THE ANTICHRIST

Here the outlook is free.—When a philosopher holds his tongue it may be the sign of the loftiness of his soul: when he contradicts himself it may be love; and the very courtesy of a knight of knowledge may force him to lie. It has been said, and not without subtlety:—il est indigne des grands cœurs de répandre le trouble qu’ils ressentent[8]:but it is necessary to add that there may also begrandeur de cœurin not shrinkingfrom the most undignified proceeding.A woman who loves sacrifices her honour; a knight of knowledge who “loves,” sacrifices perhaps his humanity; a God who loved, became a Jew....

Beauty no accident—Even the beauty of a race or of a family, the charm and perfection of all its movements, is attained with pains: like genius it is the final result of the accumulated work of generations. Great sacrifices must have been made on the altar ol good taste, for its sake many things must have been done, and much must have been left undone—the seventeenth century in France is admirable for both ofthese things,—in this century there must have been a principle of selection in respect to company, locality, clothing, the gratification of the instinct of sex; beauty must have been preferred to profit, to habit, to opinion and to indolence. The first rule of all:—nobody must “let himself go,” not even when he is alone.—Good things are exceedingly costly:; and in all cases the law obtains that he who possesses them is a different person from him who isacquiringthem. Everything good is an inheritance: that which is not inherited is imperfect, it is simply a beginning. In Athens at the time of Cicero—who expresses his surprise at the fact—the men and youths were by far superior in beauty to the women: but what hard work and exertions the male sex had for centuries imposed upon itself in the service of beauty! We must not be mistaken in regard to the method employed here: the mere discipline of feelings and thoughts is little better than nil (—it is in this that the great error of German culture, which is quite illusory, lies): thebodymust be persuaded first. The strict maintenance of a distinguished and tasteful demeanour, the obligation of frequenting only those who do not “let themselves go,” is amply sufficient to render one distinguished and tasteful: in two or three generations everything has alreadytaken deep root.The fate of a people and of humanity is decided according to whether they begin culture at theright place—notat the “soul” (as the fatal superstition of the priests and half-priests would have it): the right place is the body, demeanour, diet, physiology—the rest follows as the night the day.... That is why the Greeks remain thefirst event inculture—they knew and theydidwhat was needful. Christianity with its contempt of the body is the greatest mishap that has ever befallen mankind.

Progress in my sense.—I also speak of a “return to nature,” although it is not a process of going back but of going up—up into lofty, free and even terrible nature and naturalness; such a nature as can play with great tasks andmayplay with them.... To speak in aparable.Napoleon was an example of a “return to nature,” as I understand it (for instancein rebus tacticis,and still more, as military experts know, in strategy). But Rousseau—whither did he want to return? Rousseau this first modern man, idealist andcanaillein one person; who was in need of moral “dignity,” in order even to endure the sight of his own person,—ill with unbridled vanity and wanton self-contempt; this abortion, who planted his tent on the threshold of modernity, also wanted a “return to nature”; but, I ask once more, whither did he wish to return? I hate Rousseau, eveninthe Revolution itself: the latter was the historical expression of this hybrid of idealist andcanaille.The bloody farce which this Revolution ultimately became, its “immorality,” concerns me but slightly; what I loathe however is its Rousseauesquemorality—the so-called “truths” of the Revolution, by means of which it still exercises power and draws all flat and mediocre things over to its side. The doctrine of equality! ... But there is no more deadly poison than this; for itseemsto proceed from the very lips of justice, whereas in reality it draws the curtaindown on all justice.... “To equals equality, to unequals inequality”—that would be the real speech of justice and that which follows from it “Never make unequal things equal.” The fact that so much horror and blood are associated with this doctrine of equality, has lent this “modern idea”par excellencesuch a halo of fire and glory, that the Revolution as a drama has misled even the most noble minds.—That after all is no reason for honouring it the more.—I can see only one who regarded it as it should be regarded—that is to say, withloathing;I speak of Goethe.

Goethe.—No mere German, but a European event: a magnificent attempt to overcome the eighteenth century by means of a return to nature, by means of an ascent to the naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-overcoming on the part of the century in question.—He bore the strongest instincts of this century in his breast: its sentimentality, and idolatry of nature, its anti-historic, idealistic, unreal, and revolutionary spirit (—the latter is only a form of the unreal). He enlisted history, natural science, antiquity, as well as Spinoza, and above all practical activity, in his service. He drew a host of very definite horizons around him; far from liberating himself from life, he plunged right into it; he did not give in; he took as much as he could on his own shoulders, and into his heart. That to which he aspired wastotality; he was opposed to the sundering of reason, sensuality, feeling and will (as preached with most repulsive scholasticism by Kant, the antipodes of Goethe); he disciplined himself into a harmonious whole, hecreatedhimself. Goethe in themidst of an age of unreal sentiment, was a convinced realist: he said yea to everything that was like him in this regard,—there was no greater event in his life than thatens realissimum, surnamed Napoleon. Goethe conceived a strong, highly-cultured man, skilful in all bodily accomplishments, able to keep himself in check, having a feeling of reverence for himself, and so constituted as to be able to risk the full enjoyment of naturalness in all its rich profusion and be strong enough for this freedom; a man of tolerance, not out of weakness but out of strength, because he knows how to turn to his own profit that which would ruin the mediocre nature; a man unto whom nothing is any longer forbidden, unless it be weakness either as a vice or as a virtue. Such a spirit,become free, appears in the middle of the universe with a feeling of cheerful and confident fatalism; he believes that only individual things are bad, and that as a whole the universe justifies and, affirms itself—He no longer denies.... But such a faith is the highest Of all faiths: I christened it with the name of Dionysus.

It might be said that, in a certain sense, the nineteenth century also strove after all that Goethe himself aspired to: catholicity in understanding, in approving; a certain reserve towards everything, daring realism, and a reverence for every fact. How is it that the total result of this is not a Goethe, but a state of chaos, a nihilistic groan, an inability to discover where one is, an instinct of fatigue whichin praxiis persistently driving Europeto hark back to the eighteenth century? (—For instance in the form of maudlin romanticism, altruism, hyper-sentimentality,pessimism in taste, and socialism in politics). Is not the nineteenth century, at least in its closing years, merely an accentuated, brutalised eighteenth century,—that is to say a century of decadence? And has not Goethe been—not alone for Germany, but also for the whole of Europe,—merely an episode, a beautiful “in vain”? But great men are misunderstood when they are regarded from the wretched standpoint of public utility. The fact that no advantage can be derived from them—this in itself may perhaps be peculiar to greatness.

Goethe is the last German whom I respect: he had understood three things as I understand them. We also agree as to the “cross.”[9]People often ask me why on earth I write inGerman:nowhere am I less read than in the Fatherland. But who knows whether I evendesireto be read at present?—To create things on which time may try its teeth in vain; to be concerned both in the form and the substance of my writing, about a certain degree of immortality—never have I been modest enough to demand less of myself. The aphorism, the sentence, in both of which I, as the first among Germans, am a master, are the forms of “eternity”; it is my ambition to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a whole book,—what everyone else doesnotsay in a whole book.

I have given mankind the deepest book it possesses, myZarathustra;before long I shall give it the most independent one.

[1]The German wordRauschas used by Nietzsche here, suggests a blend of our two English words “intoxication” and “elation.”—TR.

[2]An allusion to a verse in Luther’s hymn: “Lass fahren dahin...das Reich muss uns doch bleiben,” which Nietzsche applies to the German Empire.—TR.

[3]A disciple of Schopenhauer who blunted the sharpness of his master’s Pessimism and who watered it down for modern requirements.—TR.

[4]Quotation from the Libretto of Mozart’s “Magic Flute” Act I, Sc. 3.—TR.

[5]This alludes to Parsifal. See my note on p. 96, vol. i., “The Will to Power.”—TR.

[6]This is a playful adaptation of Max von Schenkendorfs poem “Freiheit” The proper line reads: “Freiheit die ich meine” (The freedom that I do mean).—TR.

[7]See “Memoirs of a House of the Dead,” by Dostoiewsky (translation by Marie von Thilo: “Buried Alive”).—TR.

[8]Clothilde de Veaux.—TR.

[9]See my note on p. 147 of Vol. I. of theWill to Power.—TR.

In conclusion I will just say a word concerning that world to which I have sought new means of access, to which I may perhaps have found a new passage—the ancient world. My taste, which is perhaps the reverse of tolerant, is very far from saying yea through and through even to this world: on the whole it is not over eager to sayYea,it would prefer to sayNay,and better still nothing whatever.... This is true of whole cultures; it is true of books,—it is also true of places and of landscapes. Truth to tell, the number of ancient books that count for something in my life is but small; and the most famous are not of that number. My sense of style, for the epigram as style, was awakened almost spontaneously upon my acquaintance with Sallust. I have not forgotten the astonishment of my respected teacher Corssen, when he was forced to give his worst Latin pupil the highest marks,—at one stroke I had learned all there was to learn. Condensed, severe, with as much substance as possible in the background, and with cold but roguish hostility towards all “beautiful words” and “beautiful feelings”—in these things I found my own particular bent. In my writings up to my “Zarathustra,” there will be found a very earnest ambition to attain to theRomanstyle, tothe “ære perennius” in style.—The same thing happened on my first acquaintance with Horace. Up to the present no poet has given me the same artistic raptures as those which from the first I received from an Horatian ode. In certain languages it would be absurd even to aspire to what is accomplished by this poet. This mosaic of words, in which every unit spreads its power to the left and to the right over the whole, by its sound, by its place in the sentence, and by its meaning, thisminimumin the compass and number of the signs, and themaximumof energy in the signs which is thereby achieved—all this is Roman, and, if you will believe me, noblepar excellence.By the side of this all the rest of poetry becomes something popular,—nothing more than senseless sentimental twaddle.

I am not indebted to the Greeks for anything like such strong impressions; and, to speak frankly, they cannot be to us what the Romans are. One cannotlearnfrom the Greeks—their style is too strange, it is also too fluid, to be imperative or to have the effect of a classic. Who would ever have learnt writing from a Greek! Who would ever have learned it without the Romans!... Do not let anyone suggest Plato to me. In regard to Plato I am a thorough sceptic, and have never been able to agree to the admiration of Plato theartist,which is traditional among scholars. And after all, in this matter, the most refined judges of taste in antiquity are on my side. In my opinion Plato bundles all the forms of style pell-mell together, in this respect he is oneof the first decadents of style: he has something similar on his conscience to that which the Cynics had who invented thesatura Menippea.For the Platonic dialogue—this revoltingly self-complacent and childish kind of dialectics—to exercise any charm over you, you must never have read any good French authors,—Fontenelle for instance. Plato is boring. In reality my distrust of Plato is fundamental. I find him so very much astray from all the deepest instincts of the Hellenes, so steeped in moral prejudices, so pre-existently Christian—the concept “good” is already the highest value with him,—that rather than use any other expression I would prefer to designate the whole phenomenon Plato with the hard word “superior bunkum,” or, if you would like it better, “idealism.” Humanity has had to pay dearly for this Athenian having gone to school among the Egyptians (—or among the Jews in Egypt?...) In the great fatality of Christianity, Plato is that double-faced fascination called the “ideal,” which made it possible for the more noble natures of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to tread thebridgewhich led to the “cross.” And what an amount of Plato is still to be found in the concept “church,” and in the construction, the system and the practice of the church!—My recreation, my predilection, my cure, after all Platonism, has always been Thucydides. Thucydides and perhaps Machiavelli’sprincipeare most closely related to me owing to the absolute determination which they show of refusing to deceive themselves and of seeing reason inreality,—not in “rationality,” and still less in “morality.” There is no more radical cure than Thucydides for the lamentablyrose-coloured idealisation of the Greeks which the “classically-cultured” stripling bears with him into life, as a reward for his public school training. His writings must be carefully studied line by line, and his unuttered thoughts must be read as distinctly as what he actually says. There are few thinkers so rich in unuttered thoughts. In him the culture “of the Sophists”—that is to say, the culture of realism, receives its most perfect expression: this inestimable movement in the midst of the moral and idealistic knavery of the Socratic Schools which was then breaking out in all directions. Greek philosophy is the decadence of the Greek instinct: Thucydides is the great summing up, the final manifestation of that strong, severe positivism which lay in the instincts of the ancient Hellene. After all, it is courage in the face of reality that distinguishes such natures as Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward in the face of reality—consequently he takes refuge in the ideal: Thucydides is master of himself,—consequently he is able to master life.

To rout up cases of “beautiful souls,” “golden means” and other perfections among the Greeks, to admire, say, their calm grandeur, their ideal attitude of mind, their exalted simplicity—from this “exalted simplicity,” which after all is a piece ofniaiserie allemande,I was preserved by the psychologist within me. I saw their strongest instinct, the Will to Power, I saw them quivering with the fierce violence of this instinct,—I saw all their institutions grow out of measures of security calculated to preserveeach member of their society from the innerexplosive materialthat lay in his neighbour’s breast. This enormous internal tension thus discharged itself in terrible and reckless hostility outside the state: the various states mutually tore each other to bits, in order that each individual state could remain at peace with itself. It was then necessary to be strong; for danger lay close at hand,—it lurked in ambush everywhere. The superb suppleness of their bodies, the daring realism and immorality which is peculiar to the Hellenes, was a necessity not an inherent quality. It was a result, it had not been there from the beginning. Even their festivals and their arts were but means in producing a feeling of superiority, and of showing it: they are measures of self-glorification; and in certain circumstances of making one’s self terrible.... Fancy judging the Greeks in the German style, from their philosophers; fancy using the suburban respectability of the Socratic schools as a key to what is fundamentally Hellenic!... The philosophers are of course the decadents of Hellas, the counter-movement directed against the old and noble taste(—against the agonal instinct, against thePolls,against the value of the race, against the authority of tradition), Socratic virtues were preached to the Greeks,becausethe Greeks had lost virtue: irritable, cowardly, unsteady, and all turned to play-actors, they had more than sufficient reason to submit to having morality preached to them. Not that it helped them in any way; but great words and attitudes are so becoming to decadents.

I was the first who, in order to understand the ancient, still rich and even superabundant Hellenic instinct, took that marvellous phenomenon, which bears the name of Dionysus, seriously: it can be explained only as a manifestation of excessive energy. Whoever had studied the Greeks, as that most profound of modern connoisseurs of their culture, Jakob Burckhardt of Bâle, had done, knew at once that something had been achieved by means of this interpretation. And in his “Cultur der Griechen” Burckhardt inserted a special chapter on the phenomenon in question. If you would like a glimpse of the other side, you have only to refer to the almost laughable poverty of instinct among German philologists when they approach the Dionysian question. The celebrated Lobeck, especially, who with the venerable assurance of a worm dried up between books, crawled into this world of mysterious states, succeeded inconvincing himself that he was scientific, whereas he was simply revoltingly superficial and childish,—Lobeck, with all the pomp of profound erudition, gave us to understand that, as a matter of fact, there was nothing at all in all these curiosities. Truth to tell, the priests may well have communicated not a few things of value to the participators in such orgies; for instance, the fact that wine provokes desire, that man in certain circumstances lives on fruit, that plants bloom in the spring and fade in the autumn. As regards the astounding wealth of rites, symbols and myths which take their origin in the orgy, and with which the world of antiquityis literally smothered, Lobeck finds that it prompts him to a feat of even greater ingenuity than the foregoing phenomenon did. “The Greeks,” he says, (Aglaophamus,I. p. 672), “when they had nothing better to do, laughed, sprang and romped about, or, inasmuch as men also like a change at times, they would sit down, weep and bewail their lot. Others then came up who tried to discover some reason for this strange behaviour; and thus, as an explanation of these habits, there arose an incalculable number of festivals, legends, and myths. On the other hand it was believed that thefarcical performanceswhich then perchance began to take place on festival days, necessarily formed part of the celebrations, and they were retained as an indispensable part of the ritual.”—This is contemptible nonsense, and no one will take a man like Lobeck seriously for a moment We are very differently affected when we examine the notion “Hellenic,” as Winckelmann and Goethe conceived it, and find it incompatible with that element out of which Dionysian art springs—I speak of orgiasm. In reality I do not doubt that Goethe would have completely excluded any such thing from the potentialities of the Greek soul.Consequently Goethe did not understand the Greeks.For it is only in the Dionysian mysteries, in the psychology of the Dionysian state, that thefundamental factof the Hellenic instinct—its “will to life”—is expressed. What did the Hellene secure himself with these mysteries?Eternallife, the eternal recurrence of life; the future promised and hallowed in the past; the triumphant Yea to life despite death and change; real life conceived as the collective prolongation oflife through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality. To the Greeks, the symbol of sex was the most venerated of symbols, the really deep significance of all the piety of antiquity. All the details of the act of procreation, pregnancy and birth gave rise to the loftiest and most solemn feelings. In the doctrine of mysteries,painwas pronounced holy: the “pains of childbirth” sanctify pain in general,—all becoming and all growth, everything that guarantees the futureinvolvespain.... In order that there may be eternal joy in creating, in order that the will to life may say Yea to itself in all eternity, the “pains of childbirth” must also be eternal. All this is what the word Dionysus signifies: I know of no higher symbolism than this Greek symbolism, this symbolism of the Dionysian phenomenon. In it the profoundest instinct of life, the instinct that guarantees the future of life and life eternal, is understood religiously,—the road to life itself, procreation, is pronouncedholy,... It was only Christianity which, with its fundamental resentment against life, made something impure out of sexuality: it flungfilthat the very basis, the very first condition of our life.

The psychology of orgiasm conceived as the feeling of a superabundance of vitality and strength, within the scope of which even painacts as a stimulus,gave me the key to the concepttragicfeeling, which has been misunderstood not only by Aristotle, but also even more by our pessimists. Tragedy is so far from proving anything in regard to the pessimism ofthe Greeks, as Schopenhauer maintains, that it ought rather to be considered as the categorical repudiation andcondemnationthereof. The saying of Yea to life, including even its most strange and most terrible problems, the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibleness in thesacrificeof its highest types—this is what I called Dionysian, this is what I divined as the bridge leading to the psychology of thetragicpoet. Not in order to escape from terror and pity, not to purify one’s self of a dangerous passion by discharging it with vehemence—this is how Aristotle understood it—but to be far beyond terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of Becoming itself—that lust which also involves thelust of destruction.And with this I once more come into touch with the spot from which I once set out—-the “Birth of Tragedy” was my first transvaluation of all values: with this I again take my stand upon the soil from out of which my will and my capacity spring—I, the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus,—I, the prophet of eternal recurrence.

“Why so hard!”—said the diamond once unto the charcoal; “are we then not next of kin?”

“Why so soft? O my brethren; this is my question to you. For are ye not—my brothers?

“Why so soft, so servile and yielding? Why are your hearts so fond of denial and self-denial? How is it that so little fate looketh out from your eyes?

“And if ye will not be men of fate and inexorable, how can ye hope one day to conquer with me?

“And if your hardness will not sparkle, cut and divide, how can ye hope one day to create with me?

“For all creators are hard. And it must seem to you blessed to stamp your hand upon millenniums as upon wax,—

—Blessed to write upon the will of millenniums as upon brass,—harder than brass, nobler than brass.—Hard through and through is only the noblest.

This new table of values, O my brethren, I set over your heads: Become hard.”

—“Thus Spake Zarathustra,”

III., 29.

An Attempted Criticism of Christianity

This book belongs to the very few. Maybe not one of them is yet alive; unless he be of those who understand my Zarathustra. HowcanI confound myself with those who to-day already find a hearing?—Only the day after to-morrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.

I am only too well aware of the conditions under which a man understands me, and thennecessarilyunderstands. He must be intellectually upright to the point of hardness, in order even to endure my seriousness and my passion. He must be used to living on mountain-tops,—and to feeling the wretched gabble of politics and national egotismbeneathhim. He must have become indifferent; he must never inquire whether truth is profitable or whether it may prove fatal.... Possessing from strength a predilection for questions for which no one has enough courage nowadays; the courage for theforbidden;his predestination must be the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for the most remote things. A new conscience for truths which hitherto have remained dumb. And the will to economy on a large scale: to husband his strength and his enthusiasm.... He must honour himself, he must love himself; he must be absolutely free with regardto himself.... Very well then! Such men alone are my readers, my proper readers, my preordained readers: of what account are the rest?—the rest are simply—humanity.—One must be superior to humanity in power, in loftiness of soul,—in contempt.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.

Let us look each other in the face. We are hyperboreans,—we know well enough how far outside the crowd we stand. “Thou wilt find the way to the Hyperboreans neither by land nor by water”: Pindar already knew this much about us. Beyond the north, the ice, and death—our life, our happiness....We discovered happiness; we know the way; we found the way out of thousands of years of labyrinth. Whoelsewould have found it?—Not the modern man, surely?—“I do not know where I am or what I am to do; I am everything that knows not where it is or what to do,”—sighs the modern man. We were made quite ill bythismodernity,—with its indolent peace, its cowardly compromise, and the whole of the virtuous filth of its Yea and Nay. This tolerance andlargeur de cœurwhich “forgives” everything because it “understands” everything, is a Sirocco for us. We prefer to live amid ice than to be breathed upon by modern virtues and other southerly winds!... We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor others: but we were very far from knowing whither to direct our bravery. We were becoming gloomy; people called us fatalists.Ourfate—it was the abundance, the tensionand the storing up of power. We thirsted for thunderbolts and great deeds; we kept at the most respectful distance from the joy of the weakling, from “resignation.” ... Thunder was in our air, that part of nature which we are, became overcast—for we had no direction.The formula of our happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal.

What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad?—All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness?—The feeling that power isincreasing,—that resistance has been overcome.

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency[1](virtue in the Renaissance sense,virtu,free from all moralic acid). The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our humanity. And they ought even to be helped to perish.

What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy with all the botched and the weak—Christianity.

The problem I set in this work is not what will replace mankind in the order of living being! (—Man is anend—); but, what type of man must bereared,must bewilled,as having the higher value, as being the most worthy of life and the surest guarantee of the future.

This more valuable type has appeared often enough already: but as a happy accident, as an exception, never aswilled.He has rather been precisely the most feared; hitherto he has been almost the terrible in itself;—and from out the very fear he provoked there arose the will to rear the type which has how been reared,attained:the domestic animal, the gregarious animal, the sick animal man,—the Christian.

Mankind doesnotrepresent a development towards a better, stronger or higher type, in the sense in which this is supposed to occur to-day. “Progress” is merely a modern idea—that is to say, a false idea.[2]The modern European is still far below the European of the Renaissance in value. The process of evolution does not by any means imply elevation, enhancement and increasing strength.

On the other hand isolated and individual cases are continually succeeding in different places on earth, as the outcome of the most different cultures, and in these ahigher typecertainly manifests itself: something which by the side of mankind in general, represents a kind of superman. Such lucky strokes of great success have always been possible and will perhaps always be possible. And even whole races, tribes and nations may in certain circumstances represent suchlucky strokes.

We must not deck out and adorn Christianity: it has waged a deadly war upon thishighertype of man, it has set a ban upon all the fundamental instincts of this type, and has distilled evil and the devil himself out of these instincts:—the strong man as the typical pariah, the villain. Christianity has sided with everything weak, low, and botched; it has made an ideal out ofantagonismtowards all the self-preservative instincts of strong life: it has corrupted even the reason of the strongest intellects, by teaching that the highest values of intellectuality are sinful, misleading and full of temptations. The most lamentable example of this was the corruption of Pascal, who believed in the perversion of his reason through original sin, whereas it had only been perverted by his Christianity.

A painful and ghastly spectacle has just risen before my eyes. I tore down the curtain which concealed mankind’scorruption.This word in my mouth is at least secure from the suspicion that it contains a moral charge against mankind. It is—I would fain emphasise this again—free from moralic acid: to such an extent is this so, that I am most thoroughly conscious of the corruption in question precisely in those quarters in which hitherto people have aspired with most determination to “virtue” and to “godliness.” As you have already surmised, I understand corruption in the sense ofdecadence.What I maintain is this, that all the values uponwhich mankind builds its highest hopes and desires aredecadentvalues.

I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it selects andprefersthat which is detrimental to it. A history of the “higher feelings,” of “human ideals”—and it is not impossible that I shall have to write it—would almost explain why man is so corrupt. Life itself, to my mind, is nothing more nor less than the instinct of growth, of permanence, of accumulating forces, of power: where the will to power is lacking, degeneration sets in. My contention is that all the highest values of mankindlackthis will,—that the values of decline and ofnihilismare exercising the sovereign power under the cover of the holiest names.

Christianity is called the religion ofpity.—Pity is opposed to the tonic passions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life: its action is depressing. A man loses power when he pities. By means of pity the drain on strength which suffering itself already introduces into the world is multiplied a thousandfold. Through pity, suffering itself becomes infectious; in certain circumstances it may lead to a total loss of life and vital energy, which is absurdly put of proportion to the magnitude of the cause (—the case of the death of the Nazarene). This is the first standpoint; but there is a still more important one. Supposing one measures pity according to the value of the reactions it usually stimulates, its danger to life appears in a much more telling light On the whole, pity thwarts the lawof development which is the law of selection. It preserves that which is ripe for death, it fights in favour of the disinherited and the condemned of life; thanks to the multitude of abortions of all kinds which it maintains in life, it lends life itself a sombre and questionable aspect. People have dared to call pity a virtue (—in everynobleculture it is considered as a weakness—); people went still further, they exalted it tothevirtue, the root and origin of all virtues,—but, of course, what must never be forgotten is the fact that this was done from the standpoint of a philosophy which was nihilistic, and on whose shield the deviceThe Denial of Lifewas inscribed. Schopenhauer was right in this respect: by means of pity, life is denied and mademore worthy of denial,—pity is thepraxisof Nihilism. I repeat, this depressing and infectious instinct thwarts those instincts which aim at the preservation and enhancement of the value life: bymultiplyingmisery quite as much as by preserving all that is miserable, it is the principal agent in promoting decadence,—pity exhorts people to nothing, tononentity!But they do not say “nonentity” they say “Beyond,” or “God,” or “the true life”; or Nirvana, or Salvation, or Blessedness, instead. This innocent rhetoric, which belongs to the realm of the religio-moral idiosyncrasy, immediately appears to bevery much less innocentif one realises what the tendency is which here tries to drape itself in the mantle of sublime expressions—the tendency of hostility to life. Schopenhauer was hostile to life: that is why he elevated pity to a virtue.... Aristotle, as you know, recognised in pity a morbid and dangerousstate, of which it was wise to rid one’s self from time to time by a purgative: he regarded tragedy as a purgative. For the sake of the instinct of life, it would certainly seem necessary to find some means of lancing any such morbid and dangerous accumulation of pity, as that which possessed Schopenhauer (and unfortunately the whole of our literary and artistic decadence as well, from St Petersburg to Paris, from Tolstoi to Wagner), if only to make itburst....Nothing is more unhealthy in the midst of our unhealthy modernity, than Christian pity. To be doctorshere,to be inexorablehere,to wield the knife effectivelyhere,—all this is our business, all this isourkind of love to our fellows, this is what makesusphilosophers, us hyperboreans!—

It is necessary to state whom we regard as our antithesis:—the theologians, and all those who have the blood of theologians in their veins—the whole of our philosophy.... A man must have had his very nose upon this fatality, or better still he must have experienced it in his own soul; he must almost have perished through it, in order to be unable to treat this matter lightly (—the free-spiritedness of our friends the naturalists and physiologists is, in my opinion, ajoke,—what they lack in these questions is passion, what they lack is having suffered from these questions—). This poisoning extends much further than people think: I unearthed the “arrogant” instinct of the theologian, wherever nowadays people feel themselves idealists,—wherever, thanks to superior antecedents, they claim the right to rise above reality and to regard it with suspicion.... Like the priest the idealist has every grandiloquent concept in his hand (—and not only in his hand!), he wields them all with kindly contempt against the “understanding,” the “senses,” “honours,” “decent living,” “science”; he regards such things asbeneathhim, as detrimental and seductive forces, upon the face of which, “the Spirit” moves in pure absoluteness:—as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a wordholiness,had not done incalculably more harm to life hitherto, than any sort of horror and vice.... Pure spirit is pure falsehood.... As long as the priest, theprofessionaldenier, calumniator and poisoner of life, is considered as thehighestkind of man, there can be no answer to the question, whatistruth? Truth has already been turned topsy-turvy, when the conscious advocate of nonentity and of denial passes as the representative of “truth.”

It is upon this theological instinct that I wage war. I find traces of it everywhere. Whoever has the blood of theologians in his veins, stands from the start in a false and dishonest position to all things. The pathos which grows out of this state, is calledFaith:that is to say, to shut one’s eyes once and for all, in order not to suffer at the sight of incurable falsity. People convert this faulty view of all things into a moral, a virtue, a thing of holiness. They endow their distorted vision with a good conscience,—they claim that nootherpoint ofview is any longer of value, once theirs has been made sacrosanct with the names “God,” “Salvation,” “Eternity.” I unearthed the instinct of the theologian everywhere: it is the most universal, and actually the most subterranean form of falsity on earth. That which a theologian considers true,mustof necessity be false: this furnishes almost the criterion of truth. It is his most profound self-preservative instinct which forbids reality ever to attain to honour in any way, or even to raise its voice. Whithersoever the influence of the theologian extends,valuationsare topsy-turvy, and the concepts “true” and “false” have necessarily changed places: that which is most deleterious to life, is here called “true,” that which enhances it, elevates it, says Yea to it, justifies it and renders it triumphant, is called “false.” ... If it should happen that theologians,viathe “conscience” either of princes or of the people, stretch out their hand for power, let us not be in any doubt as to what results therefrom each time, namely:—the will to the end, thenihilisticwill to power....

Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say, that philosophy is ruined by the blood of theologians. The Protestant minister is the grand-father of German philosophy, Protestantism itself is the latter’speccatum originale.Definition of Protestantism: the partial paralysis of Christianity—and of reason.... One needs only to pronounce the words “Tübingen Seminary,” in order to understand what German philosophy really is at bottom,theologyin disguise.... The Swabians are the best liars in Germany, they lie innocently.... Whence came all the rejoicing with which the appearance of Kant was greeted by the scholastic world of Germany, three-quarters of which consist of clergymen’s and schoolmasters’ sons? Whence came the German conviction, which finds an echo even now, that Kant inaugurated a change for thebetter?The theologian’s instinct in the German scholar divined what had once again been made possible.... A back-staircase leading into the old ideal was discovered, the concept “true world,” the concept morality as theessenceof the world (—those two most vicious errors that have ever existed!), were, thanks to a subtle and wily scepticism, once again, if not demonstrable, at least no longerrefutable....Reason, theprerogativeof reason, does not extend so far.... Out of reality they had made “appearance”; and an absolutely false world—that of being—had been declared to be reality. Kant’s success is merely a theologian’s success. Like Luther, and like Leibniz, Kant was one brake the more upon the already squeaky wheel of German uprightness.

One word more against Kant as amoralist.A virtuemustbeourinvention, our most personal defence and need: in every other sense it is merely a danger. That which does not constitute a condition of our life, is merely harmful to it: to possess a virtue merely because one happens to respect the concept “virtue,” as Kant would have us do, is pernicious. “Virtue,” “Duty,” “Goodness in itself,”goodness stamped with the character of impersonality and universal validity—these things are mere mental hallucinations, in which decline the final devitalisation of life and Königsbergian Chinadom find expression. The most fundamental laws of preservation and growth, demand precisely the reverse, namely:—that each should discoverhisown virtue, his own Categorical Imperative. A nation goes to the dogs when it confounds its concept of duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing is more profoundly, more thoroughly pernicious, than every impersonal feeling of duty, than every sacrifice to the Moloch of abstraction.—Fancy no one’s having thought Kant’s Categorical Imperativedangerous to life!... The instinct of the theologist alone took it under its wing!—An action stimulated by the instinct of life, is proved to be a proper action by the happiness that accompanies it: and that nihilist with the bowels of a Christian dogmatist regarded happiness as anobjection .... What is there that destroys a man more speedily than to work, think, feel, as an automaton of “duty,” without internal promptings, without a profound personal predilection, without joy? This is the recipepar excellenceof decadence and even of idiocy.... Kant became an idiot—And he was the contemporary of Goethe! This fatal spider was regarded astheGerman philosopher,—is still regarded as such!... I refrain from saying what I think of the Germans.... Did Kant not see in the French Revolution the transition of the State from the inorganic to theorganicform? Did he not ask himself whether there was a single event on record which could be explainedotherwise than as a moral faculty of mankind; so that by means of it, “mankind’s tendency towards good,” might beprovedonce and for all? Kant’s reply: “that is the Revolution.” Instinct at fault in anything and everything, hostility to nature as an instinct, German decadence made into philosophy—that is Kant!

Except for a few sceptics, the respectable type in the history of philosophy, the rest do not know the very first pre-requisite of intellectual uprightness. They all behave like females, do these great enthusiasts and animal prodigies,—they regard “beautiful feelings” themselves as arguments, the “heaving breast” as the bellows of divinity, and conviction as thecriterionof truth. In the end, even Kant, with “Teutonic” innocence, tried to dress this lack of intellectual conscience up in a scientific garb by means of the concept “practical reason.” He deliberately invented a kind of reason which at times would allow one to dispense with reason, that is to say when “morality,” when the sublime command “thou shalt,” makes itself heard. When one remembers that in almost all nations the philosopher is only a further development of the priestly type, this heirloom of priesthood, thisfraud towards one’s self,no longer surprises one. When a man has a holy life-task, as for instance to improve, save, or deliver mankind, when a man bears God in his breast, and is the mouthpiece of imperatives from another world,—with such a mission he stands beyond the pale of all merely reasonable valuations. He is even sanctified by such a taste,and is already the type of a higher order! What does a priest care about science! He stands too high for that!—And until now the priest hasruled!—He it was who determined the concept “true and false.”

Do not let us undervalue the fact that weourselves,we free spirits, are already a “transvaluation of all values,” an incarnate declaration of war against all the old concepts “true” and “untrue” and of a triumph over them. The most valuable standpoints are always the last to be found: but the most valuable standpoints are the methods. AH the methods and the first principles of our modern scientific procedure, had for years to encounter the profoundest contempt: association with them meant exclusion from the society of decent people—one was regarded as an “enemy of God,” as a scoffer at truth and as “one possessed.” With one’s scientific nature, one belonged to the Chandala. We have had the whole feeling of mankind against us; hitherto their notion of that which ought to be truth, of that which ought to serve the purpose of truth: every “thou shalt,” has been directed against us.... Our objects, our practices, our calm, cautious distrustful manner—everything about us seemed to them absolutely despicable and beneath contempt After all, it might be asked with some justice, whether the thing which kept mankind blindfold so long, were not an æsthetic taste: what they demanded of truth was apicturesqueeffect, and from the man of science what they expected was that he should make a forcible appeal to theirsenses. It was ourmodestywhich ran counter to their taste so long ... And oh! how well they guessed this, did these divine turkey-cocks!—

We have altered our standpoint. In every respect we have become more modest We no longer derive man from the “spirit,” and from the “godhead”; we have thrust him back among the beasts. We regard him as the strongest animal, because he is the craftiest: one of the results thereof is his intellectuality. On the other hand we guard against the vain pretension, which even here would fain assert itself: that man is the greatarrière penséeof organic evolution! He is by no means the crown of creation, beside him, every other creature stands at the same stage of perfection.... And even in asserting this we go a little too far; for, relatively speaking, man is the most botched and diseased of animals, and he has wandered furthest from his instincts. Be all this as it may, he is certainly the mostinteresting!As regards animals, Descartes was the first, with really admirable daring, to venture the thought that the beast wasmachina,and the whole of our physiology is endeavouring to prove this proposition. Moreover, logically we do not set man apart, as Descartes did: the extent to which man is understood to-day goes only so far as he has been understood mechanistically. Formerly man was given “free will,” as his dowry from a higher sphere; nowadays we have robbed him even of will, in view of the fact that no such faculty is any longer known. The only purpose served by the old word“will,” is to designate a result, a sort of individual reaction which necessarily follows upon a host of partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli:—the will no longer “effects” or “moves” anything.... Formerly people thought that man’s consciousness, his “spirit,” was a proof of his lofty origin, of his divinity. With the idea of perfecting man, he was conjured to draw his senses inside himself, after the manner of the tortoise, to cut off all relations with terrestrial things, and to divest himself of his mortal shell. Then the most important thing about him, the “pure spirit,” would remain over. Even concerning these things we have improved our standpoint Consciousness, “spirit,” now seems to us rather a symptom of relative imperfection in the organism, as an experiment, a groping, a misapprehension, an affliction which absorbs an unnecessary quantity of nervous energy. We deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as it is done consciously. “Pure spirit” is a piece of “pure stupidity”: if we discount the nervous system, the senses and the “mortal shell,” we have miscalculated—that it is all!...

In Christianity neither morality nor religion comes in touch at all with reality. Nothing but imaginarycauses(God, the soul, the ego, spirit, free will—or even non-free will); nothing but imaginaryeffects(sin, salvation, grace, punishment, forgiveness of sins). Imaginary beings are supposed to have intercourse (God, spirits, souls); imaginary Natural History (anthropocentric: total lack of the notion “natural causes”); an imaginarypsychology(nothingbut misunderstandings of self, interpretations of pleasant or unpleasant general feelings; for instance of the states of thenervus sympathicus,with the help of the sign language of a religio-moral idiosyncrasy,—repentance, pangs of conscience, the temptation of the devil, the presence of God); an imaginary teleology (the Kingdom of God, the Last Judgment, Everlasting Life).—This purely fictitious world distinguishes itself very unfavourably from the world of dreams: the latterreflectsreality, whereas the former falsifies, depreciates and denies it Once the concept “nature” was taken to mean the opposite of the concept God, the word “natural” had to acquire the meaning of abominable,—the whole of that fictitious world takes its root in the hatred of nature (—reality!—), it is the expression of profound discomfiture in the presence of reality....But this explains everything.What is the only kind of man who has reasons for wriggling out of reality by lies? The man who suffers from reality. But in order to suffer from reality one must be a bungled portion of it. The preponderance of pain over pleasure is thecauseof that fictitious morality and religion: but any such preponderance furnishes the formula for decadence.

A criticism of the Christian concept of God inevitably leads to the same conclusion.—A nation that still believes in itself, also has its own God. In him it honours the conditions which enable it to remain uppermost,—that is to say, its virtues. It projects its joy over itself, its feeling of power, into a being, towhom it can be thankful for such things. He who is rich, will give of his riches: a proud people requires a God, unto whom it cansacrificethings.... Religion, when restricted to these principles, is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence; for this he must have a God.—Such a God must be able to benefit and to injure him, he must be able to act the friend and the foe. He must be esteemed for his good as well as for his evil qualities. The monstrous castration of a God by making him a God only of goodness, would lie beyond the pale of the desires of such a community. The evil God is just as urgently needed as the good God: for a people in such a form of society certainly does not owe its existence to toleration and humaneness.... What would be the good of a God who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn, craft, and violence?—who had perhaps never experienced the rapturousardeursof victory and of annihilation? No one would understand such a God: why should one possess him?—Of course, when a people is on the road to ruin; when it feels its belief in a future, its hope of freedom vanishing for ever; when it becomes conscious of submission as the most useful quality, and of the virtues of the submissive as self-preservative measures, then its God must also modify himself. He then becomes a tremulous and unassuming sneak; he counsels “peace of the soul,” the cessation of all hatred, leniency and “love” even towards friend and foe. He is for ever moralising, he crawls into the heart of every private virtue, becomes a God for everybody, he retires from active service and becomes a Cosmopolitan.... Formerly herepresented a people, the strength of a people, everything aggressive and desirous of power lying concealed in the heart of a nation: now he is merely the good God.... In very truth Gods have no other alternative, they areeitherthe Will to Power—in which case they are always the Gods of whole nations,—or, on the other hand, the incapacity for power—in which case they necessarily become good.

Wherever the Will to Power, no matter in what form, begins to decline, a physiological retrogression, decadence, always supervenes. The godhead ofdecadence,shorn of its masculine virtues and passions is perforce converted into the God of the physiologically degraded, of the weak. Of course they do not call themselves the weak, they call themselves “the good.” ... No hint will be necessary to help you to understand at what moment in history the dualistic fiction of a good and an evil God first became possible. With the same instinct by which the subjugated reduce their God to “Goodness in itself,” they also cancel the good qualities from their conqueror’s God; they avenge themselves on their masters by diabolising the latter’s God.—Thegood Godand the devil as well:—both the abortions of decadence.—How is it possible that we are still so indulgent towards the simplicity of Christian theologians to-day, as to declare with them that the evolution of the concept God, from the “God of Israel,” the God of a people, to the Christian God, the quintessence of all goodness, marks astep forward?—But even Renan does this. As if Renanhad a right to simplicity! Why the very contrary stares one in the face. When the pre-requisites ofascendinglife, when everything strong, plucky, masterful and proud has been eliminated from the concept of God, and step by step he has sunk down to the symbol of a staff for the weary, of a last straw for all those who are drowning; when he becomes the pauper’s God, the sinner’s God, the sick man’s Godpar excellence,and the attribute “Saviour,” “Redeemer,” remainsoveras the one essential attribute of divinity: what does such a metamorphosis, such an abasement of the godhead imply?—Undoubtedly, “the kingdom of God” has thus become larger. Formerly all he had was his people, his “chosen” people. Since then he has gone travelling over foreign lands, just as his people have done; since then he has never rested anywhere: until one day he felt at home everywhere, the Great Cosmopolitan,—until he got the “greatest number,” and half the world on his side. But the God of the “greatest number,” the democrat among gods, did not become a proud heathen god notwithstanding: he remained a Jew, he remained the God of the back streets, the God of all dark corners and hovels, of all the unwholesome quarters of the world!... His universal empire is now as ever a netherworld empire, an infirmary, a subterranean empire, a ghetto-empire.... And he himself is so pale, so weak, so decadent ... Even the palest of the pale were able to master him—our friends the metaphysicians, those albinos of thought. They spun their webs around him so long that ultimately he was hypnotised by their movements and himselfbecame a spider, a metaphysician. Thenceforward he once more began spinning the world out of his inner being—sub specie Spinozæ,—thenceforward he transfigured himself into something ever thinner and ever more anæmic, became “ideal,” became “pure spirit,” became“absotutum”and “thing-in-itself.” ...The decline and fall of a god:God became the “thing-in-itself.”

The Christian concept of God—God as the deity of the sick, God as a spider, God as spirit—is one of the most corrupt concepts of God that has ever been attained on earth. Maybe it represents the low-water mark in the evolutionary ebb of the godlike type God degenerated into thecontradiction of life,instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yea! With God war is declared on life, nature, and the will to life! God is the formula for every calumny of this world and for every lie concerning a beyond! In God, nonentity is deified, and the will to nonentity is declared holy!

The fact that the strong races of Northern Europe did not repudiate the Christian God, certainly does not do any credit to their religious power, not to speak of their taste They ought to have been able successfully to cope with such a morbid and decrepit offshoot of decadence. And a curse lies on their heads; because they were unable to cope with him: they made illness, decrepitude and contradiction a part of all their instincts,—since then they have notcreatedany other God! Two thousand years have passed and not a single new God! But still there exists, and as if by right,—like anultimumandmaximumof god-creating power,—thecreator spiritusin man, this miserable God of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid creature of decay, nonentity, concept and contradiction, in which all the instincts of decadence, all the cowardices and languors of the soul find their sanction!——

With my condemnation of Christianity I should not like to have done an injustice to a religion which is related to it and the number of whose followers is even greater; I refer to Buddhism. As nihilistic religions, they are akin,—they are religions of decadence,—while each is separated from the other in the most extraordinary fashion. For being able to compare them at all, the critic of Christianity is profoundly grateful to Indian scholars.—Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity,—it is part of its constitutional heritage to be able to face problems objectively and coolly, it is the outcome of centuries of lasting philosophical activity. The concept “God” was already exploded when it appeared. Buddhism is the only reallypositivereligion to be found in history, even in its epistemology (which is strict phenomenalism)—it no longer speaks of the “struggle withsin” but fully recognising the true nature of reality it speaks of the “struggle withpain.” It already has—and this distinguishes it fundamentally from Christianity,—the self-deception of moral concepts beneath it,—touse my own phraseology, it standsBeyond Good and Evil.The two physiological facts upon which it rests and upon which it bestows its attention are: in the first place excessive irritability of feeling, which manifests itself as a refined susceptibility to pain,and alsoas super-spiritualisation, an all-too-lengthy sojourn amid concepts and logical procedures, under the influence of which the personal instinct has suffered in favour of the “impersonal.” (—Both of these states will be known to a few of my readers, the objective ones, who, like myself, will know them from experience.) Thanks to these physiological conditions, a state of depression set in, which Buddha sought to combat by means of hygiene. Against it, he prescribes life in the open, a life of travel; moderation and careful choice in food; caution in regard to all intoxicating liquor, as also in regard to all the passions which tend to create bile and to heat the blood; and he deprecates care either on one’s own or on other people’s account He recommends ideas that bring one either peace or good cheer,—he invents means whereby the habit of contrary ideas may be lost He understands goodness—being good—as promoting health.Prayeris out of the question, as is alsoasceticism;there is neither a Categorical Imperative nor any discipline whatsoever, even within the walls of a monastery (—it is always possible to leave it if one wants to). All these things would have been only a means of accentuating the excessive irritability already referred to. Precisely on this account he does not exhort his followers to wage war upon those who do not share their views; nothing is more abhorredin his doctrine than the feeling of revenge, of aversion, and of resentment (—“not through hostility doth hostility end”: the touching refrain of the whole of Buddhism....) And in this he was right; for it is precisely these passions which are thoroughly unhealthy in view of the principal dietetic object The mental fatigue which he finds already existent and which expresses itself in excessive “objectivity” (i.e., the enfeeblement of the individual’s interest—loss of ballast and of “egoism”), he combats by leading the spiritual interests as well imperatively back to the individual In Buddha’s doctrine egoism is a duty: the thing which is above all necessary,i.e.,“how canst thou be rid of suffering” regulates and defines the whole of the spiritual diet (—let anyone but think of that Athenian who also declared war upon pure “scientificality,” Socrates, who made a morality out of personal egoism even in the realm of problems).

The pre-requisites for Buddhism are a very mild climate, great gentleness and liberality in the customs of a people andnomilitarism. The movement must also originate among the higher and even learned classes. Cheerfulness, peace and absence of desire, are the highest of inspirations, and they arerealised.Buddhism is not a religion in which perfection is merely aspired to: perfection is the normal case. In Christianity all the instincts of the subjugated and oppressed come to the fore: it is the lowest classes who seek their salvation in this religion. Here the pastime, the manner ofkilling time is to practise the casuistry of sin, self-criticism, and conscience inquisition. Here the ecstasy in the presence of apowerful being,called “god,” is constantly maintained by means of prayer; while the highest thing is regarded as unattainable, as a gift, as an act of “grace” Here plain dealing is also entirely lacking: concealment and the darkened room are Christian. Here the body is despised, hygiene is repudiated as sensual; the church repudiates even cleanliness (—the first Christian measure after the banishment of the Moors was the closing of the public baths, of which Cordova alone possessed 270). A certain spirit of cruelty towards one’s self and others is also Christian: hatred of all those who do not share one’s views; the will to persecute Sombre and exciting ideas are in the foreground; the most coveted states and those which are endowed with the finest names, are really epileptic in their nature; diet is selected in such a way as to favour morbid symptoms and to over-excite the nerves. Christian, too, is the mortal hatred of the earth’s rulers,—the “noble,”—and at the same time a sort of concealed and secret competition with them (the subjugated leave the “body” to their master—all they want is the “soul”). Christian is the hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage, freedom, intellectuallibertinage;Christian is the hatred of thesenses,of the joys of the senses, of joy in general.

When Christianity departed from its native soil, which consisted of the lowest classes, thesubmergedmassesof the ancient world, and set forth in quest of power among barbaric nations, it no longer met with exhausted men but inwardly savage and self-lacerating men—the strong but bungled men. Here, dissatisfaction with one’s self, suffering through one’s self, is not as in the case of Buddhism, excessive irritability and susceptibility to pain, but rather, conversely, it is an inordinate desire for inflicting pain, for a discharge of the inner tension in hostile deeds and ideas. Christianity was in need ofbarbaricideas and values, in order to be able to master barbarians: such are for instance, the sacrifice of the first-born, the drinking of blood at communion, the contempt of the intellect and of culture; torture in all its forms, sensual and non-sensual; the great pomp of the cult Buddhism is a religion forsenilemen, for races which have become kind, gentle, and over-spiritual, and which feel pain too easily (—Europe is not nearly ripe for it yet—); it calls them back to peace and cheerfulness, to a regimen for the intellect, to a certain hardening of the body. Christianity aims at masteringbeasts of prey; its expedient is to make themill,—to render feeble is the Christian recipe for taming, for “civilisation.” Buddhism is a religion for the close and exhaustion of civilisation; Christianity does not even find civilisation at hand when it appears, in certain circumstances it lays the foundation of civilisation.

Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times colder, more truthful, more objective. It no longer requiresto justify pain and its susceptibility to suffering by the interpretation of sin,—it simply says what it thinks, “I suffer.” To the barbarian, on the other hand, suffering in itself is not a respectable thing: in order to acknowledge to himself that he suffers, what he requires, in the first place, is an explanation (his instinct directs him more readily to deny his suffering, or to endure it in silence). In his case, the word “devil” was a blessing: man had an almighty and terrible enemy,—he had no reason to be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.—

At bottom there are in Christianity one or two subtleties which belong to the Orient In the first place it knows that it is a matter of indifference whether a thing be true or not; but that it is of the highest importance that it should be believed to be true. Truth and the belief that something is true: two totally separate worlds of interest, almostopposite worlds,the road to the one and the road to the other lie absolutely apart To be initiated into this fact almost constitutes one a sage in the Orient: the Brahmins understood it thus, so did Plato, and so does every disciple of esoteric wisdom. If for example it give anyone pleasure to believe himself delivered from sin, it isnota necessary prerequisite thereto that he should be sinful, but only that he shouldfeelsinful. If, however,faithis above all necessary, then reason, knowledge, and scientific research must be brought into evil repute: the road to truth becomes theforbiddenroad.—Stronghopeis a much greater stimulant of life than any single realised joy could be. Sufferers must be sustainedby a hope which no actuality can contradict,—and which cannot ever be realised: the hope of another world. (Precisely on account of this power that hope has of making the unhappy linger on, the Greeks regarded it as the evil of evils, as the mostmischievousevil: it remained behind in Pandora’s box.) In order thatlovemay be possible, God must be a person. In order that the lowest instincts may also make their voices heard God must be young. For the ardour of the women a beautiful saint, and for the ardour of the men a Virgin Mary has to be pressed into the foreground. All this on condition that Christianity wishes to rule over a certain soil, on which Aphrodisiac or Adonis cults had already determined thenotionof a cult. To insist uponchastityonly intensifies the vehemence and profundity of the religious instinct—it makes the cult warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful.—Love is the state in which man sees things most widely different from what they are. The force of illusion reaches its zenith here, as likewise the sweetening and transfiguring power. When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything. The thing was to discover a religion in which it was possible to love: by this means the worst in life is overcome—it is no longer even seen.—So much for three Christian virtues Faith, Hope, and Charity: I call them the three Christianprecautionary measures.—Buddhism is too full of aged wisdom, too positivistic to be shrewd in this way.

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