great gentleness and liberality, and _no_ militarism; moreover, it must
get its start among the higher and better educated classes.
Cheerfulness, quiet and the absence of desire are the chief desiderata,
and they are _attained_. Buddhism is not a religion in which perfection
is merely an object of aspiration: perfection is actually normal.--
Under Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and the oppressed
come to the fore: it is only those who are at the bottom who seek their
salvation in it. Here the prevailing pastime, the favourite remedy for
boredom is the discussion of sin, self-criticism, the inquisition of
conscience; here the emotion produced by _power_ (called "God") is
pumped up (by prayer); here the highest good is regarded as
unattainable, as a gift, as "grace." Here, too, open dealing is lacking;
concealment and the darkened room are Christian. Here body is despised
and hygiene is denounced as sensual; the church even ranges itself
against cleanliness (--the first Christian order after the banishment of
the Moors closed the public baths, of which there were 270 in Cordova
alone). Christian, too, is a certain cruelty toward one's self and
toward others; hatred of unbelievers; the will to persecute. Sombre and
disquieting ideas are in the foreground; the most esteemed states of
mind, bearing the most respectable names, are epileptoid; the diet is so
regulated as to engender morbid symptoms and over-stimulate the nerves.
Christian, again, is all deadly enmity to the rulers of the earth, to
the "aristocratic"--along with a sort of secret rivalry with them (--one
resigns one's "body" to them; one wants _only_ one's "soul"...). And
Christian is all hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage, of
freedom, of intellectual _libertinage_; Christian is all hatred of the
senses, of joy in the senses, of joy in general....
22.
When Christianity departed from its native soil, that of the lowest
orders, the _underworld_ of the ancient world, and began seeking power
among barbarian peoples, it no longer had to deal with _exhausted_ men,
but with men still inwardly savage and capable of self-torture--in
brief, strong men, but bungled men. Here, unlike in the case of the
Buddhists, the cause of discontent with self, suffering through self, is
_not_ merely a general sensitiveness and susceptibility to pain, but, on
the contrary, an inordinate thirst for inflicting pain on others, a
tendency to obtain subjective satisfaction in hostile deeds and ideas.
Christianity had to embrace _barbaric_ concepts and valuations in order
to obtain mastery over barbarians: of such sort, for example, are the
sacrifices of the first-born, the drinking of blood as a sacrament, the
disdain of the intellect and of culture; torture in all its forms,
whether bodily or not; the whole pomp of the cult. Buddhism is a
religion for peoples in a further state of development, for races that
have become kind, gentle and over-spiritualized (--Europe is not yet
ripe for it--): it is a summons that takes them back to peace and
cheerfulness, to a careful rationing of the spirit, to a certain
hardening of the body. Christianity aims at mastering _beasts of prey_;
its modus operandi is to make them _ill_--to make feeble is the
Christian recipe for taming, for "_civilizing_." Buddhism is a religion
for the closing, over-wearied stages of civilization. Christianity
appears before civilization has so much as begun--under certain
circumstances it lays the very foundations thereof.
23.
Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times more austere, more honest, more
objective. It no longer has to _justify_ its pains, its susceptibility
to suffering, by interpreting these things in terms of sin--it simply
says, as it simply thinks, "I suffer." To the barbarian, however,
suffering in itself is scarcely understandable: what he needs, first of
all, is an explanation as to _why_ he suffers. (His mere instinct
prompts him to deny his suffering altogether, or to endure it in
silence.) Here the word "devil" was a blessing: man had to have an
omnipotent and terrible enemy--there was no need to be ashamed of
suffering at the hands of such an enemy.--
At the bottom of Christianity there are several subtleties that belong
to the Orient. In the first place, it knows that it is of very little
consequence whether a thing be true or not, so long as it is _believed_
to be true. Truth and _faith_: here we have two wholly distinct worlds
of ideas, almost two diametrically _opposite_ worlds--the road to the
one and the road to the other lie miles apart. To understand that fact
thoroughly--this is almost enough, in the Orient, to _make_ one a sage.
The Brahmins knew it, Plato knew it, every student of the esoteric knows
it. When, for example, a man gets any _pleasure_ out of the notion that
he has been saved from sin, it is _not_ necessary for him to be actually
sinful, but merely to _feel_ sinful. But when _faith_ is thus exalted
above everything else, it necessarily follows that reason, knowledge and
patient inquiry have to be discredited: the road to the truth becomes a
forbidden road.--Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more
powerful _stimulans_ to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be.
Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict
with actuality can dash it--so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can
_satisfy_ it: a hope reaching out beyond this world. (Precisely because
of this power that hope has of making the suffering hold out, the Greeks
regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most _malign_ of evils; it
remained behind at the source of all evil.)[3]--In order that _love_ may
be possible, God must become a person; in order that the lower instincts
may take a hand in the matter God must be young. To satisfy the ardor of
the woman a beautiful saint must appear on the scene, and to satisfy
that of the men there must be a virgin. These things are necessary if
Christianity is to assume lordship over a soil on which some
aphrodisiacal or Adonis cult has already established a notion as to what
a cult ought to be. To insist upon _chastity_ greatly strengthens the
vehemence and subjectivity of the religious instinct--it makes the cult
warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful.--Love is the state in which man
sees things most decidedly as they are _not_. The force of illusion
reaches its highest here, and so does the capacity for sweetening, for
_transfiguring_. When a man is in love he endures more than at any other
time; he submits to anything. The problem was to devise a religion which
would allow one to love: by this means the worst that life has to offer
is overcome--it is scarcely even noticed.--So much for the three
Christian virtues: faith, hope and charity: I call them the three
Christian _ingenuities_.--Buddhism is in too late a stage of
development, too full of positivism, to be shrewd in any such way.--
[3] That is, in Pandora's box.
24.
Here I barely touch upon the problem of the _origin_ of Christianity.
The _first_ thing necessary to its solution is this: that Christianity
is to be understood only by examining the soil from which it sprung--it
is _not_ a reaction against Jewish instincts; it is their inevitable
product; it is simply one more step in the awe-inspiring logic of the
Jews. In the words of the Saviour, "salvation is of the Jews."[4]--The
_second_ thing to remember is this: that the psychological type of the
Galilean is still to be recognized, but it was only in its most
degenerate form (which is at once maimed and overladen with foreign
features) that it could serve in the manner in which it has been used:
as a type of the _Saviour_ of mankind.--
[4] John iv, 22.
The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world, for
when they were confronted with the question, to be or not to be, they
chose, with perfectly unearthly deliberation, to be _at any price_: this
price involved a radical _falsification_ of all nature, of all
naturalness, of all reality, of the whole inner world, as well as of
the outer. They put themselves _against_ all those conditions under
which, hitherto, a people had been able to live, or had even been
_permitted_ to live; out of themselves they evolved an idea which stood
in direct opposition to _natural_ conditions--one by one they distorted
religion, civilization, morality, history and psychology until each
became a _contradiction_ of its _natural significance_. We meet with the
same phenomenon later on, in an incalculably exaggerated form, but only
as a copy: the Christian church, put beside the "people of God," shows a
complete lack of any claim to originality. Precisely for this reason the
Jews are the most _fateful_ people in the history of the world: their
influence has so falsified the reasoning of mankind in this matter that
today the Christian can cherish anti-Semitism without realizing that it
is no more than the _final consequence of Judaism_.
In my "Genealogy of Morals" I give the first psychological explanation
of the concepts underlying those two antithetical things, a _noble_
morality and a _ressentiment_ morality, the second of which is a mere
product of the denial of the former. The Judaeo-Christian moral system
belongs to the second division, and in every detail. In order to be able
to say Nay to everything representing an _ascending_ evolution of
life--that is, to well-being, to power, to beauty, to self-approval--the
instincts of _ressentiment_, here become downright genius, had to invent
an _other_ world in which the _acceptance of life_ appeared as the most
evil and abominable thing imaginable. Psychologically, the Jews are a
people gifted with the very strongest vitality, so much so that when
they found themselves facing impossible conditions of life they chose
voluntarily, and with a profound talent for self-preservation, the side
of all those instincts which make for _décadence_--_not_ as if mastered
by them, but as if detecting in them a power by which "the world" could
be _defied_. The Jews are the very opposite of _décadents_: they have
simply been forced into _appearing_ in that guise, and with a degree of
skill approaching the _non plus ultra_ of histrionic genius they have
managed to put themselves at the head of all _décadent_ movements (--for
example, the Christianity of Paul--), and so make of them something
stronger than any party frankly saying _Yes_ to life. To the sort of
men who reach out for power under Judaism and Christianity,--that is to
say, to the _priestly_ class--_décadence_ is no more than a means to an
end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and
in confusing the values of "good" and "bad," "true" and "false" in a
manner that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it.
25.
The history of Israel is invaluable as a typical history of an attempt
to _denaturize_ all natural values: I point to five facts which bear
this out. Originally, and above all in the time of the monarchy, Israel
maintained the _right_ attitude of things, which is to say, the natural
attitude. Its Jahveh was an expression of its consciousness of power,
its joy in itself, its hopes for itself: to him the Jews looked for
victory and salvation and through him they expected nature to give them
whatever was necessary to their existence--above all, rain. Jahveh is
the god of Israel, and _consequently_ the god of justice: this is the
logic of every race that has power in its hands and a good conscience in
the use of it. In the religious ceremonial of the Jews both aspects of
this self-approval stand revealed. The nation is grateful for the high
destiny that has enabled it to obtain dominion; it is grateful for the
benign procession of the seasons, and for the good fortune attending its
herds and its crops.--This view of things remained an ideal for a long
while, even after it had been robbed of validity by tragic blows:
anarchy within and the Assyrian without. But the people still retained,
as a projection of their highest yearnings, that vision of a king who
was at once a gallant warrior and an upright judge--a vision best
visualized in the typical prophet (_i. e._, critic and satirist of the
moment), Isaiah.--But every hope remained unfulfilled. The old god no
longer _could_ do what he used to do. He ought to have been abandoned.
But what actually happened? Simply this: the conception of him was
_changed_--the conception of him was _denaturized_; this was the price
that had to be paid for keeping him.--Jahveh, the god of "justice"--he
is in accord with Israel _no more_, he no longer vizualizes the national
egoism; he is now a god only conditionally.... The public notion of this
god now becomes merely a weapon in the hands of clerical agitators, who
interpret all happiness as a reward and all unhappiness as a punishment
for obedience or disobedience to him, for "sin": that most fraudulent of
all imaginable interpretations, whereby a "moral order of the world" is
set up, and the fundamental concepts, "cause" and "effect," are stood on
their heads. Once natural causation has been swept out of the world by
doctrines of reward and punishment some sort of _un_-natural causation
becomes necessary: and all other varieties of the denial of nature
follow it. A god who _demands_--in place of a god who helps, who gives
counsel, who is at bottom merely a name for every happy inspiration of
courage and self-reliance.... _Morality_ is no longer a reflection of
the conditions which make for the sound life and development of the
people; it is no longer the primary life-instinct; instead it has become
abstract and in opposition to life--a fundamental perversion of the
fancy, an "evil eye" on all things. _What_ is Jewish, _what_ is
Christian morality? Chance robbed of its innocence; unhappiness polluted
with the idea of "sin"; well-being represented as a danger, as a
"temptation"; a physiological disorder produced by the canker worm of
conscience....
26.
The concept of god falsified; the concept of morality falsified;--but
even here Jewish priest-craft did not stop. The whole history of Israel
ceased to be of any value: out with it!--These priests accomplished that
miracle of falsification of which a great part of the Bible is the
documentary evidence; with a degree of contempt unparalleled, and in the
face of all tradition and all historical reality, they translated the
past of their people into _religious_ terms, which is to say, they
converted it into an idiotic mechanism of salvation, whereby all
offences against Jahveh were punished and all devotion to him was
rewarded. We would regard this act of historical falsification as
something far more shameful if familiarity with the _ecclesiastical_
interpretation of history for thousands of years had not blunted our
inclinations for uprightness _in historicis_. And the philosophers
support the church: the _lie_ about a "moral order of the world" runs
through the whole of philosophy, even the newest. What is the meaning
of a "moral order of the world"? That there is a thing called the will
of God which, once and for all time, determines what man ought to do and
what he ought not to do; that the worth of a people, or of an individual
thereof, is to be measured by the extent to which they or he obey this
will of God; that the destinies of a people or of an individual are
_controlled_ by this will of God, which rewards or punishes according to
the degree of obedience manifested.--In place of all that pitiable lie
_reality_ has this to say: the _priest_, a parasitical variety of man
who can exist only at the cost of every sound view of life, takes the
name of God in vain: he calls that state of human society in which he
himself determines the value of all things "the kingdom of God"; he
calls the means whereby that state of affairs is attained "the will of
God"; with cold-blooded cynicism he estimates all peoples, all ages and
all individuals by the extent of their subservience or opposition to the
power of the priestly order. One observes him at work: under the hand of
the Jewish priesthood the _great_ age of Israel became an age of
decline; the Exile, with its long series of misfortunes, was
transformed into a _punishment_ for that great age--during which priests
had not yet come into existence. Out of the powerful and _wholly free_
heroes of Israel's history they fashioned, according to their changing
needs, either wretched bigots and hypocrites or men entirely "godless."
They reduced every great event to the idiotic formula: "obedient _or_
disobedient to God."--They went a step further: the "will of God" (in
other words some means necessary for preserving the power of the
priests) had to be _determined_--and to this end they had to have a
"revelation." In plain English, a gigantic literary fraud had to be
perpetrated, and "holy scriptures" had to be concocted--and so, with the
utmost hierarchical pomp, and days of penance and much lamentation over
the long days of "sin" now ended, they were duly published. The "will of
God," it appears, had long stood like a rock; the trouble was that
mankind had neglected the "holy scriptures".... But the "will of God"
had already been revealed to Moses.... What happened? Simply this: the
priest had formulated, once and for all time and with the strictest
meticulousness, what tithes were to be paid to him, from the largest to
the smallest (--not forgetting the most appetizing cuts of meat, for
the priest is a great consumer of beefsteaks); in brief, he let it be
known just _what he wanted_, what "the will of God" was.... From this
time forward things were so arranged that the priest became
_indispensable everywhere_; at all the great natural events of life, at
birth, at marriage, in sickness, at death, not to say at the
"_sacrifice_" (that is, at meal-times), the holy parasite put in his
appearance, and proceeded to _denaturize_ it--in his own phrase, to
"sanctify" it.... For this should be noted: that every natural habit,
every natural institution (the state, the administration of justice,
marriage, the care of the sick and of the poor), everything demanded by
the life-instinct, in short, everything that has any value _in itself_,
is reduced to absolute worthlessness and even made the _reverse_ of
valuable by the parasitism of priests (or, if you chose, by the "moral
order of the world"). The fact requires a sanction--a power to _grant
values_ becomes necessary, and the only way it can create such values is
by denying nature.... The priest depreciates and desecrates nature: it
is only at this price that he can exist at all.--Disobedience to God,
which actually means to the priest, to "the law," now gets the name of
"sin"; the means prescribed for "reconciliation with God" are, of
course, precisely the means which bring one most effectively under the
thumb of the priest; he alone can "save".... Psychologically considered,
"sins" are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical
basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest _lives_
upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be "sinning".... Prime
axiom: "God forgiveth him that repenteth"--in plain English, _him that
submitteth to the priest_.
27.
Christianity sprang from a soil so corrupt that on it everything
natural, every natural value, every _reality_ was opposed by the deepest
instincts of the ruling class--it grew up as a sort of war to the death
upon reality, and as such it has never been surpassed. The "holy
people," who had adopted priestly values and priestly names for all
things, and who, with a terrible logical consistency, had rejected
everything of the earth as "unholy," "worldly," "sinful"--this people
put its instinct into a final formula that was logical to the point of
self-annihilation: as _Christianity_ it actually denied even the last
form of reality, the "holy people," the "chosen people," _Jewish_
reality itself. The phenomenon is of the first order of importance: the
small insurrectionary movement which took the name of Jesus of Nazareth
is simply the Jewish instinct _redivivus_--in other words, it is the
priestly instinct come to such a pass that it can no longer endure the
priest as a fact; it is the discovery of a state of existence even more
fantastic than any before it, of a vision of life even more _unreal_
than that necessary to an ecclesiastical organization. Christianity
actually _denies_ the church....
I am unable to determine what was the target of the insurrection said to
have been led (whether rightly or _wrongly_) by Jesus, if it was not the
Jewish church--"church" being here used in exactly the same sense that
the word has today. It was an insurrection against the "good and just,"
against the "prophets of Israel," against the whole hierarchy of
society--_not_ against corruption, but against caste, privilege, order,
formalism. It was _unbelief_ in "superior men," a Nay flung at
everything that priests and theologians stood for. But the hierarchy
that was called into question, if only for an instant, by this movement
was the structure of piles which, above everything, was necessary to the
safety of the Jewish people in the midst of the "waters"--it represented
their _last_ possibility of survival; it was the final _residuum_ of
their independent political existence; an attack upon it was an attack
upon the most profound national instinct, the most powerful national
will to live, that has ever appeared on earth. This saintly anarchist,
who aroused the people of the abyss, the outcasts and "sinners," the
Chandala of Judaism, to rise in revolt against the established order of
things--and in language which, if the Gospels are to be credited, would
get him sent to Siberia today--this man was certainly a political
criminal, at least in so far as it was possible to be one in so
_absurdly unpolitical_ a community. This is what brought him to the
cross: the proof thereof is to be found in the inscription that was put
upon the cross. He died for his _own_ sins--there is not the slightest
ground for believing, no matter how often it is asserted, that he died
for the sins of others.--
28.
As to whether he himself was conscious of this contradiction--whether,
in fact, this was the only contradiction he was cognizant of--that is
quite another question. Here, for the first time, I touch upon the
problem of the _psychology of the Saviour_.--I confess, to begin with,
that there are very few books which offer me harder reading than the
Gospels. My difficulties are quite different from those which enabled
the learned curiosity of the German mind to achieve one of its most
unforgettable triumphs. It is a long while since I, like all other young
scholars, enjoyed with all the sapient laboriousness of a fastidious
philologist the work of the incomparable Strauss.[5] At that time I was
twenty years old: now I am too serious for that sort of thing. What do I
care for the contradictions of "tradition"? How can any one call pious
legends "traditions"? The histories of saints present the most dubious
variety of literature in existence; to examine them by the scientific
method, _in the entire absence of corroborative documents_, seems to me
to condemn the whole inquiry from the start--it is simply learned
idling....
[5] David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74), author of "Das Leben Jesu"
(1835-6), a very famous work in its day. Nietzsche here refers to it.
29.