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).—This purely fictitious
world distinguishes itself very unfavourably from the world of
dreams: the latter _reflects_ reality, whereas the former falsifies,
depreciates and denies it Once the concept “nature” was taken to mean
the opposite of the concept God, the word “natural” had to acquire the
meaning of abominable,—the whole of that fictitious world takes its
root in the hatred of nature (—reality!—), it is the expression of
profound discomfiture in the presence of reality.... _But this explains
everything._ What is the only kind of man who has reasons for wriggling
out of reality by lies? The man who suffers from reality. But in
order to suffer from reality one must be a bungled portion of it. The
preponderance of pain over pleasure is the _cause_ of that fictitious
morality and religion: but any such preponderance furnishes the formula
for decadence.
16
A criticism of the Christian concept of God inevitably leads to the
same conclusion.—A nation that still believes in itself, also has
its own God. In him it honours the conditions which enable it to
remain uppermost,—that is to say, its virtues. It projects its joy
over itself, its feeling of power, into a being, to whom it can be
thankful for such things. He who is rich, will give of his riches: 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 benefit 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. The monstrous castration of a God
by making him a God only of goodness, would lie beyond the pale of the
desires of such a community. The evil God is just as urgently needed
as the good God: for a people in such a form of society certainly does
not owe its existence to toleration and humaneness.... What would be
the good of a God who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn,
craft, and violence?—who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous
_ardeurs_ of victory and of annihilation? No one would understand such
a God: why should one possess him?—Of course, 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, he
retires from active service and becomes a Cosmopolitan.... Formerly
he represented a people, the strength of a people, everything
aggressive and desirous of power lying concealed in the heart of a
nation: now he is merely the good God.... In very truth Gods have no
other alternative, they are _either_ the Will to Power—in which case
they are always the Gods of whole nations,—or, on the other hand, the
incapacity for power—in which case they necessarily become good.
17
Wherever the Will to Power, no matter in what form, begins to decline,
a physiological retrogression, decadence, always supervenes. The
godhead of _decadence,_ shorn of its masculine virtues and passions
is perforce converted into the God of the physiologically degraded,
of the weak. Of course they do not call themselves the weak, they
call themselves “the good.” ... No hint will be necessary to help you
to understand at what moment in history the dualistic fiction of a
good and an evil God first became possible. With the same instinct by
which the subjugated reduce their God to “Goodness in itself,” they
also cancel the good qualities from their conqueror’s God; they avenge
themselves on their masters by diabolising the latter’s God.—The _good
God_ and the devil as well:—both the abortions of decadence.—How
is it possible that we are still so indulgent towards the simplicity
of Christian theologians to-day, as to declare with them that the
evolution of the concept God, from the “God of Israel,” the God of
a people, to the Christian God, the quintessence of all goodness,
marks a _step forward?_—But even Renan does this. As if Renan had
a right to simplicity! Why the very contrary stares one in the face.
When the pre-requisites of _ascending_ life, when everything strong,
plucky, masterful and proud has been eliminated from the concept
of God, and step by step he has sunk down to the symbol of a staff
for the weary, of a last straw for all those who are drowning; when
he becomes the pauper’s God, the sinner’s God, the sick man’s God
_par excellence,_ and the attribute “Saviour,” “Redeemer,” remains
_over_ as the one essential attribute of divinity: what does such a
metamorphosis, such an abasement of the godhead imply?—Undoubtedly,
“the kingdom of God” has thus become larger. Formerly all he had was
his people, his “chosen” people. Since then he has gone travelling
over foreign lands, just as his people have done; since then he has
never rested anywhere: until one day he felt at home everywhere, the
Great Cosmopolitan,—until he got the “greatest number,” and half the
world on his side. But the God of the “greatest number,” the democrat
among gods, did not become a proud heathen god notwithstanding: he
remained a Jew, he remained the God of the back streets, the God of
all dark corners and hovels, of all the unwholesome quarters of the
world!... His universal empire is now as ever a netherworld empire,
an infirmary, a subterranean empire, a ghetto-empire.... And he
himself is so pale, so weak, so decadent ... Even the palest of the
pale were able to master him—our friends the metaphysicians, those
albinos of thought. They spun their webs around him so long that
ultimately he was hypnotised by their movements and himself became a
spider, a metaphysician. Thenceforward he once more began spinning the
world out of his inner being—_sub specie Spinozæ,_—thenceforward
he transfigured himself into something ever thinner and ever more
anæmic, became “ideal,” became “pure spirit,” became _“absotutum”_ and
“thing-in-itself.” ... _The decline and fall of a god:_ God became the
“thing-in-itself.”
18
The Christian concept of God—God as the deity of the sick, God as a
spider, God as 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! In God, nonentity is deified, and the will to
nonentity is declared holy!
19
The fact that the strong races of Northern Europe did not repudiate
the Christian God, certainly does not do any credit to their religious
power, not to speak of their taste They ought to have been able
successfully to cope with such a morbid and decrepit offshoot of
decadence. And a curse lies on their heads; because they were unable to
cope with him: they made illness, decrepitude and contradiction a part
of all their instincts,—since then they have not _created_ any other
God! Two thousand years have passed and not a single new God! But still
there exists, and as if by right,—like an _ultimum_ and _maximum_ of
god-creating power,—the _creator spiritus_ in man, this miserable God
of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid creature of decay, nonentity,
concept and contradiction, in which all the instincts of decadence, all
the cowardices and languors of the soul find their sanction!——
20
With my condemnation of Christianity I should not like to have done
an injustice to a religion which is related to it and the number of
whose followers is even greater; I refer to Buddhism. As nihilistic
religions, they are akin,—they are religions of decadence,—while
each is separated from the other in the most extraordinary fashion.
For being able to compare them at all, the critic of Christianity is
profoundly grateful to Indian scholars.—Buddhism is a hundred times
more realistic than Christianity,—it is part of its constitutional
heritage to be able to face problems objectively and coolly, it is
the outcome of centuries of lasting philosophical activity. The
concept “God” was already exploded when it appeared. Buddhism is
the only really _positive_ religion to be found in history, even
in its epistemology (which is strict phenomenalism)—it no longer
speaks of the “struggle with _sin_” but fully recognising the true
nature of reality it speaks of the “struggle with _pain._” It already
has—and this distinguishes it fundamentally from Christianity,—the
self-deception of moral concepts beneath it,—to use my own
phraseology, it stands _Beyond Good and Evil._ The two physiological
facts upon which it rests and upon which it bestows its attention
are: in the first place excessive irritability of feeling, which
manifests itself as a refined susceptibility to pain, _and also_ as
super-spiritualisation, an all-too-lengthy sojourn amid concepts and
logical procedures, under the influence of which the personal instinct
has suffered in favour of the “impersonal.” (—Both of these states
will be known to a few of my readers, the objective ones, who, like
myself, will know them from experience.) Thanks to these physiological
conditions, a state of depression set in, which Buddha sought to combat
by means of hygiene. Against it, he prescribes life in the open, a life
of travel; moderation and careful choice in food; caution in regard to
all intoxicating liquor, as also in regard to all the passions which
tend to create bile and to heat the blood; and he deprecates care
either on one’s own or on other people’s account He recommends ideas
that bring one either peace or good cheer,—he invents means whereby
the habit of contrary ideas may be lost He understands goodness—being
good—as promoting health. _Prayer_ is out of the question, as is
also _asceticism;_ there is neither a Categorical Imperative nor any
discipline whatsoever, even within the walls of a monastery (—it is
always possible to leave it if one wants to). All these things would
have been only a means of accentuating the excessive irritability
already referred to. Precisely on this account he does not exhort his
followers to wage war upon those who do not share their views; nothing
is more abhorred in his doctrine than the feeling of revenge, of
aversion, and of resentment (—“not through hostility doth hostility
end”: the touching refrain of the whole of Buddhism....) And in this
he was right; for it is precisely these passions which are thoroughly
unhealthy in view of the principal dietetic object The mental fatigue
which he finds already existent and which expresses itself in
excessive “objectivity” (_i.e._, the enfeeblement of the individual’s
interest—loss of ballast and of “egoism”), he combats by leading
the spiritual interests as well imperatively back to the individual
In Buddha’s doctrine egoism is a duty: the thing which is above all
necessary, _i.e.,_ “how canst thou be rid of suffering” regulates
and defines the whole of the spiritual diet (—let anyone but think
of that Athenian who also declared war upon pure “scientificality,”
Socrates, who made a morality out of personal egoism even in the realm
of problems).
21
The pre-requisites for Buddhism are a very mild climate, great
gentleness and liberality in the customs of a people and _no_
militarism. The movement must also originate among the higher and
even learned classes. Cheerfulness, peace and absence of desire, are
the highest of inspirations, and they are _realised._ Buddhism is not
a religion in which perfection is merely aspired to: perfection is
the normal case. In Christianity all the instincts of the subjugated
and oppressed come to the fore: it is the lowest classes who seek
their salvation in this religion. Here the pastime, the manner of
killing time is to practise the casuistry of sin, self-criticism, and
conscience inquisition. Here the ecstasy in the presence of a _powerful
being,_ called “god,” is constantly maintained by means of prayer;
while the highest thing is regarded as unattainable, as a gift, as an
act of “grace” Here plain dealing is also entirely lacking: concealment
and the darkened room are Christian. Here the body is despised, hygiene
is repudiated as sensual; the church repudiates even cleanliness (—the
first Christian measure after the banishment of the Moors was the
closing of the public baths, of which Cordova alone possessed 270).
A certain spirit of cruelty towards one’s self and others is also
Christian: hatred of all those who do not share one’s views; the will
to persecute Sombre and exciting ideas are in the foreground; the most
coveted states and those which are endowed with the finest names, are
really epileptic in their nature; diet is selected in such a way as
to favour morbid symptoms and to over-excite the nerves. Christian,
too, is the mortal hatred of the earth’s rulers,—the “noble,”—and
at the same time a sort of concealed and secret competition with them
(the subjugated leave the “body” to their master—all they want is
the “soul”). Christian is the hatred of the intellect, of pride, of
courage, freedom, intellectual _libertinage;_ Christian is the hatred
of the _senses,_ of the joys of the senses, of joy in general.
22
When Christianity departed from its native soil, which consisted of the
lowest classes, the _submerged masses_ of the ancient world, and set
forth in quest of power among barbaric nations, it no longer met with
exhausted men but inwardly savage and self-lacerating men—the strong
but bungled men. Here, dissatisfaction with one’s self, suffering
through one’s self, is not as in the case of Buddhism, excessive
irritability and susceptibility to pain, but rather, conversely, it
is an inordinate desire for inflicting pain, for a discharge of the
inner tension in hostile deeds and ideas. Christianity was in need of
_barbaric_ ideas and values, in order to be able to master barbarians:
such are for instance, the sacrifice of the first-born, the drinking
of blood at communion, the contempt of the intellect and of culture;
torture in all its forms, sensual and non-sensual; the great pomp of
the cult Buddhism is a religion for _senile_ men, for races which
have become kind, gentle, and over-spiritual, and which feel pain too
easily (—Europe is not nearly ripe for it yet—); it calls them back
to peace and cheerfulness, to a regimen for the intellect, to a certain
hardening of the body. 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.” Buddhism is a religion for the
close and exhaustion of civilisation; Christianity does not even find
civilisation at hand when it appears, in certain circumstances it lays
the foundation of civilisation.
23
Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times colder, more truthful,
more objective. It no longer requires to justify pain and its
susceptibility to suffering by the interpretation of sin,—it simply
says what it thinks, “I suffer.” To the barbarian, on the other hand,
suffering in itself is not a respectable thing: in order to acknowledge
to himself that he suffers, what he requires, in the first place, is
an explanation (his instinct directs him more readily to deny his
suffering, or to endure it in silence). In his case, the word “devil”
was a blessing: man had an almighty and terrible enemy,—he had no
reason to be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.—
At bottom there are in Christianity one or two subtleties which belong
to the Orient In the first place it knows that it is a matter of
indifference whether a thing be true or not; but that it is of the
highest importance that it should be believed to be true. Truth and
the belief that something is true: two totally separate worlds of
interest, almost _opposite worlds,_ the road to the one and the road to
the other lie absolutely apart To be initiated into this fact almost
constitutes one a sage in the Orient: the Brahmins understood it thus,
so did Plato, and so does every disciple of esoteric wisdom. If for
example it give anyone pleasure to believe himself delivered from sin,
it is _not_ a necessary prerequisite thereto that he should be sinful,
but only that he should _feel_ sinful. If, however, _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._—Buddhism is too full of aged
wisdom, too positivistic to be shrewd in this way.
24
Here I only touch upon the problem of the origin of Christianity.
The first principle of its solution reads: Christianity can be
understood only in relation to the soil out of which it grew,—it is
not a counter-movement against the Jewish instinct, it is the rational
outcome of the latter, one step further in its appalling logic. In
the formula of the Saviour: “for Salvation is of the Jews.”—The
second principle is: the psychological type of the Galilean is still
recognisable, but it was only in a state of utter degeneration (which
is at once a distortion and an overloading with foreign features) that
he was able to serve the purpose for which he has been used,—namely,
as the type of a Redeemer of mankind.
The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world,
because when they were confronted with the question of Being or
non-Being, with simply uncanny deliberateness, they preferred Being
_at any price:_ this price was the fundamental _falsification_ of all
Nature, all the naturalness and all the reality, of the inner quite
as much as of the outer world. They hedged themselves in behind all
those conditions under which hitherto a people has been able to live,
has been allowed to live; of themselves they created an idea which was
the reverse of _natural_ conditions,—each in turn, they twisted first
religion, then the cult, then morality, history and psychology, about
in a manner so perfectly hopeless that they were made _to contradict
their natural value._ We meet with the same phenomena again, and
exaggerated to an incalculable degree, although only as a copy:—the
Christian Church as compared with the “chosen people,” lacks all
claim to originality. Precisely on this account the Jews are the most
_fatal_ people in the history of the world: their ultimate influence
has falsified mankind to such an extent, that even to this day the
Christian can be anti-Semitic in spirit, without comprehending that he
himself is the _final consequence of Judaism._
It was in my “Genealogy of Morals” that I first gave a
psychological exposition of the idea of the antithesis noble and
_resentment-morality,_ the latter having arisen out of an attitude
of negation to the former: but this is Judæo-Christian morality
heart and soul. In order to be able to say Nay to everything that
represents the ascending movement of life, prosperity, power,
beauty, and self-affirmation on earth, the instinct of resentment,
become genius, bad to invent _another_ world, from the standpoint
of which that _Yea-saying_ to life appeared as _the_ most evil and
most abominable thing. From the psychological standpoint the Jewish
people are possessed of the toughest vitality. Transplanted amid
impossible conditions, with profound self-preservative intelligence,
it voluntarily took the side of all the instincts of decadence,—_not_
as though dominated by them, but because it detected a power in them
by means of which it could assert itself _against_ “the world.” The
Jews are the opposite of all _decadents_: they have been forced to
represent them to the point of illusion, and with a _non plus ultra_ of
histrionic genius, they have known how to set themselves at the head
of all decadent movements (St Paul and Christianity for instance), in
order to create something from them which is stronger than every party
_saying Yea to life._ For the category of men which aspires to power in
Judaism and Christianity,—that is to say, for the sacerdotal class,
decadence is but a _means;_ this category of men has a vital interest
in making men sick, and in turning the notions “good” and “bad,” “true”
and “false,” upside down in a manner which is not only dangerous to
life, but also slanders it.
25