to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me.--And,
considering the fact that its labour was merely preparatory, that with
adamantine self-consciousness it laid only the foundations for a work to
go on for thousands of years, the whole _meaning_ of antiquity
disappears!... To what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans?--All the
prerequisites to a learned culture, all the _methods_ of science, were
already there; man had already perfected the great and incomparable art
of reading profitably--that first necessity to the tradition of
culture, the unity of the sciences; the natural sciences, in alliance
with mathematics and mechanics, were on the right road,--_the sense of
fact_, the last and more valuable of all the senses, had its schools,
and its traditions were already centuries old! Is all this properly
understood? Every _essential_ to the beginning of the work was
ready:--and the _most_ essential, it cannot be said too often, are
methods, and also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed
by habit and laziness. What we have today reconquered, with unspeakable
self-discipline, for ourselves--for certain bad instincts, certain
Christian instincts, still lurk in our bodies--that is to say, the keen
eye for reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the
smallest things, the whole _integrity_ of knowledge--all these things
were already there, and had been there for two thousand years! _More_,
there was also a refined and excellent tact and taste! _Not_ as mere
brain-drilling! _Not_ as "German" culture, with its loutish manners! But
as body, as bearing, as instinct--in short, as reality.... _All gone for
naught!_ Overnight it became merely a memory!--The Greeks! The Romans!
Instinctive nobility, taste, methodical inquiry, genius for organization
and administration, faith in and the _will_ to secure the future of man,
a great yes to everything entering into the _imperium Romanum_ and
palpable to all the senses, a grand style that was beyond mere art, but
had become reality, truth, _life_....--All overwhelmed in a night, but
not by a convulsion of nature! Not trampled to death by Teutons and
others of heavy hoof! But brought to shame by crafty, sneaking,
invisible, anæmic vampires! Not conquered,--only sucked dry!... Hidden
vengefulness, petty envy, became _master_! Everything wretched,
intrinsically ailing, and invaded by bad feelings, the whole
_ghetto-world_ of the soul, was at once _on top_!--One needs but read
any of the Christian agitators, for example, St. Augustine, in order to
realize, in order to smell, what filthy fellows came to the top. It
would be an error, however, to assume that there was any lack of
understanding in the leaders of the Christian movement:--ah, but they
were clever, clever to the point of holiness, these fathers of the
church! What they lacked was something quite different. Nature
neglected--perhaps forgot--to give them even the most modest endowment
of respectable, of upright, of _cleanly_ instincts.... Between
ourselves, they are not even men.... If Islam despises Christianity, it
has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least assumes that it is
dealing with _men_....
60.
Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization,
and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of _Mohammedan_
civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was
fundamentally nearer to _us_ and appealed more to our senses and tastes
than that of Rome and Greece, was _trampled down_ (--I do not say by
what sort of feet--) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly
instincts for its origin--because it said yes to life, even to the rare
and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life!... The crusaders later made
war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them
to have grovelled in the dust--a civilization beside which even that of
our nineteenth century seems very poor and very "senile."--What they
wanted, of course, was booty: the orient was rich.... Let us put aside
our prejudices! The crusades were a higher form of piracy, nothing more!
The German nobility, which is fundamentally a Viking nobility, was in
its element there: the church knew only too well how the German nobility
was to be _won_.... The German noble, always the "Swiss guard" of the
church, always in the service of every bad instinct of the church--_but
well paid_.... Consider the fact that it is precisely the aid of German
swords and German blood and valour that has enabled the church to carry
through its war to the death upon everything noble on earth! At this
point a host of painful questions suggest themselves. The German
nobility stands _outside_ the history of the higher civilization: the
reason is obvious.... Christianity, alcohol--the two _great_ means of
corruption.... Intrinsically there should be no more choice between
Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The
decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here.
Either a man is a Chandala or he is not.... "War to the knife with Rome!
Peace and friendship with Islam!": this was the feeling, this was the
_act_, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors,
Frederick II. What! must a German first be a genius, a free spirit,
before he can feel _decently_? I can't make out how a German could ever
feel _Christian_....
61.
Here it becomes necessary to call up a memory that must be a hundred
times more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed for Europe the
last great harvest of civilization that Europe was ever to reap--the
_Renaissance_. Is it understood at last, _will_ it ever be understood,
_what_ the Renaissance was? _The transvaluation of Christian
values_,--an attempt with all available means, all instincts and all the
resources of genius to bring about a triumph of the _opposite_ values,
the more _noble_ values.... This has been the one great war of the past;
there has never been a more critical question than that of the
Renaissance--it is _my_ question too--; there has never been a form of
_attack_ more fundamental, more direct, or more violently delivered by a
whole front upon the center of the enemy! To attack at the critical
place, at the very seat of Christianity, and there enthrone the more
noble values--that is to say, to _insinuate_ them into the instincts,
into the most fundamental needs and appetites of those sitting there ...
I see before me the _possibility_ of a perfectly heavenly enchantment
and spectacle:--it seems to me to scintillate with all the vibrations of
a fine and delicate beauty, and within it there is an art so divine, so
infernally divine, that one might search in vain for thousands of years
for another such possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in significance
and at the same time so wonderfully full of paradox that it should
arouse all the gods on Olympus to immortal laughter--_Cæsar Borgia as
pope!_... Am I understood?... Well then, _that_ would have been the
sort of triumph that _I_ alone am longing for today--: by it
Christianity would have been _swept away_!--What happened? A German
monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vengeful instincts
of an unsuccessful priest in him, raised a rebellion _against_ the
Renaissance in Rome.... Instead of grasping, with profound thanksgiving,
the miracle that had taken place: the conquest of Christianity at its
_capital_--instead of this, his hatred was stimulated by the spectacle.
A religious man thinks only of himself.--Luther saw only the _depravity_
of the papacy at the very moment when the opposite was becoming
apparent: the old corruption, the _peccatum originale_, Christianity
itself, no longer occupied the papal chair! Instead there was life!
Instead there was the triumph of life! Instead there was a great yea to
all lofty, beautiful and daring things!... And Luther _restored the
church_: he attacked it.... The Renaissance--an event without meaning, a
great futility!--Ah, these Germans, what they have not cost us!
_Futility_--that has always been the work of the Germans.--The
Reformation; Leibnitz; Kant and so-called German philosophy; the war
of "liberation"; the empire--every time a futile substitute for
something that once existed, for something _irrecoverable_.... These
Germans, I confess, are my enemies: I despise all their uncleanliness
in concept and valuation, their cowardice before every honest yea
and nay. For nearly a thousand years they have tangled and confused
everything their fingers have touched; they have on their conscience
all the half-way measures, all the three-eighths-way measures, that
Europe is sick of,--they also have on their conscience the uncleanest
variety of Christianity that exists, and the most incurable and
indestructible--Protestantism.... If mankind never manages to get rid
of Christianity the _Germans_ will be to blame....
62.
--With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I
_condemn_ Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most
terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his
mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it
seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption.
The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has
turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and
every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me
of its "humanitarian" blessings! Its deepest necessities range it
against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it
_creates_ distress to make _itself_ immortal.... For example, the worm
of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this
misery!--The "equality of souls before God"--this fraud, this _pretext_
for the _rancunes_ of all the base-minded--this explosive concept,
ending in revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing
the whole social order--this is _Christian_ dynamite.... The
"humanitarian" blessings of Christianity forsooth! To breed out of
_humanitas_ a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to
lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest
instincts! All this, to me, is the "humanitarianism" of
Christianity!--Parasitism as the _only_ practice of the church; with its
anæmic and "holy" ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the
hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross
as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever
heard of,--against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, _kindness_ of
soul--_against life itself_....
This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all
walls, wherever walls are to be found--I have letters that even the
blind will be able to see.... I call Christianity the one great curse,
the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge,
for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and
_small_ enough,--I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human
race....
And mankind reckons _time_ from the _dies nefastus_ when this fatality
befell--from the _first_ day of Christianity!--_Why not rather from its
last?_--_From today?_--The transvaluation of all values!...
THE END