Christianity, revolution, the abolition of slavery, equal rights,
philanthropy, love of peace, justice, truth: all these big words are
only valuable in a struggle, as banners: not as realities, but as
_showwords,_ for something quite different (yea, even quite opposed to
what they mean!). 68
The nineteenth century shows no advance whatever on the sixteenth:
and the German spirit of 1888 is an example of a backward movement
when compared with that of 1788.... Mankind does not advance, it does
not even exist. The aspect of the whole is much more like that of a
huge experimenting workshop where some things in all ages succeed,
while an incalculable number of things fail; where all order, logic,
co-ordination, and responsibility is lacking. How dare we blink the
fact that the rise of Christianity is a decadent movement?--that the
German Reformation was a recrudescence of Christian barbarism?--that
the Revolution destroyed the instinct for an organisation of society on
a large scale?... Man is not an example of progress as compared with
animals: the tender son of culture is an abortion compared with the
Arab or the Corsican; the Chinaman is a more successful type--that is
to say, richer in sustaining power than the European. 72-73
I know best why man is the only animal that laughs: he alone suffers
so excruciatingly that he was _compelled_ to invent laughter. The
unhappiest and most melancholy animal is, as might have been expected,
the most cheerful. 74
Socialism--or the _tyranny_ of the meanest and the most
brainless,--that is to say, the superficial, the envious, and the
mummers, brought to its zenith,--is, as a matter of fact, the logical
conclusion of "modern ideas" and their latent anarchy: but in the
genial atmosphere of democratic well-being the capacity for forming
resolutions or even for coming _to an end_ at all, is paralysed. Men
will follow--but no longer their reason. That is why socialism is on
the whole a hopelessly bitter affair: and there is nothing more amusing
than to observe the discord between the poisonous and desperate faces
of present-day socialists--and what wretched and nonsensical feelings
does not their style reveal to us!--and the childish lamblike happiness
of their hopes and desires. 102
This is the teaching which life itself preaches to all living things:
the morality of Development. To have and to wish to have more, in a
word, Growth--that is life itself. In the teaching of socialism "a will
to the denial of life" is but poorly concealed: botched men and races
they must be who have devised a teaching of this sort. 102
_Spiritual enlightenment_ is an unfailing means of making men
uncertain, weak of will, and needful of succour and support; in short,
of developing the herding instincts in them. 105
When the _feeling of power_ suddenly seizes and overwhelms a man,--and
this takes place in the case of all the great passions,--a doubt arises
in him concerning his own person: he dare not think himself the cause
of this astonishing sensation--and thus he posits a stronger person, a
Godhead as its cause, 114-115
Religion has lowered the concept "man"; its ultimate conclusion is
that all goodness, greatness, and truth are superhuman, and are only
obtainable by the grace of God. 116
_In short:_ what is the price paid for the _improvement_ supposed to
be due to morality?--The unhinging of _reason,_ the reduction of all
motives to fear and hope (punishment and reward); _dependence_ upon the
tutelage of priests, and upon a formulary exactitude which is supposed
to express a divine will; the implantation of a "conscience" which
establishes a false science in the place of experience and experiment:
as though all one had to do or had not to do were predetermined--a kind
of contraction of the seeking and striving spirit;--_in short:_ the
worst _mutilation_ of man that can be imagined, and it is pretended
that "the good man" is the result. 122-123
Paganism is that which says yea to all that is natural, it is
innocence in being natural, "naturalness." _Christianity_ is that which
says no to all that is natural, it is a certain lack of dignity in
being natural; hostility to Nature. 127
_Christianity_ is a degenerative movement, consisting of all kinds of
decaying and excremental elements: it is _not_ the expression of the
downfall of a race, it is, from the root, an agglomeration of all the
morbid elements which are mutually attractive and which gravitate to
one another.
It is therefore _not_ a national religion, _not_ determined by race: it
appeals to the disinherited everywhere; it consists of a foundation of
resentment against all that is successful and dominant: it is in need
of a symbol which represents the damnation of everything successful and
dominant. It is opposed to every form of _intellectual_ movement, to
all philosophy: it takes up the cudgels for idiots, and utters a curse
upon all intellect. Resentment against those who are gifted, learned,
intellectually independent: in all these it suspects the element of
success and domination. 130
All Christian "truth," is idle falsehood and deception, and is
precisely the reverse of that which was at the bottom of the first
Christian movement. 133
To be really Christian would mean to be absolutely indifferent to
dogmas, cults, priests, church, and theology. 133
A God who died for our sins, salvation through faith, resurrection
after death--all these things are the counterfeit coins of
real-Christianity, for which that pernicious blockhead Paul must be
held responsible. 138
Christianity has, from the first, always transformed the symbolical
into crude realities:
(1) The antitheses "true life" and "false life" were misunderstood and
changed into "life here" and "life beyond."
(2) The notion "eternal life," as opposed to the personal life which is
ephemeral, is translated into "personal immortality";
(3) The process of fraternising by means of sharing the same food and
drink, after the Hebrew-Arabian manner, is interpreted as the "miracle
of transubstantiation."
(4) "Resurrection" which was intended to mean the entrance to the "true
life," in the sense of being intellectually "born again," becomes an
historical contingency, supposed to take place at some moment after
death;
(5) The teaching of the Son of man as the "Son of God,"--that is to
say, the life-relationship between man and God,--becomes the "second
person of the Trinity," and thus the filial relationship of every
man--even the lowest--to God, is _done away with;_
(6) Salvation through faith (that is to say, that there is no other way
to this filial relationship to God save through the _practice of life_
taught by Christ) becomes transformed into the belief that there is a
miraculous way of _atoning_ for all _sin;_ though not through our own
endeavours, but by means of Christ:
For all these purposes, "Christ on the Cross" had to be interpreted
afresh. The _death_ itself would certainly not be the principal feature
of the event ... it was only another sign pointing to the way in which
one should behave towards the authorities and the laws of the world
_--that one was not to defend oneself--this was the exemplary life._
139-140
The Gospel is the announcement that the road to happiness lies open for
the lowly and the poor--that all one has to do is to emancipate one's
self from all institutions, traditions, and the tutelage of the higher
classes. Thus Christianity is no more than the _typical teaching of
Socialists._
Property, acquisitions, mother-country, status and rank, tribunals,
the police, the State, the Church, Education, Art, militarism: all
these are so many obstacles in the way of happiness, so many mistakes,
snares, and devil's artifices, on which the Gospel passes sentence--all
this is typical of socialistic doctrines.
Behind all this there is the outburst, the explosion of a concentrated
loathing of the "masters"--the instinct which discerns the happiness of
freedom after such long oppression. 173-174
Christianity is a denaturalisation of gregarious morality: under the
power of the most complete misapprehensions and self-deceptions.
Democracy is a more natural form of it, and less sown with falsehood.
It is a fact that the oppressed, the low, and whole mob of slaves and
half-castes, _will prevail._
First step: they make themselves free--they detach themselves, at
first in fancy only; they recognise each other; they make themselves
paramount.
Second step: they enter the lists, they demand acknowledgment, equal
rights, "Justice."
Third step: they demand privileges (they draw the representatives of
power over to their side).