--Our age is proud of its historical sense: how, then, could it delude itself into
believing that the crude fable of the
wonder-worker and Saviour constituted the beginnings of Christianity--and that everything
spiritual and symbolical
in it only came later? Quite to the contrary, the whole history of Christianity--from the
death on the cross
onward--is the history of a progressively clumsier misunderstanding of an original
symbolism. With every
extension of Christianity among larger and ruder masses, even less capable of grasping the
principles that gave
birth to it, the need arose to make it more and more vulgar and barbarous--it absorbed the
teachings and rites of all
the subterranean cults of the imperium Romanum, and the absurdities engendered by all
sorts of sickly reasoning.
It was the fate of Christianity that its faith had to become as sickly, as low and as
vulgar as the needs were sickly,
low and vulgar to which it had to administer. A sickly barbarism finally lifts itself to
power as the church--the
church, that incarnation of deadly hostility to all honesty, to all loftiness of soul, to
all discipline of the spirit, to all
spontaneous and kindly humanity.--Christian values--noble values: it is only we, we free
spirits, who have
re-established this greatest of all antitheses in values!. . . .
38.
--I cannot, at this place, avoid a sigh. There are days when I am visited by a feeling
blacker than the blackest
melancholy--contempt of man. Let me leave no doubt as to what I despise, whom I despise:
it is the man of today,
the man with whom I am unhappily contemporaneous. The man of today--I am suffocated by his
foul breath! . . .
Toward the past, like all who understand, I am full of tolerance, which is to say,
generous self-control: with gloomy
caution I pass through whole millenniums of this mad house of a world, call it
"Christianity," "Christian faith" or
the "Christian church," as you will--I take care not to hold mankind responsible
for its lunacies. But my feeling
changes and breaks out irresistibly the moment I enter modern times,our times. Our age
knows better. . . What was
formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent--it is indecent to be a Christian today. And
here my disgust begins.--I
look about me: not a word survives of what was once called "truth"; we can no
longer bear to hear a priest
pronounce the word. Even a man who makes the most modest pretensions to integrity must
know that a theologian,
a priest, a pope of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies--and that he no
longer escapes blame for
his lie through "innocence" or "ignorance." The priest knows, as every
one knows, that there is no longer any
"God," or any "sinner," or any "Saviour"--that "free
will" and the "moral order of the world" are lies--: serious
reflection, the profound self-conquest of the spirit,allow no man to pretend that he does
not know it. . . All the ideas
of the church are now recognized for what they are--as the worst counterfeits in
existence, invented to debase
nature and all natural values; the priest himself is seen as he actually is--as the most
dangerous form of parasite,
as the venomous spider of creation. . - - We know, our conscience now knows--just what the
real value of all those
sinister inventions of priest and church has been and what ends they have served, with
their debasement of
humanity to a state of self-pollution, the very sight of which excites loathing,--the
concepts "the other world," "the
last judgment," "the immortality of the soul," the "soul" itself:
they are all merely so many in instruments of
torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes master and remains master. .
.Every one knows this,but
nevertheless things remain as before. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling,
of self-respect, when our
statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of men and thoroughly anti-Christian in their
acts, now call
themselves Christians and go to the communion table? . . . A prince at the head of his
armies, magnificent as the
expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people--and yet acknowledging, without any
shame, that he is a
Christian! . . . Whom, then, does Christianity deny? what does it call "the
world"? To be a soldier, to be a judge, to
be a patriot; to defend one's self; to be careful of one's honour; to desire one's own
advantage; to be proud . . .
every act of everyday, every instinct, every valuation that shows itself in a deed, is now
anti-Christian: what a
monster of falsehood the modern man must be to call himself nevertheless, and without
shame, a Christian!--
39.
--I shall go back a bit, and tell you the authentic history of Christianity.--The very
word "Christianity" is a
misunderstanding--at bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The
"Gospels" died on the
cross. What, from that moment onward, was called the "Gospels" was the very
reverse of what he had lived: "bad
tidings," a Dysangelium.14It is an error amounting to nonsensicality to see in
"faith," and particularly in faith in
salvation through Christ, the distinguishing mark of the Christian: only the Christian way
of life, the life lived by
him who died on the cross, is Christian. . . To this day such a life is still possible,
and for certain men even
necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will remain possible in all ages. . . . Not
faith, but acts; above all, an
avoidance of acts, a different state of being. . . . States of consciousness, faith of a
sort, the acceptance, for
example, of anything as true--as every psychologist knows, the value of these things is
perfectly indifferent and
fifth-rate compared to that of the instincts: strictly speaking, the whole concept of
intellectual causality is false. To
reduce being a Christian, the state of Christianity, to an acceptance of truth, to a mere
phenomenon of
consciousness, is to formulate the negation of Christianity. In fact, there are no
Christians. The "Christian"--he
who for two thousand years has passed as a Christian--is simply a psychological
self-delusion. Closely examined, it
appears that, despite all his "faith," he has been ruled only by his
instincts--and what instincts!--In all ages--for
example, in the case of Luther--"faith" has been no more than a cloak, a
pretense, a curtain behind which the
instincts have played their game--a shrewd blindness to the domination of certain of the
instincts . . .I have already
called "faith" the specially Christian form of shrewdness--people always talk of
their "faith" and act according to
their instincts. . . In the world of ideas of the Christian there is nothing that so much
as touches reality: on the
contrary, one recognizes an instinctive hatred of reality as the motive power, the only
motive power at the bottom
of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That even here, in psychologicis, there is a
radical error, which is to say
one conditioning fundamentals, which is to say, one in substance. Take away one idea and
put a genuine reality in
its place--and the whole of Christianity crumbles to nothingness !--Viewed calmly, this
strangest of all phenomena,
a religion not only depending on errors, but inventive and ingenious only in devising
injurious errors, poisonous to
life and to the heart--this remains a spectacle for the gods--for those gods who are also
philosophers, and whom I
have encountered, for example, in the celebrated dialogues at Naxos. At the moment when
their disgust leaves
them (--and us!) they will be thankful for the spectacle afforded by the Christians:
perhaps because of this curious
exhibition alone the wretched little planet called the earth deserves a glance from
omnipotence, a show of divine
interest. . . . Therefore, let us not underestimate the Christians: the Christian, false
to the point of innocence, is far
above the ape--in its application to the Christians a well--known theory of descent
becomes a mere piece of
politeness. . . .
40.
--The fate of the Gospels was decided by death--it hung on the "cross.". . . It
was only death, that unexpected and
shameful death; it was only the cross, which was usually reserved for the canaille
only--it was only this appalling
paradox which brought the disciples face to face with the real riddle: "Who was it?
what was it?"--The feeling of
dismay, of profound affront and injury; the suspicion that such a death might involve a
refutation of their cause; the
terrible question, "Why just in this way?"--this state of mind is only too easy
to understand. Here everything must
be accounted for as necessary; everything must have a meaning, a reason, the highest sort
of reason; the love of a
disciple excludes all chance. Only then did the chasm of doubt yawn: "Who put him to
death? who was his natural
enemy?"--this question flashed like a lightning-stroke. Answer: dominant Judaism, its
ruling class. From that
moment, one found one's self in revolt against the established order, and began to
understand Jesus as in revolt
against the established order. Until then this militant, this nay-saying, nay-doing
element in his character had been
lacking; what is more, he had appeared to present its opposite. Obviously, the little
community had not understood
what was precisely the most important thing of all: the example offered by this way of
dying, the freedom from and
superiority to every feeling of ressentiment--a plain indication of how little he was
understood at all! All that Jesus
could hope to accomplish by his death, in itself, was to offer the strongest possible
proof, or example, of his
teachings in the most public manner. But his disciples were very far from forgiving his
death--though to have done
so would have accorded with the Gospels in the highest degree; and neither were they
prepared to offer
themselves, with gentle and serene calmness of heart, for a similar death. . . . On the
contrary, it was precisely the
most unevangelical of feelings, revenge, that now possessed them. It seemed impossible
that the cause should
perish with his death: "recompense" and "judgment" became necessary
(--yet what could be less evangelical than
"recompense," "punishment," and "sitting in judgment"!)
--Once more the popular belief in the coming of a
messiah appeared in the foreground; attention was riveted upon an historical moment: the
"kingdom of God" is to
come, with judgment upon his enemies. . . But in all this there was a wholesale
misunderstanding: imagine the
"kingdom of God" as a last act, as a mere promise! The Gospels had been, in
fact, the incarnation, the fulfillment,
therealization of this "kingdom of God." It was only now that all the familiar
contempt for and bitterness against
Pharisees and theologians began to appear in the character of the Master was thereby
turned into a Pharisee and
theologian himself! On the other hand, the savage veneration of these completely
unbalanced souls could no longer
endure the Gospel doctrine, taught by Jesus, of the equal right of all men to be children
of God: their revenge took
the form of elevating Jesus in an extravagant fashion, and thus separating him from
themselves: just as, in earlier
times, the Jews, to revenge themselves upon their enemies, separated themselves from their
God, and placed him
on a great height. The One God and the Only Son of God: both were products of resentment .
. . .
41.
--And from that time onward an absurd problem offered itself: "how could God allow
it!" To which the deranged
reason of the little community formulated an answer that was terrifying in its absurdity:
God gave his son as a
sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. At once there was an end of the gospels! Sacrifice
for sin, and in its most
obnoxious and barbarous form: sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What
appalling paganism
!--Jesus himself had done away with the very concept of "guilt," he denied that
there was any gulf fixed between
God and man; he lived this unity between God and man, and that was precisely his
"glad tidings". . . And not as a
mere privilege!--From this time forward the type of the Saviour was corrupted, bit by bit,
by the doctrine of
judgment and of the second coming, the doctrine of death as a sacrifice, the doctrine of
the resurrection, by means
of which the entire concept of "blessedness," the whole and only reality of the
gospels, is juggled away--in favour
of a state of existence after death! . . . St. Paul, with that rabbinical impudence which
shows itself in all his doings,
gave a logical quality to that conception, that indecent conception, in this way: "If
Christ did not rise from the dead,
then all our faith is in vain!"--And at once there sprang from the Gospels the most
contemptible of all unfulfillable
promises, the shameless doctrine of personal immortality. . . Paul even preached it as a
reward . . .
42.
One now begins to see just what it was that came to an end with the death on the cross: a
new and thoroughly
original effort to found a Buddhistic peace movement, and so establish happiness on
earth--real, not merely
promised. For this remains--as I have already pointed out--the essential difference
between the two religions of
decadence: Buddhism promises nothing, but actually fulfills; Christianity promises
everything, but fulfills
nothing.--Hard upon the heels of the "glad tidings" came the worst imaginable:
those of Paul. In Paul is incarnated
the very opposite of the "bearer of glad tidings"; he represents the genius for
hatred, the vision of hatred, the
relentless logic of hatred. What, indeed, has not this dysangelist sacrificed to hatred!
Above all, the Saviour: he
nailed him to his own cross. The life, the example, the teaching, the death of Christ, the
meaning and the law of the
whole gospels--nothing was left of all this after that counterfeiter in hatred had reduced
it to his uses. Surely not
reality; surely not historical truth! . . . Once more the priestly instinct of the Jew
perpetrated the same old master
crime against history--he simply struck out the yesterday and the day before yesterday of
Christianity, and
invented his own history of Christian beginnings. Going further, he treated the history of
Israel to another
falsification, so that it became a mere prologue to his achievement: all the prophets, it
now appeared, had referred
to his "Saviour." . . . Later on the church even falsified the history of man in
order to make it a prologue to
Christianity . . . The figure of the Saviour, his teaching, his way of life, his death,
the meaning of his death, even the
consequences of his death--nothing remained untouched, nothing remained in even remote
contact with reality. Paul
simply shifted the centre of gravity of that whole life to a place behind this
existence--in the lie of the "risen"
Jesus. At bottom, he had no use for the life of the Saviour--what he needed was the death
on the cross, and
something more. To see anything honest in such a man as Paul, whose home was at the centre
of the Stoical
enlightenment, when he converts an hallucination into a proof of the resurrection of the
Saviour, or even to believe
his tale that he suffered from this hallucination himself--this would be a genuine
niaiserie in a psychologist. Paul
willed the end; therefore he also willed the means. --What he himself didn't believe was
swallowed readily enough
by the idiots among whom he spread his teaching.--What he wanted was power; in Paul the
priest once more
reached out for power--he had use only for such concepts, teachings and symbols as served
the purpose of
tyrannizing over the masses and organizing mobs. What was the only part of Christianity
that Mohammed borrowed
later on? Paul's invention, his device for establishing priestly tyranny and organizing
the mob: the belief in the
immortality of the soul--that is to say, the doctrine of "judgment".
43.
When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in "the
beyond"--in nothingness--then one has
taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys
all reason, all natural
instinct--henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life
and that safeguards the future is a
cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the
"meaning" of life. . . . Why be
public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust
one another, or concern
one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? . . . Merely so many
"temptations," so many strayings
from the "straight path."--"One thing only is necessary". . . That
every man, because he has an "immortal soul,"
is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the
"salvation" of every individual may lay
claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may
assume that the laws of
nature are constantly suspended in their behalf--it is impossible to lavish too much
contempt upon such a
magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to insolence. And yet Christianity
has to thank precisely this
miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph--it was thus that it lured all the
botched, the dissatisfied, the
fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side. The
"salvation of the soul"--in plain
English: "the world revolves around me." . . . The poisonous doctrine,
"equal rights for all," has been propagated
as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct
Christianity has waged a deadly war
upon all feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the
first prerequisite to
every step upward, to every development of civilization--out of the ressentiment of the
masses it has forged its chief
weapons against us, against everything noble, joyous and high spirited on earth, against
our happiness on earth . . .
To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most
vicious outrage upon noble humanity
ever perpetrated.--And let us not underestimate the fatal influence that Christianity has
had, even upon politics!
Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for
feelings of honourable
pride in himself and his equals--for the pathos of distance. . . Our politics is sick with
this lack of courage!--The
aristocratic attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and
if belief in the "privileges
of the majority" makes and will continue to make revolution--it is Christianity, let
us not doubt, and Christian
valuations, which convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and crime!
Christianity is a revolt of all
creatures that creep on the ground against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the
"lowly" lowers . . .
44.
--The gospels are invaluable as evidence of the corruption that was already persistent
within the primitive
community. That which Paul, with the cynical logic of a rabbi, later developed to a
conclusion was at bottom merely
a process of decay that had begun with the death of the Saviour.--These gospels cannot be
read too carefully;
difficulties lurk behind every word. I confess--I hope it will not be held against
me--that it is precisely for this
reason that they offer first-rate joy to a psychologist--as the opposite of all merely
naive corruption, as refinement
par excellence, as an artistic triumph in psychological corruption. The gospels, in fact,
stand alone. The Bible as a
whole is not to be compared to them. Here we are among Jews: this is the first thing to be
borne in mind if we are
not to lose the thread of the matter. This positive genius for conjuring up a delusion of
personal "holiness"
unmatched anywhere else, either in books or by men; this elevation of fraud in word and
attitude to the level of an
art--all this is not an accident due to the chance talents of an individual, or to any
violation of nature. The thing
responsible is race. The whole of Judaism appears in Christianity as the art of concocting
holy lies, and there, after
many centuries of earnest Jewish training and hard practice of Jewish technic, the
business comes to the stage of
mastery. The Christian, that ultima ratio of lying, is the Jew all over again--he is
threefold the Jew. . . The
underlying will to make use only of such concepts, symbols and attitudes as fit into
priestly practice, the instinctive
repudiation of every other mode of thought, and every other method of estimating values
and utilities--this is not
only tradition, it is inheritance: only as an inheritance is it able to operate with the
force of nature. The whole of
mankind, even the best minds of the best ages (with one exception, perhaps hardly
human--), have permitted
themselves to be deceived. The gospels have been read as a book of innocence. . . surely
no small indication of the
high skill with which the trick has been done.--Of course, if we could actually see these
astounding bigots and bogus
saints, even if only for an instant, the farce would come to an end,--and it is precisely
because I cannot read a word
of theirs without seeing their attitudinizing that I have made am end of them. . . . I
simply cannot endure the way
they have of rolling up their eyes.--For the majority, happily enough, books are mere
literature.--Let us not be led
astray: they say "judge not," and yet they condemn to hell whoever stands in
their way. In letting God sit in
judgment they judge themselves; in glorifying God they glorify themselves; in demanding
that every one show the
virtues which they themselves happen to be capable of--still more, which they must have in
order to remain on
top--they assume the grand air of men struggling for virtue, of men engaging in a war that
virtue may prevail. "We
live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves for the good" (--"the truth,"
"the light," "the kingdom of God"): in point of
fact, they simply do what they cannot help doing. Forced, like hypocrites, to be sneaky,
to hide in corners, to slink
along in the shadows, they convert their necessity into aduty: it is on grounds of duty
that they account for their
lives of humility, and that humility becomes merely one more proof of their piety. . . Ah,
that humble, chaste,
charitable brand of fraud! "Virtue itself shall bear witness for us.". . . . One
may read the gospels as books of
moral seduction: these petty folks fasten themselves to morality--they know the uses of
morality! Morality is the
best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose!--The fact is that the conscious
conceit of the chosen here
disguises itself as modesty: it is in this way that they, the "community," the
"good and just," range themselves,
once and for always, on one side, the side of "the truth"--and the rest of
mankind, "the world," on the other. . . In
that we observe the most fatal sort of megalomania that the earth has ever seen: little
abortions of bigots and liars
began to claim exclusive rights in the concepts of "God," "the truth,"
"the light," "the spirit," "love," "wisdom"
and "life," as if these things were synonyms of themselves and thereby they
sought to fence themselves off from
the "world"; little super-Jews, ripe for some sort of madhouse, turned values
upside down in order to meet their
notions, just as if the Christian were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even
thelast judgment of all the rest. . .
. The whole disaster was only made possible by the fact that there already existed in the
world a similar
megalomania, allied to this one in race, to wit, the Jewish: once a chasm began to yawn
between Jews and
Judaeo-Christians, the latter had no choice but to employ the self-preservative measures
that the Jewish instinct
had devised, even against the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews had employed them only
against non-Jews. The
Christian is simply a Jew of the "reformed" confession.--
