Chapter 5

Here I only touch upon the problem of the originof Christianity. The first principle of its solution reads: Christianity can be understood only in relation to the soil out of which it grew,—it is not a counter-movement against the Jewish instinct, it is the rational outcome of the latter, one step further in its appalling logic. In the formula of the Saviour: “for Salvation is of the Jews.”—The second principle is: the psychological type of the Galilean is still recognisable, but it was only in a state of utter degeneration (which is at once a distortion and an overloading with foreign features) that he was able to serve the purpose for which he has been used,—namely, as the type of a Redeemer of mankind.

The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world, because when they were confronted with the question of Being or non-Being, with simply uncanny deliberateness, they preferred Beingat any price:this price was the fundamentalfalsificationof all Nature, all the naturalness and all the reality, of the inner quite as much as of the outer world. They hedged themselves in behind all those conditions under which hitherto a people has been able to live, has been allowed to live; of themselves they created an idea which was the reverse ofnaturalconditions,—each in turn, they twisted first religion, then the cult, then morality, history and psychology, about in a manner so perfectly hopeless that they were madeto contradict their natural value.We meet with the same phenomena again, and exaggerated to an incalculable degree, although only as a copy:—the Christian Church as compared with the “chosen people,” lacks all claim to originality. Precisely on this account the Jews are the mostfatalpeople in the history of the world: their ultimate influence has falsified mankind to such an extent, that even to this day the Christian can be anti-Semitic in spirit, without comprehending that he himself is thefinal consequence of Judaism.

It was in my “Genealogy of Morals” that I first gave a psychological exposition of the idea of the antithesis noble andresentment-morality,the latter having arisen out of an attitude of negation to the former: but this is Judæo-Christian morality heart and soul. In order to be able to say Nay to everything that represents the ascending movement of life, prosperity, power, beauty, and self-affirmation on earth, the instinct of resentment, become genius, bad to inventanotherworld, from the standpoint of which thatYea-sayingto life appeared asthemost evil and most abominable thing. From the psychological standpoint the Jewish people are possessed of the toughest vitality. Transplanted amid impossible conditions, with profound self-preservative intelligence, it voluntarily took the side of all the instincts of decadence,—notas though dominated by them, but because it detected a power in them by means of which it could assert itselfagainst“the world.” The Jews are the opposite of alldecadents: they have been forced to represent them to the point of illusion, and with anon plus ultraof histrionic genius, they have known how to set themselves at the head of all decadent movements (St Paul and Christianity for instance), in order to create something from them which is stronger than every partysaying Yea to life.For the category of men which aspires to power in Judaism and Christianity,—that is to say, for the sacerdotal class, decadence is but ameans;this category of men has a vital interest in making men sick, and in turning the notions “good” and “bad,” “true” and “false,” upside down in a manner which is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it.

The history of Israel is invaluable as the typical history of everydenaturalizationof natural values: let me point to five facts which relate thereto. Originally, and above all in the period of the kings, even Israel’s attitude to all things was therightone —that is to say, the natural one. Its Jehovah was the expression of its consciousness of power, of its joy over itself, of its hope for itself: victory and salvation were expected from him, through him it was confident that Nature would give what a people requires—above all rain. Jehovah is the God of Israel, andconsequentlythe God of justice: this is the reasoning of every people which is in the position of power, and which has a good conscience in that position. In the solemn cult both sides of this self-affirmation of a people find expression: it is grateful for the great strokes of fate by means of which it became uppermost; it is grateful for the regularity in the succession of the seasons and for all good fortune in the rearing of cattle and in the tilling of the soil.—This state of affairs remained the ideal for some considerable time, even after it had been swept away in a deplorable manner by anarchy from within and the Assyrians from without But the people still retained, as their highest desideratum, that visionof a king who was a good soldier and a severe judge; and he who retained it most of all was that typical prophet (—that is to say, critic and satirist of the age), Isaiah.—But all hopes remained unrealised. The old God was no longer able to do what he had done formerly. He ought to have been dropped. What happened? The idea of him was changed,—the idea of him was denaturalised: this was the price they paid for retaining him.—Jehovah, the God of “Justice,”—is no longer one with Israel, no longer the expression of a people’s sense of dignity: he is only a god on certain conditions.... The idea of him becomes a weapon in the hands of priestly agitators who henceforth interpret all happiness as a reward, all unhappiness as a punishment for disobedience to God, for “sin”: that most fraudulent method of interpretation which arrives at a so-called “moral order of the Universe,” by means of which the concept “cause” and “effect” is turned upside down. Once natural causation has been swept out of the world by reward and punishment, a causationhostile to naturebecomes necessary; whereupon all the forms of unnaturalness follow. A God whodemands,—in the place of a God who helps, who advises, who is at bottom only a name for every happy inspiration of courage and of self-reliance.... Morality is no longer the expression of the conditions of life and growth, no longer the most fundamental instinct of life, but it has become abstract, it has become the opposite of life,—Morality as the fundamental perversion of the imagination, as the “evil eye” for all things. What is Jewish morality, what is Christian morality? Chance robbed of its innocence; unhappinesspolluted with the idea of “sin”; well-being interpreted as a danger, as a “temptation”; physiological indisposition poisoned by means of the canker-worm of conscience....

The concept of God falsified; the concept of morality falsified: but the Jewish priesthood did not stop at this. No use could be made of the wholehistoryof Israel, therefore it must go! These priests accomplished that miracle of falsification, of which the greater part of the Bible is the document: with unparalleled contempt and in the teeth of all tradition and historical facts, they interpreted their own people’s past in a religious manner,—that is to say, they converted it into a ridiculous mechanical process of salvation, on the principle that all sin against Jehovah led to punishment, and that all pious worship of Jehovah led to reward. We would feel this shameful act of historical falsification far more poignantly if the ecclesiastical interpretation of history through millenniums had not blunted almost all our sense for the demands of uprightnessin historicis.And the church is seconded by the philosophers:theof “a moral order of the universe” permeates the whole development even of more modern philosophy. What does a “moral order of the universe” mean? That once and for all there is such a thing as a will of God which determines what man has to do and what he has to leave undone; that the value of a people or of an individual is measured according to how much or how little the one or the other obeys the will of God; that in the destiniesof a people or of an individual, the will of God shows itself dominant, that is to say it punishes or rewards according to the degree of obedience. In the place of this miserable falsehood,realitysays: a parasitical type of man, who can flourish only at the cost of all the healthy elements of life, the priest abuses the name of God: he calls that state of affairs in which the priest determines the value of things “the Kingdom of God”; he calls the means whereby such a state of affairs is attained or maintained, “the Will of God”; with cold-blooded cynicism he measures peoples, ages and individuals according to whether they favour or oppose the ascendancy of the priesthood. Watch him at work: in the hands of the Jewish priesthood the Augustan Age in the history of Israel became an age of decline; the exile, the protracted misfortune transformed itself into eternalpunishmentfor the Augustan Age—that age in which the priest did not yet exist Out of the mighty and thoroughly free-born figures of the history of Israel, they made, according to their requirements, either wretched bigots and hypocrites, or “godless ones”: they simplified the psychology of every great event to the idiotic formula “obedient or disobedient to God.”—A step further: the “Will of God,” that is to say the self-preservative measures of the priesthood, must be known—to this end a “revelation” is necessary. In plain English: a stupendous literary fraud becomes necessary, “holy scriptures” are discovered,—and they are published abroad with all hieratic pomp, with days of penance and lamentations over the long state Of “sin.” The “Will ofGod” has long stood firm: the whole of the trouble lies in the fact that the “Holy Scriptures” have been discarded.... Moses was already the “Will of God” revealed.... What had happened? With severity and pedantry, the priest had formulated once and for all—even to the largest and smallest contributions that were to be paid to him (—not forgetting the daintiest portions of meat; for the priest is a consumer of beef-steaks)—what he wanted,“what the Will of God was.” ... Hence-forward everything became so arranged that the priests wereindispensable everywhere.At all the natural events of life, at birth, at marriage, at the sick-bed, at death,—not to speak of the sacrifice (“the meal”),—the holy parasite appears in order to denaturalise, or in his language, to “sanctify,” everything.... For this should be understood: every natural custom, every natural institution (the State, the administration of justice, marriage, the care of the sick and the poor), every demand inspired by the instinct of life, in short everything that has a value in itself, is rendered absolutely worthless and even dangerous through the parasitism of the priest (or of the “moral order of the universe”): a sanction after the fact is required,—apower which imparts valueis necessary, which in so doing says, Nay to nature, and which by this means alonecreatesa valuation.... The priest depreciates and desecrates nature: it is only at this price that he exists at all.—Disobedience to God, that is to say, to the priest, to the “law,” now receives the name of “sin”; the means of “reconciling one’s self with God” are of course of a nature whichrender subordination to the priesthood all the more fundamental: the priest alone is able to “save.” ... From the psychological standpoint, in every society organised upon a hieratic basis, “sins” are indispensable: they are the actual weapons of power, the priestlivesupon sins, it is necessary for him that people should “sin.” ... Supreme axiom: “God forgiveth him that repenteth”—in plain English:him that submitteth himself to the priest.

Christianity grew out of an utterlyfalsesoil, in which all nature, every natural value, everyrealityhad the deepest instincts of the ruling class against it; it was a form of deadly hostility to reality which has never been surpassed. The “holy people” which had retained only priestly values and priestly names for all things, and which, with a logical consistency that is terrifying, had divorced itself from everything still powerful on earth as if it were “unholy,” “worldly,” “sinful,”—this people created a final formula for its instinct which was consistent to the point of self-suppression; asChristianityit denied even the last form of reality, the “holy people,” the “chosen people,”Jewishreality itself. The case is of supreme interest: the small insurrectionary movement christened with the name of Jesus of Nazareth, is the Jewish instinctover again,—in other words, it is the sacerdotal instinct which can no longer endure the priest as a fact; it is the discovery of a kind of life even more fantastic than the one previously conceived, a vision of life which is even more unreal than that which the organisationof a church stipulates. Christianity denies the church.[3]

I fail to see against whom was directed the insurrection of which rightly orwronglyJesus is understood to have been the promoter, if it were not directed against the Jewish church,—the word “church” being used here in precisely the same sense in which it is used to-day. It was an insurrection against the “good and the just,” against the “prophets of Israel,” against the hierarchy of society—not against the latter’s corruption, but against caste, privilege, order, formality. It was the lack of faith in “higher men,” it was a “Nay” uttered against everything that was tinctured with the blood of priests and theologians. But the hierarchy which was set in question if only temporarily by this movement, formed the construction of piles upon which, alone, the Jewish people was able to subsist in the midst of the “waters”; it was that people’slastchance of survival wrested from the world at enormous pains, theresiduumof its political autonomy: to attack this construction was tantamount to attacking the most profound popular instinct, the most tenacious national will to live that has ever existed on earth. This saintly anarchist who called the lowest of the low, the outcasts and “sinners,” the Chandala of Judaism, to revolt against the established order of things (and inlanguage which, if the gospels are to be trusted, would get one sent to Siberia even to-day)—this man was a political criminal in so far as political criminals were possible in a community so absurdly non-political. This brought him to the cross: the proof of this is the inscription found thereon. He died forhissins—and no matter how often the contrary has been asserted there is absolutely nothing to show that he died for the sins of others.

As to whether he was conscious of this contrast, or whether he was merelyregardedas such, is quite another question. And here, alone, do I touch upon the problem of the psychology of the Saviour.—I confess there are few books which I have as much difficulty in reading as the gospels. These difficulties are quite different from those which allowed the learned curiosity of the German, mind to celebrate one of its most memorable triumphs. Many years have now elapsed since I, like every young scholar, with the sage conscientiousness of a refined philologist, relished the work of the incomparable Strauss. I was then twenty years of age; now I am too serious for that sort of thing. What do I care about the contradictions of “tradition”? How can saintly legends be called “tradition” at all! The stories of saints constitute the most ambiguous literature on earth: to apply the scientific method to them,when there are no other documents to hand,seems to me to be a fatal procedure from the start—simply learned fooling.

The point that concerns me is the psychological type of the Saviour. This type might be contained in the gospels, in spite of the gospels, and however much it may have been mutilated, or overladen with foreign features: just as that of Francis of Assisi is contained in his legends in spite of his legends. It isnota question of the truth concerning what he has done, what he has said, and how he actually died; but whether his type may still be conceived in any way, whether it has been handed down to us at all?—The attempts which to my knowledge have been made to read thehistoryof a “soul” out of the gospels, seem to me to point only to disreputable levity in psychological matters. M. Renan, that buffoonin psychologies,has contributed the two most monstrous ideas imaginable to the explanation of the type of Jesus: the idea of thegeniusand the idea of thehero(“héros”). But if there is anything thoroughly unevangelical surely it is the idea of the hero. It is precisely the reverse of all struggle, of all consciousness of taking part in the fight, that has become instinctive here: the inability to resist is here converted into a morality (“resist not evil,” the profoundest sentence in the whole of the gospels, their key in a certain sense), the blessedness of peace, of gentleness, of notbeing ableto be an enemy. What is the meaning of “glad tidings”?—True life, eternal life has been found—it is not promised, it is actually here, it is inyou;it is life in love, in love free from all selection or exclusion, free from all distance. Everybody is the child of God—Jesus does not byany means claim anything for himself alone,—as the child of God everybody is equal to everybody else.... Fancy making Jesus ahero!—And what a tremendous misunderstanding the word “genius” is! Our whole idea of “spirit,” which is a civilised idea, could have had no meaning whatever in the world in which Jesus lived. In the strict terms of the physiologist, a very different word ought to be used here.... We know of a condition of morbid irritability of the sense oftouch,which recoils shuddering from every kind of contact, and from every attempt at grasping a solid object. Any such physiologicalhabitusreduced to its ultimate logical conclusion, becomes an instinctive hatred of all reality, a flight into the “intangible,” into the “incomprehensible”; a repugnance to all formulæ, to every notion of time and space, to everything that is established such as customs, institutions, the church; a feeling at one’s ease in a world in which no sign of reality is any longer visible, a merely “inner” world, a “true” world, an “eternal” world.... “The Kingdom of God is within you”...

The instinctive hatred of realityis the outcome of an extreme susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which can no longer endure to be “touched” at all, because every sensation strikes too deep.

The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, of all hostility, of all boundaries and distances in feeling,is the outcome of an extreme susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which regards all resistance, all compulsory resistance as insufferableanguish(—that is tosay, as harmful, asdeprecatedby the self-preservative instinct), and which knows blessedness (happiness) only when it is no longer obliged to offer resistance to anybody, either evil or detrimental,—love as the Only ultimate possibility of life....

These are the twophysiological realitiesupon which and out of which the doctrine of salvation has grown. I call them a sublime further development of hedonism, upon a thoroughly morbid soil. Epicureanism, the pagan theory of salvation, even though it possessed a large proportion of Greek vitality and nervous energy, remains the most closely related to the above. Epicurus was atypicaldecadent: and I was the first to recognise him as such.—The terror of pain, even of infinitely slight pain—such a state cannot possibly help culminating in areligionof love....

I have given my reply to the problem in advance. The prerequisite thereto was the admission of the fact that the type of the Saviour has reached us only in a very distorted form. This distortion in itself is extremely feasible: for many reasons a type of that kind could not be pure, whole, and free from additions. The environment in which this strange figure moved, must have left its mark upon him, and the history, thedestinyof the first Christian communities must have done so to a still greater degree. Thanks to that destiny, the type must have been enriched retrospectively with features which can be interpreted only as serving the purposes of war and of propaganda That strange and morbid world into which the gospels lead us—a world which seems tohave been drawn from a Russian novel, where the scum and dross of society, diseases of the nerves and “childish” imbecility seem to have given each other rendezvous—must in any case havecoarsenedthe type: the first disciples especially must have translated an existence conceived entirely in symbols and abstractions into their own crudities, in order at least to be able to understand something about it,—for them the type existed only after it had been cast in a more familiar mould.... The prophet, the Messiah, the future judge, the teacher of morals, the thaumaturgist, John the Baptist—all these were but so many opportunities of misunderstanding the type.... Finally, let us not under-rate thepropriumof all great and especially sectarian veneration: very often it effaces from the venerated object, all the original and frequently painfully un-familiar traits and idiosyncrasies—it does not even see them.It is greatly to be deplored that no Dostoiewsky lived in the neighbourhood of this most interesting decadent,—I mean someone who would have known how to feel the poignant charm of such a mixture of the sublime, the morbid, and the childlike. Finally, the type, as an example of decadence, may actually have been extraordinarily multifarious and contradictory: this, as a possible alternative, is not to be altogether ignored. Albeit, everything seems to point away from it; for, precisely in this case, tradition would necessarily have been particularly true and objective: whereas we have reasons for assuming the reverse. Meanwhile a yawning chasm of contradiction separates the mountain, lake, and pastoral preacher, who strikes us as a Buddhaon a soil only very slightly Hindu, from that combative fanatic, the mortal enemy of theologians and priests, whom Renan’s malice has glorified as “le grand maître en ironie.” For my part, I do not doubt but what the greater part of this venom (and even ofesprit) was inoculated into the type of the Master only as the outcome of the agitated condition of Christian propaganda. For we have ample reasons for knowing the unscrupulousness of all sectarians when they wish to contrive their ownapologyout of the person of their master. When the first Christian community required a discerning, wrangling, quarrelsome, malicious and hair-splitting theologian, to oppose other theologians, it created its “God” according to its needs; just as it did not hesitate to put upon his lips those utterly unevangelical ideas of “his second coming,” the “last judgment,”—ideas with which it could not then dispense,—and every kind of expectation and promise which happened to be current.

I can only repeat that I am opposed to the importation of the fanatic into the type of the Saviour: the word “impérieux,” which Renan uses, in itself annuls the type. The “glad tidings” are simply that there are no longer any contradictions, that the Kingdom of Heaven is for thechildren;the faith which raises its voice here is not a faith that has been won by a struggle,—it is to hand, it was there from the beginning, it is a sort of spiritual return to childishness. The case of delayed and undeveloped puberty in the organism, as the resultof degeneration is at least familiar to physiologists. A faith of this sort does not show anger, it does not blame, neither does it defend itself: it does not bring “the sword,”—it has no inkling of how it will one day establish feuds between man and man. It does not demonstrate itself, either by miracles, or by reward and promises, or yet “through the scriptures”: it is in itself at every moment its own miracle, its own reward, its own proof, its own “Kingdom of God.” This faith cannot be formulated—it lives, it guards against formulas. The accident of environment, of speech, of preparatory culture, certainly determines a particular series of conceptions: early Christianity deals only in Judæo-Semitic conceptions (—the eating and drinking at the last supper form part of these,—this idea which like everything Jewish has been abused so maliciously by the church). But one should guard against seeing anything more than a language of signs, semiotics, an opportunity for parables in all this. The very fact that no word is to be taken literally, is the only condition on which this Anti-realist is able to speak at all. Among Indians he would have made use of the ideas of Sankhyara, among Chinese, those of Lao-tze—and would not have been aware of any difference. With a little terminological laxity Jesus might be called a “free spirit”—he cares not a jot for anything that is established: the wordkilleth,everything fixedkilltth.The idea,experience,“life” as he alone knows it, is, according to him, opposed to every kind of word, formula, law, faith and dogma. He speaks only of the innermost things: “life” or“truth,” or “light,” is his expression for the innermost thing,—everything else, the whole of reality, the whole of nature, language even, has only the value of a sign, of a simile for him.—It is of paramount importance not to make any mistake at this point, however great may be the temptation thereto that lies in Christian—I mean to say, ecclesiastical prejudice. Any such essential symbolism stands beyond the pale of all religion, all notions of cult, all history, all natural science, all experience of the world, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books and all Art—for his “wisdom” is precisely the complete ignorance[4]of the existence of such things. He has not even heard speak ofculture,he does not require to oppose it,—he does not deny it.... The same holds good of the state, of the whole of civil and social order, of work and of war—he never had any reason to deny the world, he had not the vaguest notion of the ecclesiastical concept “the world.” ... Denying is precisely what was quite impossible to him.—Dialectic is also quite absent, as likewise the idea that any faith, any “truth” can be proved by argument (—his proofs are inner “lights,” inward feelings of happiness and self-affirmation, a host of “proofs of power”—). Neither can such a doctrine contradict, it does not even realise the fact that there are or can be other doctrines, it is absolutely incapable of imagining a contrary judgment.... Wherever it encounters such things, from a feeling of profound sympathy itbemoans such “blindness,”—for it sees the “light,”—but it raises no objections.

The whole psychology of the “gospels” lacks the concept of guilt and punishment, as also that of reward. “Sin,” any sort of aloofness between God and man, is done away with,—this is precisely what constitutes the “glad tidings”.Eternal bliss is not promised, it is not bound up with certain conditions; it is the only reality—the rest consists only of signs wherewith to speak about it....

The results of such a state project themselves into a new practice of life, the actual evangelical practice. It is not a “faith” which distinguishes the Christians: the Christian acts, he distinguishes himself by means of adifferentmode of action. He does not resist his enemy either by words or in his heart He draws no distinction between foreigners and natives, between Jews and Gentiles (“the neighbour” really means the co-religionist, the Jew). He is angry with no one, he despises no one. He neither shows himself at the tribunals nor does he acknowledge any of their claims (“Swear not at all”). He never under any circumstances divorces his wife, even when her infidelity has been proved.—All this is at bottom one principle, it is all the outcome of one instinct—

The life of the Saviour was naught else than this practice,—neither was his death. He no longer required any formulæ, any rites for his relations with God—not even prayer. He has done with allthe Jewish teaching of repentance and of atonement; he alone knows themodeof life which makes one feel “divine,” “saved,” “evangelical,” and at all times a “child of God.”Not“repentance,”not“prayer and forgiveness” are the roads to God: theevangelical mode of life aloneleads to God, itis“God.”—That which the gospels abolished was the Judaism of the concepts “sin,” “forgiveness of sin,” “faith,” “salvation through faith,”—the whole doctrine of the Jewish church was denied by the “glad tidings.”

The profound instinct of how one must live in order to feel “in Heaven,” in order to feel “eternal,” while in every other respect one feels bynomeans “in Heaven”: this alone is the psychological reality of “Salvation.”—A new life andnota new faith....

If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this that he regarded onlyinnerfacts as facts, as “truths,”—that he understood the rest, everything natural, temporal, material and historical, only as signs, as opportunities for parables. The concept “the Son of Man,” is not a concrete personality belonging to history, anything individual and isolated, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol divorced from the concept of time. The same is true, and in the highest degree, of theGodof this typical symbolist, of the “Kingdom of God,” of the “Kingdom of Heaven,” and of the “Sonship of God.” Nothing is more un-Christlike than theecclesiastical crudityof a personal God, of a Kingdomof God that is coming, of a “Kingdom of Heaven” beyond, of a “Son of God” as the second person of the Trinity. All this, if I may be forgiven the expression, is as fitting as a square peg in a round hole—and oh! what a hole!—the gospels: aworld-historiccynicism in the scorn of symbols.... But what is meant by the signs “Father” and “Son,” is of course obvious—not to everybody, I admit: with the word “Son,”entranceinto the feeling of the general transfiguration of all things (beatitude) is expressed, with the word “Father,”this feeling itselfthe feeling of eternity and of perfection.—I blush to have to remind you of what the Church has done with this symbolism: has it not set an Amphitryon story at the threshold of the Christian “faith”? And a dogma of immaculate conception into the bargain?...But by so doing it defiled conception.——

The “Kingdom of Heaven” is a state of the heart—not something which exists “beyond this earth” or comes to you “after death.” The whole idea of natural death is lacking in the gospels. Death is not a bridge, not a means of access: it is absent because it belongs to quite a different and merely apparent world the only use of which is to furnish signs, similes. The “hour of death” is not a Christian idea—the “hour,” time in general, physical life and its crises do not exist for the messenger of “glad tidings.” ... The “Kingdom of God” is not some thing that is expected; it has no yesterday nor any day after to-morrow, it is not going to come in a “thousand years”—it is an experience of a human heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere....

This “messenger of glad tidings” died as he lived and as he taught—notin order “to save mankind,” but in order to show how one ought to live. It was a mode of life that he bequeathed to mankind: his behaviour before his judges, his attitude towards his executioners, his accusers, and all kinds of calumny and scorn,—his demeanour on thecross.He offers no resistance; he does not defend his rights; he takes no step to ward off the most extreme consequences, he does more,—he provokes them. And he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who treat him ill....Notto defend one’s self,notto show anger, not to hold anyone responsible.... But to refrain from resisting even the evil one,—tolovehim....

—Only we spirits that havebecome free,possess the necessary condition for understanding something which nineteen centuries have misunderstood,—that honesty which has become an instinct and a passion in us, and which wages war upon the “holy lie” with even more vigour than upon every other lie.... Mankind was unspeakably far from our beneficent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the mind, which, alone, renders the solution of such strange and subtle things possible: at all times, with shameless egoism, all that people sought was theirownadvantage in these matters, the Church was built up out of contradiction to the gospel....

Whoever might seek for signs pointing to the guiding fingers of an ironical deity behind the greatcomedy of existence, would find no small argument in thehuge note of interrogationthat is called Christianity. The fact that mankind is on its knees before the reverse of that which formed the origin, the meaning and therightsof the gospel; the fact that, in the idea “Church,” precisely that is pronounced holy which the “messenger of glad tidings” regarded asbeneathhim, asbehindhim—one might seek in vain for a more egregious exampleof world-historicirony—-

—Our age is proud of its historical sense: how could it allow itself to be convinced of the nonsensical idea that at the beginning Christianity consisted only of theclumsy fable of the thaumaturgist and of the Saviour,and that all its spiritual and symbolic side was only developed later? On the contrary: the history of Christianity—from the death on the cross onwards—is the history of a gradual and ever coarser misunderstanding of an original symbolism. With every extension of Christianity over ever larger and ruder masses, who were ever less able to grasp its first principles, the need ofvulgarising and barbarising itincreased proportionately—it absorbed the teachings and rites of all thesubterraneancults of theimperium Romanum,as well as the nonsense of every kind of morbid reasoning. The fatal feature of Christianity lies in the necessary fact that its faith had to become as morbid, base and vulgar as the needs to which it had to minister were morbid, base and vulgar.Morbid barbarismat last braces itself together for power in the form of the Church—the Church, this deadly hostility to all honesty, to all loftiness of the soul, to all discipline of the mind, to all frank and kindly humanity.—Christianandnoblevalues: only we spiritswho have become free havere-established this contrast in values which is the greatest that has ever existed on earth!—

—I cannot, at this point, stifle a sigh. There are days when I am visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—thecontempt of man.And in order that I may leave you in no doubt as to what I despise,whomI despise: I declare that it is the man of to-day, the man with whom I am fatally contemporaneous. The man of to-day, I am asphyxiated by his foul breath.... Towards the past, like all knights of knowledge, I am profoundly tolerant,—that is to say, I exercise a sort ofgenerousself-control: with gloomy caution I pass through whole millennia of this mad-house world, and whether it be called “Christianity,” “Christian Faith,” or “Christian Church,” I take care not to hold mankind responsible for its mental disorders. But my feeling suddenly changes, and vents itself the moment I enter the modern age,ourage. Our ageknows....That which formerly was merely morbid, is now positively indecent It is indecent nowadays to be a Christian.And it is here that my loathing begins.I look about me: not a word of what was formerly known as “truth” has remained standing; we can no longer endure to hear a priest even pronounce the word “truth.” Even he whomakes but the most modest claims upon truth,mustknow at present, that a theologian, a priest, or a pope, not only errs but actuallyties,with every word that he utters,—and that he is no longer able to lie from “innocence,” from “ignorance.” Even the priest knows quite as well as everybody else does that there is no longer any “God,” any “sinner” or any “Saviour,” and that “free will,” and “a moral order of the universe” arelies.Seriousness, the profound self-conquest of the spirit no longer allows anyone to beignorantabout this.... All the concepts of the Church have been revealed in their true colours—that is to say, as the most vicious frauds on earth, calculated todepreciatenature and all natural values. The priest himself has been recognised as what he is—that is to say, as the most dangerous kind of parasite, as the actual venomous spider of existence.... At present we know, ourconscienceknows, the real value of the gruesome inventions which the priests and the Church have made,and what end they served.By means of them that state of self-profanation on the part of man has been attained, the sight of which makes one heave. The concepts “Beyond,” “Last Judgment,” “Immortality of the Soul,” the “soul” itself, are merely so many instruments of torture, so many systems of cruelty, on the strength of which the priest became and remained master.... Everybody knows this,and nevertheless everything remains as it was.Whither has the last shred of decency, of self-respect gone, if nowadays even our statesmen—a body of men who are otherwise so unembarrassed, and such thorough anti-Christians in deed—still declare themselvesChristians and still flock to communion?[5].... Fancy a prince at the head of his legions, magnificent as the expression of the egoism and self-exaltation of his people,—butshamelessenough to acknowledge himself a Christian!... What then does Christianity deny? What does it call “world”? “The world” to Christianity means that a man is a soldier, a judge, a patriot, that he defends himself, that he values his honour, that he desires his own advantage, that he isproud.... The conduct of every moment, every instinct, every valuation that leads to a deed, is at present anti-Christian: what anabortion of falsehoodmodern man must be, in order to be ablewithout a blushstill to call himself a Christian!——

—I will retrace my steps, and will tell you thegenuinehistory of Christianity.—The very word “Christianity” is a misunderstanding,—truth to tell, there never was more than one Christian, and hediedon the Cross. The “gospel”diedon the cross. That which thenceforward was called “gospel” was the reverse of that “gospel” that Christ had lived: it was “evil tidings,” adysangelIt is false to the point of nonsense to see in “faith,” in the faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing trait of the Christian: the only thing that is Christian is the Christian mode of existence, a life such as he led who died on the Cross.... To this day a life of this kind is still possible; forcertain men, it is even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will be possible in all ages....Nota faith, but a course of action, above all a course of inaction, non-interference, and a different life.... States of consciousness, any sort of faith, a holding of certain things for true, as every psychologist knows, are indeed of absolutely no consequence, and are only of fifth-rate importance compared with the value of the instincts: more exactly, the whole concept of intellectual causality is false. To reduce the fact of being a Christian, or of Christianity, to a holding of something for true, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is tantamount to denying Christianity.In fact there have never been any Christians.The “Christian,” he who for two thousand years has been called a Christian, is merely a psychological misunderstanding of self. Looked at more closely, there ruled in him,notwithstandingall his faith, only instincts—andwhat instincts!—“Faith” in all ages, as for instance in the case of Luther, has always been merely a cloak, a pretext, ascreen,behind which the instincts played their game,—a prudent form ofblindnessin regard to the dominion ofcertaininstincts. “Faith” I have already characterised as a piece of really Christian cleverness; for people have always spoken of “faith” and acted according to their instincts.... In the Christian’s world of ideas there is nothing which even touches reality: but I have already recognised in the instinctive hatred of reality the actual motive force, the only driving power at the root of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That here, evenin psychologicis,error is fundamental,—that is to say capable of determining the spirit of things,—that is to say,substance.Take one idea away from the whole, and put one realistic fact in its stead,—and the whole of Christianity tumbles into nonentity!—Surveyed from above, this strangest of all facts,-a religion not only dependent upon error, but inventive and showing signs of genius only in those errors which are dangerous and which poison life and the human heart—remains aspectacle for gods,for those gods who are at the same time philosophers and whom I met for instance in those celebrated dialogues on the island of Naxos. At the moment when they get rid of theirloathing (—and we do as well!), they will be thankful for the spectacle the Christians have offered: the wretched little planet called Earth perhaps deserves on account ofthiscurious case alone, a divine glance, and divine interest.... Let us not therefore underestimate the Christians: the Christian, falseto the point of innocence in falsity,is far above the apes,—in regard to the Christians a certain well-known theory of Descent becomes a mere good-natured compliment.

—The fate of the gospel was decided at the moment of the death,—it hung on the “cross.” ... It was only death, this unexpected and ignominious death; it was only the cross which as a rule was reserved simply for thecanaille,—only this appalling paradox which confronted the disciples with the actual riddle:Who was that? what was that?—The state produced by the excited and profoundly wounded feelings of these men, the suspicion that such a death might imply therefutationof their cause, and the terrible note of interrogation: “why precisely thus?” will be understood only too well. In this case everythingmustbe necessary, everything must have meaning, a reason, the highest reason. The love of a disciple admits of no such thing as accident. Only then did the chasm yawn: “who has killed him?” “who was his natural enemy?”—this question rent the firmament like a flash of lightning. Reply:dominantJudaism, its ruling class. Thenceforward the disciple felt himself in revoltagainstestablished order; he understood Jesus, after the fact, as one inrevolt against established order.Heretofore this warlike, this nay-saying and nay-doing feature in Christ had been lacking; nay more, he was its contradiction. The small primitive community had obviously understoodnothingof the principal factor of all, which was the example of freedom and of superiority to every form ofresentmentwhich lay in this way of dying. And this shows how little they understood him altogether! At bottom Jesus could not have desired anything else by his death than to give the strongest publicexampleandproofof his doctrine.... But his disciples were very far fromforgiving thisdeath—though if they had done so it would have been in the highest sense evangelical on their part,—neither were they prepared, with a gentle and serene calmness of heart, toofferthemselves for a similar death.... Precisely the most unevangelical feeling,revenge,became once moreascendant. It was impossible for the cause to end with this death: “compensation” and “judgment” were required (—and forsooth, what could be more unevangelical than “compensation,” “punishment,” “judgment”!) The popular expectation of a Messiah once more became prominent; attention was fixed upon one historical moment: the “Kingdom of God” descends to sit in judgment upon his enemies. But this proves that everything was misunderstood: the “Kingdom of God” regarded as the last scene of the last act, as a promise! But the Gospel had clearly been the living, the fulfilment, therealityof this “Kingdom of God.” It was precisely a death such as Christ’s that was this “Kingdom of God.” It was only now that all the contempt for the Pharisees and the theologians, and all bitter feelings towards them, were introduced into the character of the Master,—and by this means he himself was converted into a Pharisee and a theologian! On the other hand, the savage veneration of these completely unhinged souls could no longer endure that evangelical right of every man to be the child of God, which Jesus had taught: their revenge consisted inelevatingJesus in a manner devoid of all reason, and in separating him from themselves: just as, formerly, the Jews, with the view of revenging themselves on their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and placed him high above them. The Only God, and the Only Son of God:—both were products of resentment.

—And from this time forward an absurd problemrose into prominence: “howcouldGod allow it to happen?” To this question the disordered minds of the small community found a reply which in its absurdity was literally terrifying: God gave his Son as asacrificefor the forgiveness of sins. Alas! how prompt and sudden was the end of the gospel! Expiatory sacrifice for guilt, and indeed in its most repulsive and barbaric form,—the sacrifice of theinnocentfor the sins of the guilty! What appalling Paganism!—For Jesus himself had done away with the concept “guilt,”—he denied any gulf between God and man, helivedthis unity between God and man, it was this that constitutedhis“glad tidings.” ... And he didnotteach it as a privilege!—Thenceforward there was gradually imported into the type of the Saviour the doctrine of the Last Judgment, and of the “second coming,” the doctrine of sacrificial death, and the doctrine ofResurrection,by means of which the whole concept “blessedness,” the entire and only reality of the gospel, is conjured away—in favour of a stateafterdeath!... St Paul, with that rabbinic impudence which characterises all his doings, rationalised this conception, this prostitution of a conception, as follows: “if Christ did not rise from the dead, our faith is vain.”—And, in a trice, the most contemptible of all unrealisable promises, theimpudentdoctrine of personal immortality, was woven out of the gospel.... St Paul even preached this immortality as a reward.

You now realise what it was that came to an end with the death on the cross: a new and thoroughlyoriginal effort towards a Buddhistic movement of peace, towards real andnotmerely promisedhappiness on earth.For, as I have already pointed out, this remains the fundamental difference between the two religionsof decadence:Buddhism promises little but fulfils more, Christianity promises everything but fulfils nothing.—The “glad tidings” were followed closely by the absolutelyworsttidings—those of St Paul. Paul is the incarnation of a type which is the reverse of that of the Saviour; he is the genius in hatred, in the standpoint of hatred, and in the relentless logic of hatred. And alas what did this dysangelist not sacrifice to his hatred! Above all the Saviour himself: he nailed him tohiscross. Christ’s life, his example, his doctrine and death, the sense and the right of the gospel—not a vestige of alt this was left, once this forger, prompted by his hatred, had understood in it only that which could serve his purpose.Notreality:nothistorical truth! ... And once more, the sacerdotal instinct of the Jew, perpetrated the same great crime against history,—he simply cancelled the yesterday, and the day before that, out of Christianity; hecontrived of his own accord a history of the birth of Christianity.He did more: he once more falsified the history of Israel, so as to make it appear as a prologue tohismission: all the prophets had referred tohis“Saviour.” ... Later on the Church even distorted the history of mankind so as to convert it into a prelude to Christianity.... The type of the Saviour, his teaching, his life, his death, the meaning of his death, even the sequel to his death—nothing remained untouched, nothing was left which evenremotely resembled reality. St Paul simply transferred the centre of gravity of the whole of that great life, to a placebehindthis life,—in thelieof the “resuscitated” Christ. At bottom, he had no possible use for the life of the Saviour,—he needed the death on the cross,andsomething more. To regard as honest a man like St Paul (a man whose home was the very headquarters of Stoical enlightenment) when he devises a proof of the continued existence of the Saviour out of a hallucination; or even to believe him when he declares that he had this hallucination, would amount to foolishness on the part of a psychologist: St Paul desired the end, consequently he also desired the means.... Even what he himself did not believe, was believed in by the idiots among whom he spreadhisdoctrine.—What he wanted was power; with St Paul the priest again aspired to power,—he could make use only of concepts, doctrines, symbols with which masses may be tyrannised over, and with which herds are formed. What was the only part of Christianity which was subsequently borrowed by Muhamed? St Paul’s invention, his expedient for priestly tyranny and to the formation of herds: the belief in immortality—that is to say, the doctrine of the “Last Judgment.” ...

When the centre of gravity of life is laid,notin life, but in a beyond—in nonentity,—life is utterly robbed of its balance. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all nature in the instincts,—everything in the instincts that is beneficent, that promotes life and that is a guaranteeof the future, henceforward aroused suspicion. The very meaning of life is now construed as the effort to live in such a way that life no longer has any point.... Why show any public spirit? Why be grateful for one’s origin and one’s forebears? Why collaborate with one’s fellows, and be confident? Why be concerned about the general weal or strive after it?... All these things are merely so many “temptations,” so many deviations from the “straight path.” “One thing only is necessary.” ... That everybody, as an “immortal soul,” should have equal rank, that in the totality of beings, the “salvation” of each individual may lay claim to eternal importance, that insignificant bigots and three-quarter-lunatics may have the right to suppose that the laws of nature may be persistentlybrokenon their account,—any such magnification of every kind of selfishness to infinity, toinsolence,cannot be branded with sufficient contempt And yet it is to this miserable flattery of personal vanity that Christianity owes itstriumph,—by this means it lured all the bungled and the botched, all revolting and revolted people, all abortions, the whole of the refuse and offal of humanity, over to its side. The “salvation of the soul”—in plain English: “the world revolves around me” ... The poison of the doctrine “equalrights for all”—has been dispensed with the greatest thoroughness by Christianity: Christianity, prompted by the most secret recesses of bad instincts, has waged a deadly war upon all feeling of reverence and distance between man and man—that is to say, theprerequisiteof all elevation, of every growth in culture; out ofthe resentment of the masses it wrought itsprincipal weaponsagainst us, against everything noble, joyful, exalted on earth, against our happiness on earth.... To grant “immortality” to every St Peter and St Paul, was the greatest, the most vicious outrage uponnoblehumanity that has ever been perpetrated.—And do not let us underestimate the fatal influence which, springing from Christianity, has insinuated itself even into politics! Nowadays no one has the courage of special rights, of rights of t dominion, of a feeling of self-respect and of respect for his equals,—ofpathos of distance.Our politics are diseased with this lack of courage!—The aristocratic attitude of mind has been most thoroughly undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if the belief in the “privilege of the greatest number” creates and will continueto create revolutions,—it is Christianity, let there be no doubt about it, and Christian values, which convert every revolution into blood and crime! Christianity is the revolt of all things that crawl on their bellies against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the “lowly”lowers....

—The Gospels are invaluable as a testimony of the corruption which was already persistentwithinthe first Christian communities. That which St Paul, with the logician’s cynicism of a Rabbi, carried to its logical conclusion, was nevertheless merely the process of decay which began with the death of the Saviour.—These gospels cannot be read too cautiously; difficulties lurk behind every word theycontain. I confess, and people will not take this amiss, that they are precisely on that account a joy of the first rank for a psychologist,—as the reverse of all naive perversity, as refinementpar excellence,as a masterpiece of art in psychological corruption. The gospels stand alone. Altogether the Bible allows of no comparison. Thefirstthing to be remembered if we do not wish to lose the scent here, is, that we are among Jews. The dissembling of holiness which, here, literally amounts to genius, and which has never been even approximately achieved elsewhere either by books or by men, this fraud in word and pose which in this book is elevated to anArt,is not the accident of any individual gift, of any exceptional nature. These qualities are a matter ofrace.With Christianity, the art of telling holy lies, which constitutes the whole of Judaism, reaches its final mastership, thanks to many centuries of Jewish and most thoroughly serious training and practice. The Christian, thisultima ratioof falsehood, is the Jew over again—he is even three times a Jew.... The fundamental will only to make use of concepts, symbols and poses, which are demonstrated by the practice of the priests, the instinctive repudiation of every other kind of practice, every other standpoint of valuation and of utility—all this is not only tradition, it ishereditary;only as an inheritance is it able to work like nature. The whole of mankind, the best brains, and even the best ages—(one man only excepted who is perhaps only a monster)—have allowed themselves to be deceived. The gospels were read as thebook of innocence ...this is no insignificantsign of the virtuosity with which deception has been practised here.—Of course, if we could only succeed in seeing all these amazing bigots and pretended saints, even for a moment, all would be at an end—and it is precisely becauseIcan read no single word of theirs, without seeing their pretentious poses,that I have made an end of them.... I cannot endure a certain way they have of casting their eyes heavenwards.—Fortunately for Christianity, books are for the greatest number, merely literature. We must not let ourselves be led away: “judge not!” they say, but they dispatch all those to hell who stand in their way. Inasmuch as they let God do the judging, they themselves, judge; inasmuch as they glorify God, they glorify themselves; inasmuch as they exact those virtues of which they themselves happen to be capable—nay more, of which they are in need in order to be able to remain on top at all;—they assume the grand airs of struggling for virtue, of struggling for the dominion of virtue. “We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves for the good” (—“the Truth,” “the Light,” “the Kingdom of God”): as a matter of fact they do only what they cannot help doing. Like sneaks they have to play a humble part; sit away in corners, and remain obscurely in the shade, and they make all this appear a duty; their humble life now appears as a duty, and their humility is one proof the more of their piety!... Oh, what a humble, chaste and compassionate kind of falsity! “Virtue itself shall bear us testimony.” ... Only read the gospels as books calculated to seduce by means of morality: morality is appropriated by these petty people,—they knowwhat morality can do! The best way of leading mankind by the nose is with morality! The fact is that the most consciousconceitof people who believe themselves to bechosen,here simulates modesty: in this way they, the Christian community, the “good and the just” place themselves once and for all on a certain side, the side “of Truth”—and the rest of mankind, “the world” on the other.... This was the most fatal kind of megalomania that had ever yet existed on earth: insignificant little abortions of bigots and liars began to lay sole claim to the concepts “God,” “Truth,” “Light,” “Spirit,” “Love,” “Wisdom,” “Life,” as if these things were, so to speak, synonyms of themselves, in order to fence themselves off from “the world”; little ultra-Jews, ripe for every kind of madhouse, twisted values round in order to suit themselves, just as if the Christian, alone, were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even the “ultimate tribunal” of all the rest of mankind.... The whole fatality was rendered possible only because a kind of megalomania, akin to this one and allied to it in race,—the Jewish kind—was already to hand in the world: the very moment the gulf between Jews and Judæo-Christians was opened, the latter had no alternative left, but to adopt the same self-preservative measures as the Jewish instinct suggested, evenagainstthe Jews themselves, whereas the Jews, theretofore, had employed these same measures only against the Gentiles. The Christian is nothing more than an anarchical Jew.

—Let me give you a few examples of what thesepaltry people have stuffed into their heads, what they have laidon the lips of their Master: quite a host of confessions from “beautiful souls.”—

“And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.” (Mark vi. 11.)—How evangelical!...

“And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.” (Mark ix. 42.)—Howevangelical!...

“And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it fa better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark ix. 47, 48.)—The eye is not precisely what is meant in this passage....

“Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” (Mark ix. 1.)—Welllied,lion![6]...

“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 morethan others?do not even the publicans so?” (Matthew v. 46, 47.) The principle of “Christian love”: it insists upon beingwell 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 anerror .... 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 rewardisgreat in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.” (Luke vi. 23.)—Impudentrabble! They dare to compare themselves with the prophets....

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God andthatthe 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, whichtemple 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 speech of a lunatic.... Thisappalling impostorproceeds thus: “Know 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 nobleare 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. 20et seq.)—In order tounderstandthis passage, which is of the highest importance as an example of the psychology of every Chandala morality, the reader should refer to myGenealogy of Morals:in this book, the contrast between anobleand a Chandala morality born ofresentmentand impotent revengefulness, is brought to light for the first time. St Paul was the greatest of all the apostles of revenge....

What follows from this?That one does well toput 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, whilecleanlyinstincts 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, isnotthereby 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 libertyto make!—After all the Scribes and Pharisees were theprivileged 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 everyotherprinciple 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 thinghe hates,has value.... The Christian, more particularly the Christian priest, is acriterion of values—Do I require to add that in the whole of the New Testament onlyonefigure appears which we cannot help respecting? Pilate, the Roman Governor. To take a Jewish quarrelseriouslywas a thing he could not get himself to do. One Jew more or less—what did it matter?... The noblescorn of a Roman, in whose presence the word “truth” had been shamelessly abused, has enriched the New Testament with the only saying whichis of value,—and this saying is not only the criticism, but actually the shattering of that Testament: “What is truth!”...

—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 acrime against life.... We deny God as God.... If the existence of this Christian God wereprovedto 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 anddecried. “Faith” as an imperative is avetoagainst science,—in praxi,it means lies at any price. St Paulunderstoodthat 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, thetwo great opponents of all superstition, philology and medicine), means, in very truth, simply St Paul’s firmresolveto 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 thegood oldphilologists 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 anAntichrist.As a philologist, for instance, a man seesbehindthe “holy books,” as a doctor he seesbehindthe physiological rottenness of the typical Christian. The doctor says “incurable,” the philologist says “forgery.”

—Has anybody ever really understood the celebrated story which stands at the beginning of the Bible,—concerning God’s deadly panic overscience?... Nobody has understood it This essentially sacerdotal book naturally begins with the great inner difficulty of the priest:heknows 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’sfirstmistake: 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’ssecondmistake.—“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 sciencealso 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 hisgreatestmistake, he had created a rival for himself, science makes youequal 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 thefirst,the germ of all sins, the original sin.This alone is morality.—“Thou shaltnotknow”:—the rest follows as a matter of course, God’s panic did not deprive him of his intelligence. How can oneguardagainst 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.... Manmustnot 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 alldisease,—all these are but weaponsemployed 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 inventswar;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!” ...

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