theologians and all who have any theological blood in their veins--this
is our whole philosophy.... One must have faced that menace at close
hand, better still, one must have had experience of it directly and
almost succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly
(--the alleged free-thinking of our naturalists and physiologists seems
to me to be a joke--they have no passion about such things; they have
not suffered--). This poisoning goes a great deal further than most
people think: I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who
regard themselves as "idealists"--among all who, by virtue of a higher
point of departure, claim a right to rise above reality, and to look
upon it with suspicion.... The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries
all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand (--and not only in his hand!);
he launches them with benevolent contempt against "understanding," "the
senses," "honor," "good living," "science"; he sees such things as
_beneath_ him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which "the soul"
soars as a pure thing-in-itself--as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a
word, _holiness_, had not already done much more damage to life than all
imaginable horrors and vices.... The pure soul is a pure lie.... So long
as the priest, that _professional_ denier, calumniator and poisoner of
life, is accepted as a _higher_ variety of man, there can be no answer
to the question, What _is_ truth? Truth has already been stood on its
head when the obvious attorney of mere emptiness is mistaken for its
representative....
9.
Upon this theological instinct I make war: I find the tracks of it
everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is shifty and
dishonourable in all things. The pathetic thing that grows out of this
condition is called _faith_: in other words, closing one's eyes upon
one's self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable
falsehood. People erect a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness
upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon
faulty vision; they argue that no _other_ sort of vision has value any
more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the names of "God,"
"salvation" and "eternity." I unearth this theological instinct in all
directions: it is the most widespread and the most _subterranean_ form
of falsehood to be found on earth. Whatever a theologian regards as true
_must_ be false: there you have almost a criterion of truth. His
profound instinct of self-preservation stands against truth ever coming
into honour in any way, or even getting stated. Wherever the influence
of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the
concepts "true" and "false" are forced to change places: whatever is
most damaging to life is there called "true," and whatever exalts it,
intensifies it, approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is
there called "false."... When theologians, working through the
"consciences" of princes (or of peoples--), stretch out their hands for
_power_, there is never any doubt as to the fundamental issue: the will
to make an end, the _nihilistic_ will exerts that power....
10.
Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say that theological
blood is the ruin of philosophy. The Protestant pastor is the
grandfather of German philosophy; Protestantism itself is its _peccatum
originale_. Definition of Protestantism: hemiplegic paralysis of
Christianity--_and_ of reason.... One need only utter the words
"Tübingen School" to get an understanding of what German philosophy is
at bottom--a very artful form of theology.... The Suabians are the best
liars in Germany; they lie innocently.... Why all the rejoicing over
the appearance of Kant that went through the learned world of Germany,
three-fourths of which is made up of the sons of preachers and
teachers--why the German conviction still echoing, that with Kant came a
change for the _better_? The theological instinct of German scholars
made them see clearly just _what_ had become possible again.... A
backstairs leading to the old ideal stood open; the concept of the "true
world," the concept of morality as the _essence_ of the world (--the two
most vicious errors that ever existed!), were once more, thanks to a
subtle and wily scepticism, if not actually demonstrable, then _at
least_ no longer _refutable_.... _Reason_, the _prerogative_ of reason,
does not go so far.... Out of reality there had been made "appearance";
an absolutely false world, that of being, had been turned into
reality.... The success of Kant is merely a theological success; he was,
like Luther and Leibnitz, but one more impediment to German integrity,
already far from steady.--
11.
A word now against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be _our_ invention;
it must spring out of _our_ personal need and defence. In every other
case it is a source of danger. That which does not belong to our life
_menaces_ it; a virtue which has its roots in mere respect for the
concept of "virtue," as Kant would have it, is pernicious. "Virtue,"
"duty," "good for its own sake," goodness grounded upon impersonality or
a notion of universal validity--these are all chimeras, and in them one
finds only an expression of the decay, the last collapse of life, the
Chinese spirit of Königsberg. Quite the contrary is demanded by the most
profound laws of self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man
find his _own_ virtue, his _own_ categorical imperative. A nation goes
to pieces when it confounds _its_ duty with the general concept of duty.
Nothing works a more complete and penetrating disaster than every
"impersonal" duty, every sacrifice before the Moloch of abstraction.--To
think that no one has thought of Kant's categorical imperative as
_dangerous to life_!... The theological instinct alone took it under
protection!--An action prompted by the life-instinct proves that it is a
_right_ action by the amount of pleasure that goes with it: and yet that
Nihilist, with his bowels of Christian dogmatism, regarded pleasure as
an _objection_.... What destroys a man more quickly than to work, think
and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal desire,
without pleasure--as a mere automaton of duty? That is the recipe for
_décadence_, and no less for idiocy.... Kant became an idiot.--And such
a man was the contemporary of Goethe! This calamitous spinner of cobwebs
passed for _the_ German philosopher--still passes today!... I forbid
myself to say what I think of the Germans.... Didn't Kant see in the
French Revolution the transformation of the state from the inorganic
form to the _organic_? Didn't he ask himself if there was a single event
that could be explained save on the assumption of a moral faculty in
man, so that on the basis of it, "the tendency of mankind toward the
good" could be _explained_, once and for all time? Kant's answer: "That
is revolution." Instinct at fault in everything and anything, instinct
as a revolt against nature, German _décadence_ as a philosophy--_that is
Kant_!--
12.
I put aside a few sceptics, the types of decency in the history of
philosophy: the rest haven't the slightest conception of intellectual
integrity. They behave like women, all these great enthusiasts and
prodigies--they regard "beautiful feelings" as arguments, the "heaving
breast" as the bellows of divine inspiration, conviction as the
_criterion_ of truth. In the end, with "German" innocence, Kant tried to
give a scientific flavour to this form of corruption, this dearth of
intellectual conscience, by calling it "practical reason." He
deliberately invented a variety of reasons for use on occasions when it
was desirable not to trouble with reason--that is, when morality, when
the sublime command "thou shalt," was heard. When one recalls the fact
that, among all peoples, the philosopher is no more than a development
from the old type of priest, this inheritance from the priest, this
_fraud upon self_, ceases to be remarkable. When a man feels that he has
a divine mission, say to lift up, to save or to liberate mankind--when a
man feels the divine spark in his heart and believes that he is the
mouthpiece of supernatural imperatives--when such a mission inflames
him, it is only natural that he should stand beyond all merely
reasonable standards of judgment. He feels that he is _himself_
sanctified by this mission, that he is himself a type of a higher
order!... What has a priest to do with philosophy! He stands far above
it!--And hitherto the priest has _ruled_!--He has determined the meaning
of "true" and "not true"!...
13.
Let us not underestimate this fact: that _we
ourselves_, we free spirits, are already a "transvaluation of all
values," a _visualized_ declaration of war and victory against all the
old concepts of "true" and "not true." The most valuable intuitions are
the last to be attained; the most valuable of all are those which
determine _methods_. All the methods, all the principles of the
scientific spirit of today, were the targets for thousands of years of
the most profound contempt; if a man inclined to them he was excluded
from the society of "decent" people--he passed as "an enemy of God," as
a scoffer at the truth, as one "possessed." As a man of science, he
belonged to the Chandala[2].... We have had the whole pathetic stupidity
of mankind against us--their every notion of what the truth _ought_ to
be, of what the service of the truth _ought_ to be--their every "thou
shalt" was launched against us.... Our objectives, our methods, our
quiet, cautious, distrustful manner--all appeared to them as absolutely
discreditable and contemptible.--Looking back, one may almost ask one's
self with reason if it was not actually an _aesthetic_ sense that kept
men blind so long: what they demanded of the truth was picturesque
effectiveness, and of the learned a strong appeal to their senses. It
was our _modesty_ that stood out longest against their taste.... How
well they guessed that, these turkey-cocks of God!
[2] The lowest of the Hindu castes.
14.
We have unlearned something. We have become more modest in every way. We
no longer derive man from the "spirit," from the "godhead"; we have
dropped him back among the beasts. We regard him as the strongest of the
beasts because he is the craftiest; one of the results thereof is his
intellectuality. On the other hand, we guard ourselves against a conceit
which would assert itself even here: that man is the great second
thought in the process of organic evolution. He is, in truth, anything
but the crown of creation: beside him stand many other animals, all at
similar stages of development.... And even when we say that we say a bit
too much, for man, relatively speaking, is the most botched of all the
animals and the sickliest, and he has wandered the most dangerously from
his instincts--though for all that, to be sure, he remains the most
_interesting_!--As regards the lower animals, it was Descartes who first
had the really admirable daring to describe them as _machina_; the whole
of our physiology is directed toward proving the truth of this doctrine.
Moreover, it is illogical to set man apart, as Descartes did: what we
know of man today is limited precisely by the extent to which we have
regarded him, too, as a machine. Formerly we accorded to man, as his
inheritance from some higher order of beings, what was called "free
will"; now we have taken even this will from him, for the term no longer
describes anything that we can understand. The old word "will" now
connotes only a sort of result, an individual reaction, that follows
inevitably upon a series of partly discordant and partly harmonious
stimuli--the will no longer "acts," or "moves."... Formerly it was
thought that man's consciousness, his "spirit," offered evidence of his
high origin, his divinity. That he might be _perfected_, he was advised,
tortoise-like, to draw his senses in, to have no traffic with earthly
things, to shuffle off his mortal coil--then only the important part of
him, the "pure spirit," would remain. Here again we have thought out the
thing better: to us consciousness, or "the spirit," appears as a symptom
of a relative imperfection of the organism, as an experiment, a groping,
a misunderstanding, as an affliction which uses up nervous force
unnecessarily--we deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as it
is done consciously. The "pure spirit" is a piece of pure stupidity:
take away the nervous system and the senses, the so-called "mortal
shell," and _the rest is miscalculation_--that is all!...
15.
Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of
contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary _causes_ ("God,"
"soul," "ego," "spirit," "free will"--or even "unfree"), and purely
imaginary _effects_ ("sin," "salvation," "grace," "punishment,"
"forgiveness of sins"). Intercourse between imaginary _beings_ ("God,"
"spirits," "souls"); an imaginary _natural history_ (anthropocentric; a
total denial of the concept of natural causes); an imaginary
_psychology_ (misunderstandings of self, misinterpretations of agreeable
or disagreeable general feelings--for example, of the states of the
_nervus sympathicus_ with the help of the sign-language of
religio-ethical balderdash--, "repentance," "pangs of conscience,"
"temptation by the devil," "the presence of God"); an imaginary
_teleology_ (the "kingdom of God," "the last judgment," "eternal
life").--This purely _fictitious world_, greatly to its disadvantage, is
to be differentiated from the world of dreams; the latter at least
reflects reality, whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and
denies it. Once the concept of "nature" had been opposed to the concept
of "God," the word "natural" necessarily took on the meaning of
"abominable"--the whole of that fictitious world has its sources in
hatred of the natural (--the real!--), and is no more than evidence of a
profound uneasiness in the presence of reality.... _This explains
everything._ Who alone has any reason for living his way out of reality?
The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality one must be a
_botched_ reality.... The preponderance of pains over pleasures is the
cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such a preponderance
also supplies the formula for _décadence_....
16.
A criticism of the _Christian concept of God_ leads inevitably to the
same conclusion.--A nation that still believes in itself holds fast to
its own god. In him it does honour to the conditions which enable it to
survive, to its virtues--it projects its joy in itself, its feeling of
power, into a being to whom one may offer thanks. He who is rich will
give of his riches; a proud people need a god to whom they can make
_sacrifices_.... Religion, within these limits, is a form of gratitude.
A man is grateful for his own existence: to that end he needs a
god.--Such a god must be able to work both benefits and injuries; he
must be able to play either friend or foe--he is wondered at for the
good he does as well as for the evil he does. But the castration,
against all nature, of such a god, making him a god of goodness alone,
would be contrary to human inclination. Mankind has just as much need
for an evil god as for a good god; it doesn't have to thank mere
tolerance and humanitarianism for its own existence.... What would be
the value of a god who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn,
cunning, violence? who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous
_ardeurs_ of victory and of destruction? No one would understand such a
god: why should any one want him?--True enough, when a nation is on the
downward path, when it feels its belief in its own future, its hope of
freedom slipping from it, when it begins to see submission as a first
necessity and the virtues of submission as measures of self-preservation,
then it _must_ overhaul its god. He then becomes a hypocrite, timorous
and demure; he counsels "peace of soul," hate-no-more, leniency, "love"
of friend and foe. He moralizes endlessly; he creeps into every private
virtue; he becomes the god of every man; he becomes a private citizen, a
cosmopolitan.... Formerly he represented a people, the strength of a
people, everything aggressive and thirsty for power in the soul of a
people; now he is simply _the good god_.... The truth is that there is
no other alternative for gods: _either_ they are the will to power--in
which case they are national gods--_or_ incapacity for power--in which
case they have to be good....
17.
Wherever the will to power begins to decline, in whatever form, there is
always an accompanying decline physiologically, a _décadence_. The
divinity of this _décadence_, shorn of its masculine virtues and
passions, is converted perforce into a god of the physiologically
degraded, of the weak. Of course, they do not _call_ themselves the
weak; they call themselves "the good."... No hint is needed to indicate
the moments in history at which the dualistic fiction of a good and an
evil god first became possible. The same instinct which prompts the
inferior to reduce their own god to "goodness-in-itself" also prompts
them to eliminate all good qualities from the god of their superiors;
they make revenge on their masters by making a _devil_ of the latter's
god.--The _good_ god, and the devil like him--both are abortions of
_décadence_.--How can we be so tolerant of the naïveté of Christian
theologians as to join in their doctrine that the evolution of the
concept of god from "the god of Israel," the god of a people, to the
Christian god, the essence of all goodness, is to be described as
_progress_?--But even Renan does this. As if Renan had a right to be
naïve! The contrary actually stares one in the face. When everything
necessary to _ascending_ life; when all that is strong, courageous,
masterful and proud has been eliminated from the concept of a god; when
he has sunk step by step to the level of a staff for the weary, a
sheet-anchor for the drowning; when he becomes the poor man's god, the
sinner's god, the invalid's god _par excellence_, and the attribute of
"saviour" or "redeemer" remains as the one essential attribute of
divinity--just _what_ is the significance of such a metamorphosis?
what does such a _reduction_ of the godhead imply?--To be
sure, the "kingdom of God" has thus grown larger. Formerly he had only
his own people, his "chosen" people. But since then he has gone
wandering, like his people themselves, into foreign parts; he has given
up settling down quietly anywhere; finally he has come to feel at home
everywhere, and is the great cosmopolitan--until now he has the "great
majority" on his side, and half the earth. But this god of the "great
majority," this democrat among gods, has not become a proud heathen god:
on the contrary, he remains a Jew, he remains a god in a corner, a god
of all the dark nooks and crevices, of all the noisesome quarters of the
world!... His earthly kingdom, now as always, is a kingdom of the
underworld, a _souterrain_ kingdom, a ghetto kingdom.... And he himself
is so pale, so weak, so _décadent_.... Even the palest of the pale are
able to master him--messieurs the metaphysicians, those albinos of the
intellect. They spun their webs around him for so long that finally he
was hypnotized, and began to spin himself, and became another
metaphysician. Thereafter he resumed once more his old business of
spinning the world out of his inmost being _sub specie Spinozae_;
thereafter he became ever thinner and paler--became the "ideal," became
"pure spirit," became "the absolute," became "the thing-in-itself."...
_The collapse of a god_: he became a "thing-in-itself."
18.
The Christian concept of a god--the god as the patron of the sick, the
god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit--is one of the most
corrupt concepts that has ever been set up in the world: it probably
touches low-water mark in the ebbing evolution of the god-type. God
degenerated into the _contradiction of life_. Instead of being its
transfiguration and eternal Yea! In him war is declared on life, on
nature, on the will to live! God becomes the formula for every slander
upon the "here and now," and for every lie about the "beyond"! In him
nothingness is deified, and the will to nothingness is made holy!...
19.
The fact that the strong races of northern Europe did not repudiate this
Christian god does little credit to their gift for religion--and not
much more to their taste. They ought to have been able to make an end of
such a moribund and worn-out product of the _décadence_. A curse lies
upon them because they were not equal to it; they made illness,
decrepitude and contradiction a part of their instincts--and since then
they have not managed to _create_ any more gods. Two thousand years have
come and gone--and not a single new god! Instead, there still exists,
and as if by some intrinsic right,--as if he were the _ultimatum_ and
_maximum_ of the power to create gods, of the _creator spiritus_ in
mankind--this pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid
image of decay, conjured up out of emptiness, contradiction and vain
imagining, in which all the instincts of _décadence_, all the cowardices
and wearinesses of the soul find their sanction!--
20.
In my condemnation of Christianity I surely hope I do no injustice to a
related religion with an even larger number of believers: I allude to
_Buddhism_. Both are to be reckoned among the nihilistic religions--they
are both _décadence_ religions--but they are separated from each other
in a very remarkable way. For the fact that he is able to _compare_ them
at all the critic of Christianity is indebted to the scholars of
India.--Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity--it is
part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively
and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical
speculation. The concept, "god," was already disposed of before it
appeared. Buddhism is the only genuinely _positive_ religion to be
encountered in history, and this applies even to its epistemology (which
is a strict phenomenalism). It does not speak of a "struggle with sin,"
but, yielding to reality, of the "struggle with suffering." Sharply
differentiating itself from Christianity, it puts the self-deception
that lies in moral concepts behind it; it is, in my phrase, _beyond_
good and evil.--The two physiological facts upon which it grounds itself
and upon which it bestows its chief attention are: first, an excessive
sensitiveness to sensation, which manifests itself as a refined
susceptibility to pain, and _secondly_, an extraordinary spirituality, a
too protracted concern with concepts and logical procedures, under the
influence of which the instinct of personality has yielded to a notion
of the "impersonal." (--Both of these states will be familiar to a few
of my readers, the objectivists, by experience, as they are to me).
These physiological states produced a _depression_, and Buddha tried to
combat it by hygienic measures. Against it he prescribed a life in the
open, a life of travel; moderation in eating and a careful selection of
foods; caution in the use of intoxicants; the same caution in arousing
any of the passions that foster a bilious habit and heat the blood;
finally, no _worry_, either on one's own account or on account of
others. He encourages ideas that make for either quiet contentment or
good cheer--he finds means to combat ideas of other sorts. He
understands good, the state of goodness, as something which promotes
health. _Prayer_ is not included, and neither is _asceticism_. There is
no categorical imperative nor any disciplines, even within the walls of
a monastery (--it is always possible to leave--). These things would
have been simply means of increasing the excessive sensitiveness above
mentioned. For the same reason he does not advocate any conflict with
unbelievers; his teaching is antagonistic to nothing so much as to
revenge, aversion, _ressentiment_ (--"enmity never brings an end to
enmity": the moving refrain of all Buddhism....) And in all this he was
right, for it is precisely these passions which, in view of his main
regiminal purpose, are _unhealthful_. The mental fatigue that he
observes, already plainly displayed in too much "objectivity" (that is,
in the individual's loss of interest in himself, in loss of balance and
of "egoism"), he combats by strong efforts to lead even the spiritual
interests back to the _ego_. In Buddha's teaching egoism is a duty. The
"one thing needful," the question "how can you be delivered from
suffering," regulates and determines the whole spiritual diet.
(--Perhaps one will here recall that Athenian who also declared war upon
pure "scientificality," to wit, Socrates, who also elevated egoism to
the estate of a morality).
21.