What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to
Power, and power itself in man. What is bad?--All that proceeds from
weakness. What is happiness?--The feeling that power is _increasing,-_
that resistance has been overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not
virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, _virtu,_
free from all moralic acid). The weak and botched shall perish: first
principle of our humanity. And they ought even to be helped to perish.
What is more harmful than any vice?--Practical sympathy with all the
botched and the weak--Christianity. 128
We must not deck out and adorn Christianity: it has waged a deadly
war upon this _higher_ type of man, it has set a ban upon all the
fundamental instincts of this type, and has distilled evil and the
devil himself out of these instincts:--the strong man as the typical
pariah, the villain. Christianity has sided with everything weak, low,
and botched; it has made an ideal out of _antagonism_ against all the
self-preservative instincts of strong life: it has corrupted even the
reason of the strongest intellects, by teaching that the highest values
of intellectuality are sinful, misleading and full of temptations. 130
I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its
instincts, when it selects and _prefers_ that which is detrimental to
it. 131
Life itself, to my mind, is nothing more nor less than the instinct of
growth, of permanence, of accumulating forces, of power: where the will
to power is lacking, degeneration sets in. 131
Pity is opposed to the tonic passions which enhance the energy of the
feeling of life: its action is depressing. A man loses power when he
pities. By means of pity the drain on strength which suffering itself
already introduces into the world is multiplied a thousandfold. 131
On the whole, pity thwarts the law of development which is the law of
selection. It preserves that which is ripe for death, it fights in
favour of the disinherited and the condemned of life. 131-132
This depressing and infectious instinct thwarts those instincts
which aim at the preservation and enhancement of the value of life:
by _multiplying_ misery quite as much as by preserving all that is
miserable, it is the principal agent in promoting decadence. 132
That which a theologian considers true, _must_ of necessity be false:
this furnishes almost the criterion of truth. It is his most profound
self-preservative instinct which forbids reality ever to attain to
honour in any way, or even to raise its voice. Whithersoever the
influence of the theologian extends, _valuations_ are topsy-turvy, and
the concepts "true" and "false" have necessarily changed places: that
which is most deleterious to life, is here called "true," that which
enhances it, elevates it, says Yea to it, justifies it and renders it
triumphant, is called "false." 135
What is there that destroys a man more speedily than to work, think,
feel, as an automaton of "duty," without internal promptings, without
a profound personal predilection, without joy? This is the recipe _par
excellence_ of decadence and even of idiocy. 137
In Christianity, neither morality nor religion comes in touch at
all with reality. Nothing but imaginary _causes_ (God, the soul,
the ego, spirit, free will--or even non-free will); nothing but
imaginary _effects_ (sin, salvation, grace, punishment, forgiveness
of sins). Imaginary beings are supposed to have intercourse (God,
spirits, souls); imaginary Natural History (anthropocentric: total
lack of the notion, "natural causes"); an imaginary _psychology_
(nothing but misunderstandings of self, interpretations of pleasant or
unpleasant general feelings; for instance of the states of the _nervus
sympathicus,_ with the help of the sign language of a religio-moral
idiosyncrasy,--repentance, pangs of conscience, the temptation of the
devil, the presence of God); an imaginary teleology (the Kingdom of
God, the Last Judgment, Everlasting Life). 141-142
A proud people requires a God, unto whom it can _sacrifice_ things....
Religion, when restricted to these principles, is a form of gratitude.
A man is grateful for his own existence; for this he must have a
God.--Such a God must be able to profit and to injure him, he must be
able to act the friend and the foe. He must be esteemed for his good as
well as for his evil qualities. 143
When a people is on the road to ruin; when it feels its belief in
a future, its hope of freedom vanishing for ever; when it becomes
conscious of submission as the most useful quality, and of the virtues
of the submissive as self-preservative measures, then its God must also
modify himself. He then becomes a tremulous and unassuming sneak; he
counsels "peace of the soul," the cessation of all hatred, leniency
and "love" even towards friend and foe. He is for ever moralising,
he crawls into the heart of every private virtue, becomes a God for
everybody. 143
The Christian concept of God--God as the deity of the sick, God as a
spider, God as a spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts of God
that has ever been attained on earth. Maybe it represents the low-water
mark in the evolutionary ebb of the godlike type. God degenerated into
the _contradiction of life,_ instead of being its transfiguration and
eternal Yea! With God war is declared on life, nature, and the will to
life! God is the formula for every calumny of this world and for every
lie concerning a beyond! 146
Christianity aims at mastering _beasts of prey;_ its expedient is to
make them _ill,_--to render feeble is the Christian recipe for taming,
for "civilisation." 151
If _faith_ is above all necessary, then reason, knowledge, and
scientific research must be brought into evil repute: the road to
truth becomes the _forbidden_ road.--Strong _hope_ is a much greater
stimulant of life than any single realised joy could be. Sufferers
must be sustained by a hope which no actuality can contradict,--and
which cannot ever be realised: the hope of another world. (Precisely on
account of this power that hope has of making the unhappy linger on,
the Greeks regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most _mischievous_
evil: it remained behind in Pandora's box.) In order that _love_ may
be possible, God must be a person. In order that the lowest instincts
may also make their voices heard God must be young. For the ardour of
the women a beautiful saint, and for the ardour of the men a Virgin
Mary has to be pressed into the foreground. All this on condition that
Christianity wishes to rule over a certain soil, on which Aphrodisiac
or Adonis cults had already determined the _notion_ of a cult. To
insist upon _chastity_ only intensifies the vehemence and profundity of
the religious instinct--it makes the cult warmer, more enthusiastic,
more soulful.--Love is the state in which man sees things most widely
different from what they are. The force of illusion reaches its zenith
here, as likewise the sweetening and transfiguring power. When a man is
in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything.
The thing was to discover a religion in which it was possible to love:
by this means the worst in life is overcome--it is no longer even
seen.--So much for three Christian virtues Faith, Hope, and Charity: I
call them the three Christian _precautionary measures._ 152-153
What is Jewish morality, what is Christian morality? Chance robbed of
its innocence; unhappiness polluted with the idea of "sin"; well being
interpreted as a danger, as a "temptation"; physiological indisposition
poisoned by means of the cankerworm of conscience. 157-158
What does a "moral order of the universe" mean? That once and for all
there is such a thing as will of God which determines what man has to
do and what he has to leave undone; that the value of a people or of
an individual is measured according to how much or how little the one
or the other obeys the will of God; that in the destinies of a people
or of an individual, the will of God shows itself dominant, that is to
say it punishes or rewards according to the degree of obedience. In the
place of this miserable falsehood _reality_ says: a parasitical type of
man, who can flourish only at the cost of all the healthy elements of
life, the priest abuses the name of God: he calls that state of affairs
in which the priest determines the value of things "the Kingdom of
God"; he calls the means whereby such a state of affairs is attained or
maintained, "the Will of God"; with cold-blooded cynicism he measures
peoples, ages and individuals according to whether they favour or
oppose the ascendency of the priesthood. 158-159
I fail to see against whom was directed the insurrection of which
rightly or _wrongly_ Jesus is understood to have been the promoter, if
it were not directed against the Jewish church. 162
This saintly anarchist who called the lowest of the low, the outcasts
and "sinners," the Chandala of Judaism, to revolt against the
established order of things (and in language which, if the gospels are
to be trusted, would get one sent to Siberia even to-day)--this man was
a political criminal in so far as political criminals were possible in
a community so absurdly non-political. This brought him to the cross:
the proof of this is the inscription found thereon. He died for _his_
sins--and no matter how often the contrary has been asserted there is
absolutely nothing to show that he died for the sins of others. 162-163
_The instinctive hatred of reality_ is the outcome of an extreme
susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which can no longer endure to
be "touched" at all, because every sensation strikes too deep.
_The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, of all hostility, of all
boundaries and distances in feeling,_ is the outcome of an extreme
susceptibility to pain and to irritation, which regards all resistance,
all compulsory resistance as insufferable _anguish_(--that is to say,
as harmful, as _deprecated_ by the self-preservative instinct), and
which knows blessedness (happiness) only when it is no longer obliged
to offer resistance to anybody, either evil or detrimental,--love as
the only ultimate possibility of life....
These are the two _physiological realities_ upon which and out of which
the doctrine of salvation has grown. 166
With a little terminological laxity Jesus might be called a "free
spirit"--he cares not a jot for anything that is established: the
word _killeth,_ everything fixed _killeth._ The idea, _experience,
"life"_ as he alone knows it, is, according to him, opposed to every
kind of word, formula, law, faith and dogma. He speaks only of the
innermost things: "life" or "truth" or "light," is his expression for
the innermost things,--everything else the whole of reality, the whole
of nature, language even, has only the value of a sign, of a simile for
him. 169-170
The whole psychology of the "gospels" lacks the concept of guilt and
punishment, as also that of reward. "Sin," any sort of aloofness
between God and man, is done away with,--_this is precisely what
constitutes the "glad tidings."_ Eternal bliss is not promised, it is
not bound up with certain conditions; it is the only reality--the rest
consists only of signs wherewith to speak about it....
The results of such a state project themselves into a new practice
of life, the actual evangelical practice. It is not a "faith" which
distinguishes himself by means of a _different_ mode of action.... 171
The life of the Saviour was naught else than this practice,--neither
was his death. He no longer required any formulæ, any rites for his
relations with God--not even prayer. He has done with all the Jewish
teaching of repentance and of atonement; he alone knows the _mode_ of
life which makes one feel "divine," "saved," "evangelical," and at all
times a "child of God." Not "repentance," not "prayer and forgiveness"
are the roads to God: the _evangelical mode of life alone_ leads to
God, it _is_ "God."--That which the gospels abolished was the Judaism
of the concepts "sin," "forgiveness of sin," "faith," "salvation
through faith,"--the whole doctrine of the Jewish church was denied by
the "glad tidings."
The profound instinct of how one must live in order to feel "in
Heaven," in order to feel "eternal," while in every other respect
one feels by _no_ means "in Heaven": this alone is the psychological
reality of "Salvation."--A new life and _not_ a new faith.... 171-172
This "messenger of glad tidings" died as he lived and as he
taught--_not_ in order "to save mankind," but in order to show how one
ought to live. It was a mode of life that he bequeathed to mankind: his
behaviour before his judges, his attitude towards his executioners, his
accusers, and all kinds of calumny and scorn,--his demeanour on the
_cross._ 174
The history of Christianity--from the death on the cross onwards--is
the history of a gradual and ever coarser misunderstanding of an
original symbolism. 175
"The world" to Christianity means that a man is a soldier, a judge,
a patriot, that he defends himself, that he values his honour, that
he desires his own advantage, that he is _proud._ ... The conduct of
every moment, every instinct, every valuation that leads to a deed, is
at present anti-Christian: what an _abortion of falsehood_ modern man
must be, in order to be able _without a blush_ still to call himself a
Christian! 178
The very word "Christianity" is a misunderstanding,--truth to tell,
there never was more than one Christian, and he _died_ on the Cross.
The "gospel" _died_ on the cross. That which thenceforward was called
"gospel" was the reverse of that "gospel" that Christ had lived: it
was "evil tidings," a _dysangel._ It is false to the point of nonsense
to see in "faith," in the faith in salvation through Christ, the
distinguishing trait of the Christian; the only thing that is Christian
is the Christian mode of existence, a life such as he led who died on
the Cross.... To this day a life of this kind is still possible; for
certain men, it is even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity
will be possible in all ages.... _Not_ a faith, but a course of action.
173-179
To regard a man like St.-Paul as honest (a man whose home was the
very headquarters of Stoical enlightenment) when he devises a proof
of the continued existence of the Saviour out of a hallucination; or
even to believe him when he declares that he had this hallucination,
would amount to foolishness on the part of a psychologist: St.-Paul
desired the end, consequently he also desired the means.... Even what
he himself did not believe, was believed in by the idiots among whom
he spread _his_ doctrine.--What he wanted was power; with St.-Paul the
priest again aspired to power. 185
When the centre of gravity of life is laid, _not_ in life, but in a
beyond--in _nonentity,_ life is utterly robbed of its balance. The
great lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all nature in
the instincts,--everything in the instincts that is beneficent, that
promotes life and that is a guarantee of the future, henceforward
aroused suspicion. The very meaning of life is now construed as the
effort to live in such a way that life no longer has any point.... Why
show any public spirit? Why be grateful for one's origin and one's
forebears? Why collaborate with one's fellows, and be confident? Why
be concerned about the general weal or strive after it?... All these
things are merely so many "temptations," so many deviations from the
"straight path." "One thing only is necessary" ... that everybody, as
an "immortal soul," should have equal rank, that in the totality of
beings, the "salvation" of each individual may lay claim to eternal
importance, that insignificant bigots and three-quarter-lunatics may
have the right to suppose that the laws of nature may be persistently
_broken_ on their account,--any such magnification of every kind
of selfishness to infinity, to _insolence,_ cannot be branded with
sufficient contempt. And yet it is to this miserable flattery of
personal vanity that Christianity owed its _triumph,--_by this means
it lured all the bungled and the botched, all revolting and revolted
people, all abortions, the whole of the refuse and offal of humanity,
over to its side. 185-186
With Christianity, the art of feeling holy lies, which constitutes
the whole of Judaism, reaches its final mastership, thanks to many
centuries of Jewish and most thoroughly serious training and practice.
188
Only read the gospels as books calculated to seduce by means of
morality--morality is appropriated by these petty people,--they know
what morality can do! The best way of leading mankind by the nose
is with morality! The fact is that the most conscious _conceit_ of
people who believe themselves to be _chosen,_ here simulates modesty:
in this way they, the Christian community, the "good and the just"
place themselves once and for all on a certain side, the side "of
Truth"--and the rest of mankind, "the world" on the other.... This
was the most fatal kind of megalomania that had ever yet existed on
earth; insignificant little abortions of bigots and liars began to lay
sole claim to the concepts "God," "Truth," "Light," "Spirit," "Love,"
"Wisdom," "Life," as if these things were, so to speak, synonyms of
themselves, in order to fence themselves off from "the world"; little
ultra-Jews, ripe for every kind of madhouse, twisted values round in
order to suit themselves, just as if the Christian, alone, were the
meaning, the salt, the standard and even the _"ultimate tribunal"_ of
all the rest of mankind. 189-190
One does well to put on one's gloves when reading the New Testament.
The proximity of so much pitch almost defiles one. We should feel just
as little inclined to hobnob with "the first Christians" as with Polish
Jews: not that we need explain our objections.... They simply smell
bad.--In vain have I sought for a single sympathetic feature in the New
Testament; there is not a trace of freedom, kindliness, openheartedness
and honesty to be found in it. Humaneness has not even made a start
in this book, while _cleanly_ instincts are entirely absent from
it.... Only evil instincts are to be found in the New Testament, it
shows no sign of courage, these people lack even the courage of these
evil instincts. All is cowardice, all is a closing of one's eyes and
self-deception. Every book becomes clean, after one has just read the
New Testament. 193-194
In the whole of the New Testament only _one_ figure appears which we
cannot help respecting. Pilate, the Roman Governor. To take a Jewish
quarrel _seriously_ was a thing he could not get himself to do. One
Jew more or less--what did it matter?... The noble scorn of a Roman,
in whose presence the word "truth" had been shamelessly abused,
has enriched the New Testament with the only saying which _is of
value,_--and this saying is not only the criticism, but actually the
shattering of that Testament: "What is truth!" 195-196
No one is either a philologist or a doctor, who is not also an
_Antichrist._ As a philologist, for instance, a man sees _behind_ the
"holy books" as a doctor he sees _behind_ the physiological rottenness
of the typical Christian. The Doctor says "incurable," the philologist
says "forgery." 197
The priest knows only one great danger, and that is science,--the
healthy concept of cause and effect. But, on the whole, science
flourishes only in happy conditions,--a man must have time, he must
also have superfluous mental energy in order to "pursue knowledge."
... _"Consequently_ man must be made unhappy,"--this has been the
argument of the priest of all ages.--You have already divined what, in
accordance with such a manner of arguing, must first have come into the
world:--"sin."... The notion of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral
order of the universe," was invented against science. 199
The notion of guilt and punishment, including the doctrine of "grace,"
of "salvation" and of "forgiveness"--all lies through and through
without a shred of psychological reality--were invented in order to
destroy man's _sense of causality:_ they are an attack with the fist,
with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But one actuated by the
most cowardly, most crafty, and most ignoble instincts! A _priest's_
attack! A _parasite's_ attack! A vampyrism of pale subterranean
leeches! 200
"Faith saveth; _therefore_ it is true."--It might be objected here that
it is precisely salvation which is not probed but only _promised;_
salvation is bound up with the condition "faith,"--one _shall_ be
saved, _because_ one has faith.... But how prove _that_ that which the
priest promises to the faithful really will take place, to wit: the
"Beyond" which defies all demonstration?--The assumed "proof of power"
is at bottom once again only a belief in the fact that the effect which
faith promises will not fail to take place. In a formula: "I believe
that faith saveth;--_consequently_ it is true."--But with this we are
at the end of our tether. 201
Holiness in itself is simply a symptom of an impoverished, enervated
and incurably deteriorated body! 203-204
Christianity is built upon the rancour of the sick; its instinct
is directed _against_ the sound, against health. Everything
well-constituted, proud, high-spirited, and beautiful is offensive to
its ears and eyes. 204
"Faith" simply means the refusal to know what is true. 205
The conclusion which all idiots, women and common people come to, that
there must be something in a cause for which some one lays down his
life (or which, as in the case of primitive Christianity, provokes an
epidemic of sacrifices),--this conclusion put a tremendous check upon
all investigation, upon the spirit of investigation and of caution.
Martyrs have _harmed_ the cause of truth. 208
Convictions are prisons. They never see far enough, they do not
look down from a sufficient height: but in order to have any say
in questions of value and non-value, a man must see five hundred
convictions _beneath_ him--_behind_ him.... A spirit who desires great
things, and who also desires the means thereto, is necessarily a
sceptic. Freedom from every kind of conviction _belongs_ to strength,
to the _ability_ to open one's eyes freely. 209-210
Whom do I hate most among the rabble, the Chandala apostles, who
undermine the working man's instinct, his happiness and his feeling of
contentedness with his insignificant existence,--who make him envious,
and who teach him revenge.... The wrong never lies in unequal rights;
it lies in the claim to equal rights. 220
The Christian and the anarchist are both decadents; they are both
incapable of acting in any other way than disintegratingly, poisonously
and witheringly, like _bloodsuckers;_ they are both actuated by an
instinct of _mortal hatred_ of everything that stands erect, that is
great, that is lasting, and that is a guarantee of the future. 221-222
Christianity destroyed the harvest we might have reaped from the
culture of antiquity, later it also destroyed our harvest of the
culture of Islam. The wonderful Moorish world of Spanish culture, which
in its essence is more closely related to _us,_ and which appeals
more to our sense and taste than Rome and Greece, was _trampled to
death_(--I do not say by what kind of feet), why?--because it owed its
origin to noble, to manly instincts, because it said yea to life, even
that life so full of the race, and refined luxuries of the Moors! 226
I condemn Christianity and confront it with the most terrible
accusation that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. To my mind
it is the greatest of all conceivable corruptions, it has had the
will to the last imaginable corruption. The Christian Church allowed
nothing to escape from its corruption; it converted every value
into its opposite, every truth into a lie, and every honest impulse
into an ignominy of the soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of
its humanitarian blessings! To _abolish_ any sort of distress was
opposed to its profoundest interests; its very existence depended
on states of distress; it created states of distress in order to
make itself immortal.... The cancer germ of sin, for instance:
the Church was the first to enrich mankind with this misery!--The
"equality of souls before God," this falsehood, this _pretext_ for
the _rancunes_ of all the base-minded, this anarchist bomb of a
concept, which has ultimately become the revolution, the modern
idea, the principle of decay of the whole of social order,--this is
_Christian_ dynamite.... The "humanitarian" blessings of Christianity!
To breed a self-contradiction, an art of self-profanation, a will
to lie at any price, an aversion, a contempt of all good and honest
instincts out of _humanitas!_ Is this what you call the blessings of
Christianity?--Parasitism as the only method of the Church; sucking
all the blood, all the love, all the hope of life out of mankind with
anæmic and sacred ideals. A "Beyond" as the will to deny all reality;
the cross as the trade-mark of the most subterranean form of conspiracy
that has ever existed,--against health, beauty, well-constitutedness,
bravery, intellect, kindliness of soul, _against Life itself...._
This eternal accusation against Christianity I would fain write on all
walls, wherever there are walls,--I have letters with which I can make
even the blind see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one
enormous and innermost perversion, the one great instinct of revenge,
for which no means are too venomous, too underhand, too underground and
too _petty,_--I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.... 230-231