL VALUATIONS.
253. THIS is an attempt at investigating morality without being affected by its charm, and not without some mistrust in regard to the beguiling beauty of its attitudes and looks. A world which we can admire, which is in keeping with our capacity for worship which is continually demonstrating itself in small things or in large: this is the Christian standpoint which is common to us all. But owing to an increase in our astuteness, in our mistrust, and in our scientific spirit (also through a more developed instinct for truth, which again is due to Christian influence), this interpre tation has grown ever less and less tenable for us. The craftiest of subterfuges: Kantian criticism. The intellect not only denies itself every right to interpret things in that way, but also to reject the interpretation once it has been made. People are satisfied with a greater demand upon their credulity and faith, with a renunciation of all right to reason concerning the proof of their creed, with an intangible and superior " Ideal " (God) as a stop-gap. The Hegelian subterfuge, a continuation of the Platonic, a piece of romanticism and reaction, and at the same time a symptom of the historical sense of a new power: " Spirit " itself is the " self- revealing and self-realising ideal": we believe that in the "process of development" an ever greater proportion of this ideal is being mani festedthus the ideal is being realized, faith is vested in the future, into which all its noble needs are