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The Will to Power. Friedrich Nietzsche
Читать онлайн.Название The Will to Power
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isbn 4064066452223
Автор произведения Friedrich Nietzsche
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177. Believers are aware that they owe an infinite amount to Christianity, and therefore conclude that its Founder must have been a man of the first rank. . . . This conclusion is false, but it is typical of the reverents. Regarded objectively, it is, in the first place, just possible that they are mistaken concerning the extent of their debt to Christianity: a man s convictions prove nothing concerning the thing he is convinced about, and in religions they are more likely to give rise to suspicions. . . . Secondly, it is possible that the debt owing to Christianity is not due to its Founder at all, but to the whole structure, the 149 whole thing to the Church, etc. The notion " Founder " is so very equivocal, that it may stand even for the accidental cause of a movement: the person of the Founder has been inflated in proportion as the Church has grown: but even this process of veneration allows of the conclusion that, at one time or other, this Founder was some thing exceedingly insecure and doubtful in the beginning. . . . Let any one think of the free and easy way in which Paul treats the problem of the personality of Jesus, how he almost juggles with it: some one who died, who was seen after His death, some one whom the Jews delivered up to death all this was only the theme Paul wrote the music to it.
178. The founder of a religion may be quite insignificant, a wax vesta and no more.
179. Concerning the psychological problem of Christianity. The driving forces are; resentment, popular insurrection, the revolt of the bungled and the botched. (In Buddhism it is different: it is not born of resentment. It rather combats resent ment because the latter leads to action?) This party, which stands for freedom, under stands that the abandonment of antagonism in thought and deed is a condition of distinction and preservation. Here lies the psychological difficulty which has stood in the way of Christianity being understood: the force which created it, urges to a struggle against itself. Only as a party standing ior peace and innocence can this insurrectionary movement hope to be successful: it must conquer by means of excessive mildness, sweetness, softness, and its instincts are aware of this. The feat was to deny and con demn the force, of which man is the expression, and to press the reverse of that force continually to the fore, by word and deed.
180. The pretence of youthfulness. It is a mistake to imagine that, with Christianity, an ingenuous and youthful people rose against an old culture; the story goes that it was out of the lowest levels of society, where Christianity flourished and shot its roots, that the more profound source of life gushed forth afresh: but nothing can be under stood of the psychology of Christianity, if it be supposed that it was the expression of revived youth among a people, or of the resuscitated strength of a race. It is rather a typical form of decadence, of moral-softening and of hysteria, amid a general hotch-potch of races and people that had lost all aims and had grown weary and sick. The wonderful company which gathered round this master-seducer of the populace, would not be at all out of place in a Russian novel: all the diseases of the nerves seem to give one another a rendezvous in this crowd the absence of a known duty, the feeling that every- 151 thing is nearing its end, that nothing is any longer worth while, and that contentment lies in dolce far niente. The power and certainty of the future in the Jew s instinct, its monstrous will for life and for power, lies in its ruling classes; the people who upheld primitive Christianity are best dis tinguished by this exJiausted condition of their instincts. On the one hand, they are sick of every thing; on the other, they are content with each other, with themselves and for themselves.
181. Christianity regarded as emancipated Judaism (just as a nobility which is both racial and in digenous ultimately emancipates itself from these conditions, and goes in search of kindred elements. . . .). (1) As a Church (community) on the territory of the State, as an unpolitical institution. (2) As life, breeding, practice, art of living. (3) As a religion of sin (sin committed against God, being the only recognized kind, and the only cause of all suffering), with a universal cure for it. There is no sin save against God; what is done against men, man shall not sit in judgment upon, nor call to account, except in the name of God. At the same time, all commandments (love): everything is associated with God, and all acts are performed according to God s will. Beneath this arrangement there lies exceptional intelligence (a very narrow life, such as that led by the 152 Esquimaux, can only be endured by most peaceful and indulgent people: the Judaeo-Christian dogma turns against sin in favour of the " sinner ").
182. The Jewish priesthood understood how to present everything it claimed to be right as a divine precept, as an act of obedience to God, and also to introduce all those things which conduced to preserve Israel and were the conditions of its existence (for instance: the large number of " works ": circumcision and the cult of sacrifices, as the very pivot of the national conscience), not as Nature, but as God. This process continued; within the very heart of Judaism, where the need of these " works " was not felt (that is to say, as a means of keeping a race distinct), a priestly sort of man was pictured, whose bearing towards the aristocracy was like that of " noble nature "; a sacerdotalism of the soul, which now, in order to throw its opposite into strong relief, attaches value, not to the " dutiful acts " themselves, but to the sentiment. . . . At bottom, the problem was once again, how to make a certain kind of soul prevail: it was also a popular insurrection in the midst of a priestly people a pietistic movement coming from below (sinners, publicans, women, and children). Jesus of Nazareth was the symbol of their sect. And again, in order to believe in themselves, they were in need of a theological transfiguration: they require nothing less than " the Son of God " in 153 order to create a belief for themselves. And just as the priesthood had falsified the whole history of Israel, another attempt was made, here, to alter and falsify the whole history of mankind in such a way as to make Christianity seem like the most important event it contained. This movement could have originated only upon the soil of Judaism, the main feature of which was the confounding of guilt with sorrow and the reduction of all sin to sin against God. Of all this, Christianity is the second degree of power.
183. The symbolism of Christianity is based upon that of Judaism, which had already transfigured all reality (history, Nature) into a holy and artificial unreality which refused to recognise real history, and which showed no more interest in a natural course of things.
184. The Jews made the attempt to prevail, after two of their castes the warrior and the agri cultural castes, had disappeared from their midst. In this sense they are the " castrated people": they have their priests and then their Chandala. . . . How easily a disturbance occurs among them an insurrection of their Chandala. This was the origin of Christianity. Owing to the fact that they had no knowledge of warriors except as their masters, they introduced 154 enmity towards the nobles, the men of honor, pride, and power, and the ruling classes, into their religion: they are pessimists from indignation. . . . Thus they created a very important and novel position: the priests in the van of the Chandala against the noble classes. . . . Christianity was the logical conclusion of this movement: even in the Jewish priesthood, it still scented the existence of the caste, of the privileged and noble minority it therefore did away with priests. Christ is the unit of the Chandala who removes the priest . . . the Chandala who redeems himself. . . . That is why the French Revolution is the lineal descendant and the continuator of Christianity it is characterised by an instinct of hate towards castes, nobles, and the last privileges.
185. The " Christian Ideal " put on the stage with Jewish astuteness these are the fundamental psychological forces of its " nature ": Revolt against the ruling spiritual powers; The attempt to make those virtues which facili tate the happiness of the lowly, a standard of all values in fact, to call God that which is no more than the self-preservative instinct of that class of man possessed of least vitality; Obedience and absolute abstention from war and resistance, justified by this ideal; 155 The love of one another as a result of the love of God.