The Will to Power - Friedrich Nietzsche

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The trick: The denial of all natural mobilia, and their transference to the spiritual world beyond . . . the exploitation of virtue and its veneration for wholly interested motives, gradual denial of virtue in everything that is not Christian.

      186. The profound contempt with which the Christian was treated by the noble people of antiquity, is of the same order as the present instinctive aversion to Jews: it is the hatred which free and self- respecting classes feel towards those who wish to creep in secretly, and who combine an awkward bearing with foolish self-sufficiency. The New Testament is the gospel of a com pletely ignoble species of man; its pretensions to highest values yea, to all values, is, as a matter of fact, revolting even nowadays.

      187. How little the subject matters! It is the spirit which gives the thing life! What a quantity of stuffy and sick-room air there is in all that chatter about " redemption," " love," " blessedness," " faith," " truth," " eternal life "! Let any one look into a really pagan book and compare the two; for in stance, in Petronius, nothing at all is done, said, desired, and valued, which, according to a bigoted Christian estimate, is not sin, or even deadly sin. And yet how happy one feels with the purer air, the 156 superior intellectuality, the quicker pace, and the free overflowing strength which is certain of the future! In the whole of the New Testament there is not one bouffonnerie: but that fact alone would suffice to refute any book. . . .

      188. The prof ound lack of dignity with which all life, which is not Christian, is condemned: it does not suffice them to think meanly of their actual oppon ents, they cannot do with less than a general slander of everything that is not themselves. . . . An abject and crafty soul is in the most perfect harmony with the arrogance of piety, as witness the early Christians. The future: they see that they are heavily paid for it. . . . Theirs is the muddiest kind of spirit that exists. The whole of Christ s life is so arranged as to confirm the prophecies of the Scriptures: He behaves in suchwise in order that they may be right. . . .

      189. The deceptive interpretation of the words, the doings, and the condition of dying people; the natural fear of death, for instance, is systematically confounded with the supposed fear of what is to happen " after death." . . .

      190. The Christians have done exactly what the Jews did before them. They introduced what they 157 conceived to be an innovation and a thing necessary to self-preservation into their Master s teaching, and wove His life into it. They likewise credited Him with all the wisdom of a maker of proverbs in short, they represented their every day life and activity as an act of obedience, and thus sanctified their propaganda. What it all depends upon, may be gathered from Paul: it is not much. What remains is the development of a type of saint, out of the values which these people regarded as saintly. The whole of the "doctrine of miracles," in-j eluding the resurrection, is the result of self- glorification on the part of the community, which ascribed to its Master those qualities it ascribed to itself, but in a higher degree (or, better still, it derived its strength from Him. . . .).

      191. The Christians have never led the life which Jesus commanded them to lead, and the impudent fable of the " justification by faith," and its unique and transcendental significance, is only the result of the Church s lack of courage and will in acknow ledging those "works" which Jesus commanded. The Buddhist behaves differently from the non- Buddhist; but the Christian behaves as all the rest of the world does, and possesses a Christianity of ceremonies and states of the soul. The profound and contemptible falsehood of Christianity in Europe makes us deserve the con tempt of the Arabs, Hindoos, and Chinese. . , . 158 Let any one listen to the words of the first German statesman, concerning that which has preoccupied Europe for the last forty years.

      192. " Faith " or " works "? But that the " works," the habit of particular works may engender a certain set of values or thoughts, is just as natural as it would be unnatural for " works " to proceed from mere valuations. Man must practise, not how to strengthen feelings of value, but how to strengthen action: first of all, one must be able to do some thing. . . . Luther s Christian Dilettantism. Faith is an asses bridge. The background consists of a profound conviction on the part of Luther and his peers, that they are enabled to accomplish Christian " works," a personal fact, disguised under an extreme doubt as to whether all action is not sin and devil s work, so that the worth of life depends upon isolated and highly-strained conditions of inactivity (prayer, effusion, etc.). Ultimately, Luther would be right: the instincts which are expressed by the whole bearing of the reformers are the most brutal that exist. Only in turning absolutely away from themselves, and in becoming absorbed in the opposite of themselves, only by means of an illusion ("faith") was existence endurable to them.

      193. " What was to be done in order to believe? " an absurd question. That which is wrong with Christianity is, that it does none of the things that Christ commanded, It is a mean life, but seen through the eye of contempt.

      194. The entrance into the real life a man saves t his own life by living the life of the multitude.

      195. Christianity has become something fundament ally different from what its Founder wished it to be. It is the great anti-pagan movement of anti quity, formulated with the use of the life, teaching, and " words " of the Founder of Christianity, but interpreted quite arbitrarily, according to a scheme embodying profoundly different needs: translated into the language of all the subterranean religions then existing. It is the rise of Pessimism (whereas Jesus wished to bring the peace and the happiness of the lambs): and moreover the Pessimism of the weak, of the inferior, of the suffering, and of the oppressed. Its mortal enemies are (i) Power, whether in the form of character, intellect, or taste, and " worldliness "; (2) the "good cheer" of classical times, the noble levity and scepticism, hard pride, eccentric dissipation, and cold frugality of the sage, Greek refinement in manners, words, and form. Its mortal enemy is as much the Roman as the Greek. The attempt on the part of anti-paganism to establish itself on a philosophical basis, and to make its tenets possible: it shows a taste for the ambiguous figures of antique culture, and above all for Plato, who was, more than any other, an anti-Hellene and Semite in instinct. . . . It also shows a taste for Stoicism, which is essentially the work of Semites ("dignity" is regarded as severity law; virtue is held to be greatness, self responsibility, authority, greatest sovereignty over oneself this is Semitic. The Stoic is an Arabian sheik wrapped in Greek togas and notions.

      196. Christianity only resumes the fight which had already been begun against the classical ideal anc noble religion. As a matter of fact, the whole process of transformation is only an adaptation to the needs and to the level of intelligence of religious masses then existing: those masses whicl believed in Isis, Mithras, Dionysos, and great mother," and which demanded the follow ing things of a religion: (i) hopes of a beyond, (2) the bloody phantasmagoria of animal sacrmce (the mystery), (3) holy legend and the redeeming deed (4) asceticism, denial of the world, supe: stitious "purification," (5) a hierarchy as a part of the community. In short, Christianity everywhere fitted the already prevailing and increasing anti-pagan tendency those cults whicl Epicurus combated or more exactly, those l6l religions proper to the lower herd, women, slaves, and ignoble classes. The misunderstandings are therefore the following: (1) The immortality of the individual; (2) The assumed existence of another world; (3) The absurd notion of punishment and expiation in the heart of the interpretation of existence; (4) The profanation of the divine nature of man, instead of its accentuation, and the con struction of a very profound chasm, which can only be crossed by the help of a miracle or by means of the most thorough self-contempt; (5) The whole world of corrupted imagination and morbid passion, instead of a simple and loving life of action, instead of Buddhistic happiness attainable on earth; (6) An ecclesiastical order with a priesthood, theology, cults, and sacraments; in short, every thing that Jesus of Nazareth combated; (7) The miraculous in everything and every body, superstition too: while precisely the trait which distinguished Judaism and primitive Christianity was their repugnance to miracles and their relative rationalism.

      197. The psychological pre-requisites: Ignorance and lack of culture, the sort of ignorance which has un learned every kind of shame: let any one imagine those impudent saints in the heart of Athens;. L 1 62 The Jewish instinct of a chosen people: they appropriate all the virtues, without further ado, as their own, and regard the rest of the world as their opposite; this is a profound sign of spiritual depravity; The total lack of real aims and real duties, for which other virtues are required than those of the bigot the State undertook this work for them:

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