salvation as the result of an _idée fixe_ does not constitute a true
idea, the fact that faith moves _no_ mountains, but may very readily
raise them where previously they did not exist—all these things are
made sufficiently clear by a mere casual stroll through a _lunatic
asylum._ Of course _no_ priest would find this sufficient: for he
instinctively denies that illness is illness or that lunatic asylums
are lunatic asylums. Christianity is in _need_ of illness, just as
Ancient Greece was in need of a superabundance of health. The actual
ulterior motive of the whole of the Church’s system of salvation
is to _make people ill._ And is not the Church itself the Catholic
madhouse as an ultimate ideal?—The earth as a whole converted into a
madhouse?—The kind of religious man which the Church aims at producing
is a typical _decadent_ The moment of time at which a religious crisis
attains the ascendancy over a people, is always characterised by
nerve-epidemics; the “inner world” of the religious man is ridiculously
like the “inner world” of over-irritable and exhausted people; the
“highest” states which Christianity holds up to mankind as the value
of values, are epileptic in character,—the Church has pronounced only
madmen _or_ great swindlers _in majorem dei honorem_ holy. Once I
ventured to characterise the whole of the Christian training of penance
and salvation (which nowadays is best studied in England) as a _folie
circulaire_ methodically generated upon a soil which, of course, is
already prepared for it,—that is to say, which is thoroughly morbid.
Not every one who likes can be a Christian: no man is “converted”
to Christianity,—he must be sick enough for it ... We others who
possess enough courage both for health and for contempt, how rightly
_we_ may despise a religion which taught men to misunderstand the
body I which would not rid itself of the superstitions of the soul!
which made a virtue of taking inadequate nourishment! which in health
combats a sort of enemy, devil, temptation! which persuaded itself that
it was possible to bear a perfect soul about in a cadaverous body,
and which, to this end, had to make up for itself a new concept of
“perfection,” a pale, sickly, idiotically gushing ideal,—so-called
“holiness,”—holiness, which in itself is simply a symptom of an
impoverished, enervated and incurably deteriorated body!... The
movement of Christianity, as a European movement, was from first to
last, a general accumulation of the ruck and scum of all sorts and
kinds (—and these, by means of Christianity, aspire to power). It
does _not_ express the downfall of a race, it is rather a conglomerate
assembly of all the decadent elements from everywhere which seek each
other and crowd together. It was not, as some believe, the corruption
of antiquity, of _noble_ antiquity, which made Christianity possible:
the learned idiocy which nowadays tries to support such a notion cannot
be too severely contradicted. At the time when the morbid and corrupted
Chandala classes became Christianised in the whole of the _imperium,_
the very _contrary type,_ nobility, was extant in its finest and
maturest forms. The greatest number became master; the democracy of
Christian instincts triumphed.... Christianity was not “national,” it
was not determined by race,—it appealed to all the disinherited forms
of life, it had its allies everywhere. 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. Again I remind you
of St Paul’s priceless words: “And God hath chosen the _weak_ things
of the world, the _foolish_ things of the world; and _base_ things of
the world, and things which are _despised”_: this was the formula, _in
hoc signo_ decadence triumphed.—_God on the Cross_—does no one yet
understand the terrible ulterior motive of this symbol?—Everything
that suffers, everything that hangs on the cross, is _divine...._ All
of us hang on the cross, consequently we are _divine ..._. We alone are
divine.... Christianity was a victory; a _nobler_ type of character
perished through it,—Christianity has been humanity’s greatest
misfortune hitherto.——
52
Christianity also stands opposed to everything happily constituted
in the _mind,_—it can make use only of morbid reason as Christian
reason; it takes the side of everything idiotic, it utters a curse
upon “intellect,” upon the _superbia_ of the healthy intellect. Since
illness belongs to the essence of Christianity, the typically Christian
state, “faith,” _must_ also be a form of illness, and all straight,
honest and scientific roads to knowledge must be repudiated by the
Church as forbidden.... Doubt in itself is already a sin.... The total
lack of psychological cleanliness in the priest, which reveals itself
in his look, is a _result_ of decadence. Hysterical women, as also
children with scrofulous constitutions, should be observed as a proof
of how invariably instinctive falsity, the love of lying for the sake
of lying, and the in ability either to look or to walk straight, are
the expression of decadence. “Faith” simply means the refusal to know
what is true. The pious person, the priest of both sexes, is false
because he is ill: his instinct _demands_ that truth should not assert
its right anywhere. “That which makes ill is good: that which proceeds
from abundance, from superabundance and from power, is evil”: that
is the view of the faithful. The _constraint to lie_—that is the
sign by which I recognise every predetermined theologian.—Another
characteristic of the theologian is his lack of _capacity_ for
_philology._ What I mean here by the word philology is, in a general
sense to be understood as the art of reading well, of being able to
take account of facts _without_ falsifying them by interpretation,
without losing either caution, patience or subtlety owing to one’s
desire to understand. Philology as _ephexis_[8] in interpretation,
whether one be dealing with books, newspaper reports, human destinies
or meteorological records,—not to speak of the “salvation of the
soul.” ... The manner in which a theologian, whether in Berlin or in
Rome, interprets a verse from the “Scriptures,” or an experience, or
the triumph of his nation’s army for instance, under the superior
guiding light of David’s Psalms, is always so exceedingly _daring,_
that it is enough to make a philologist’s hair stand on end. And what
is he to do, when pietists and other cows from Swabia explain their
miserable every-day lives in their smoky hovels by means of the “Finger
of God,” a miracle of “grace,” of “Providence,” of experiences of
“salvation”! The most modest effort of the intellect, not to speak of
decent feeling, ought at least to lead these interpreters to convince
themselves of the absolute childishness and unworthiness of any such
abuse of the dexterity of God’s fingers. However small an amount of
loving piety we might possess, a god who cured us in time of a cold in
the nose, or who arranged for us to enter a carriage just at the moment
when a cloud burst over our heads, would be such an absurd God, that he
would have to be abolished, even if he existed.[9] God as a domestic
servant, as a postman, as a general provider,—in short, merely a word
for the most foolish kind of accidents.... “Divine Providence,” as it
is believed in to-day by almost every third man in “cultured Germany,”
would be an argument against God, in fact it would be the strongest
argument against God that could be Imagined. And in any case it is an
argument against the Germans.
53
—The notion that martyrs prove anything at all in favour of a thing,
is so exceedingly doubtful, that I would fain deny that there has ever
yet existed a martyr who had anything to do with truth. In the very
manner in which a martyr flings his little parcel of truth at the
head of the world, such a low degree of intellectual honesty and such
obtuseness in regard to the question “truth” makes itself felt, that
one never requires to refute a martyr. Truth is not a thing which one
might have and another be without: only peasants or peasant-apostles,
after the style of Luther, can think like this about truth. You may be
quite sure, that the greater a man’s degree of conscientiousness may
be in matters intellectual, the more modest he will show himself on
this point To _know_ about five things, and with a subtle wave of the
hand to refuse to know _others._ ... “Truth” as it is understood by
every prophet, every sectarian, every free thinker, every socialist and
every church-man, is an absolute proof of the fact that these people
haven’t even begun that discipline of the mind and that process of
self-mastery, which is necessary for the discovery of any small, even
exceedingly small truth.—Incidentally, the deaths of martyrs have
been a great misfortune in the history of the world: they led people
astray.... The conclusion which all idiots, women and common people
come to, that there must be something in a cause for which someone 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. ... Even to this day
it only requires the crude fact of persecution, in order to create an
honourable name for any obscure sect who does not matter in the least
What? is a cause actually changed in any way by the fact that some
one has laid down his life for it? An error which becomes honourable,
is simply an error that possesses one seductive charm the more: do
you suppose, dear theologians, that we shall give you the chance of
acting the martyrs for your lies?—A thing is refuted by being laid
respectfully on ice, and theologians are refuted in the same way. This
was precisely the world-historic foolishness of all persecutors; they
lent the thing they combated a semblance of honour by conferring the
fascination of martyrdom upon it.... Women still lie prostrate before
an error to-day, because they have been told that some one died on the
cross for it _Is the cross then an argument?_—But concerning all these
things, one person alone has said what mankind has been in need of for
thousands of years,—_Zarathustra._
“Letters of blood did they write on the way they went, and their folly
taught that truth is proved by blood.
“But blood is the very worst testimony of truth; blood poisoneth even
the purest teaching, and turneth it into delusion and into blood feuds.
“And when a man goeth through fire for his teaching—what does that
prove? Verily, it is more when out of one’s own burning springeth one’s
own teaching.”[10]
54
Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: great minds are sceptical.
Zarathustra is a sceptic. Strength and the _freedom_ which proceeds
from the power and excessive power of the mind, _manifests_ itself
through scepticism. Men of conviction are of no account whatever
in regard to any principles of value or of non-value. 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.... The great passion of a sceptic, the basis and
power of his being, which is more enlightened and more despotic than he
is himself, enlists all his intellect into its service; it makes him
unscrupulous; it even gives him the courage to employ unholy means;
in certain circumstances it even allows him convictions. Conviction
as a _means:_ much is achieved merely by means of a conviction. Great
passion makes use of and consumes convictions, it does not submit to
them—it knows that it is a sovereign power. Conversely; the need of
faith, of anything either absolutely affirmative or negative, Carlylism
(if I may be allowed this expression), is the need of _weakness._
The man of beliefs, the “believer” of every sort and condition, is
necessarily a dependent man;—he is one who cannot regard _himself_ as
an aim, who cannot postulate aims from the promptings of his own heart
The “believer” does not belong to himself, he can be only a means,
he must be _used up,_ he is in need of someone who uses him up. His
instinct accords the highest honour to a morality of self-abnegation:
everything in him, his prudence, his experience, his vanity, persuade
him to adopt this morality. Every sort of belief is in itself an
expression of self-denial, of self-estrangement. ... If one considers
how necessary a regulating code of conduct is to the majority of
people, a code of conduct which constrains them and fixes them from
outside; and how control, or in a higher sense, _slavery,_ is the only
and ultimate condition under which the weak-willed man, and especially
woman, flourish; one also understands conviction, “faith.” The man
of conviction finds in the latter his _backbone._ To be _blind_ to
many things, to be impartial about nothing, to belong always to a
particular side, to hold a strict and necessary point of view in all
matters of values—these are the only conditions under which such a man
can survive at all. But all this is the reverse of, the _antagonist_
of, the truthful man,—of truth.... The believer is not at liberty to
have a conscience for the question “true” and “untrue”: to be upright
on _this_ point would mean his immediate downfall. The pathological
limitations of his standpoint convert the convinced man into the
fanatic—Savonarola, Luther Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon,—these
are the reverse type of the strong spirit that has become _free._ But
the grandiose poses of these _morbid_ spirits, of these epileptics
of ideas, exercise an influence over the masses,—fanatics are
picturesque, mankind prefers to look at poses than to listen to reason.
55
One step further in the psychology of conviction of “faith.” It
is already some time since I first thought of considering whether
convictions were not perhaps more dangerous enemies of truth than lies
(“Human All-too-Human,” Part I, Aphs. 54 and 483). Now I would fain put
the decisive question: is there any difference at all between a lie
and a conviction?—All the world believes that there is, but what in
Heaven’s name does not all the world believe! Every conviction has its
history, its preliminary stages, its period of groping and of mistakes:
it becomes a conviction only after it has _not_ been one for a long
time, only after it has _scarcely_ been one for a long time. What?
might not falsehood be the embryonic form of conviction?—At times
all that is required is a change of personality: very often what was
a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son.—I call a lie,
to refuse to see something that one sees, to refuse to see it exactly
_as_ one sees it: whether a lie is perpetrated before witnesses or not
is beside the point.—The most common sort of lie is the one uttered
to one’s self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional. Now this
refusal to see what one sees, this refusal to see a thing exactly as
one sees it, is almost the first condition for all those who belong
to a _party_ in any sense whatsoever: the man who belongs to a party
perforce becomes a liar. German historians, for instance, are convinced
that Rome stood for despotism, whereas the Teutons introduced the
spirit of freedom into the world: what difference is there between
this conviction and a lie? After this is it to be wondered at, that
all parties, including German historians, instinctively adopt the
grandiloquent phraseology of morality,—that morality almost owes
its _survival_ to the fact that the man who belongs to a party, no
matter what it may be, is in need of morality every moment?—“This
is our conviction: we confess it to the whole world, we live and die
for it,—let us respect every thing that has a conviction!”—I have
actually heard antisemites speak in this way. On the contrary, my dear
sirs! An antisemite does not become the least bit more respectable
because he lies on principle.... Priests, who in such matters are
more subtle, and who perfectly understand the objection to which the
idea of a conviction lies open—that is to say of a falsehood which
is perpetrated on principle _because_ it serves a purpose, borrowed
from the Jews the prudent measure of setting the concept “God,” “Will
of God,” “Revelation of God,” at this place. Kant, too, with his
categorical imperative, was on the same road: this was his _practical_
reason.—There are some questions in which it is _not_ given to man
to decide between true and false; all the principal questions, all
the principal problems of value, stand beyond human reason.... To
comprehend the limits of reason—this alone is genuine philosophy. For
what purpose did God give man revelation? Would God have done anything
superfluous? Man cannot of his own accord know what is good and what is
evil, that is why God taught man his will.... Moral: the priest does
_not_ lie, such questions as “truth” or “falseness” have nothing to do
with the things concerning which the priest speaks; such things do not
allow of lying. For, in order to lie, it would be necessary to know
_what_ is true in this respect. But that is precisely what man cannot
know: hence the priest is only the mouthpiece of God.—This sort of
sacerdotal syllogism is by no means exclusively Judaic or Christian;
the right to lie and the _prudent measure_ of “revelation” belongs
to the priestly type, whether of decadent periods or of Pagan times
(—Pagans are all those who say yea to life, and to whom “God” is the
word for the great yea to all things). The “law,” the “will of God,”
the “holy book,” and inspiration.—All these things are merely words
for the conditions under which the priest attains to power, and with
which he maintains his power,—these concepts are to be found at the
base of all sacerdotal organisations, of all priestly or philosophical
and ecclesiastical governments. The “holy lie,” which is common to
Confucius, to the law-book of Manu, to Muhamed, and to the Christian
church, is not even absent in Plato. “Truth is here”; this phrase
means, wherever it is uttered: _the priest lies...._
56
After all, the question is, to what _end_ are falsehoods perpetrated?
The fact that, in Christianity, “holy” ends are entirely absent,
constitutes _my_ objection to the means it employs. Its ends are only
_bad_ ends: the poisoning, the calumniation and the denial of life,
the contempt of the body, the degradation and self-pollution of man by
virtue of the concept sin,—consequently its means are bad as well.—My
feelings are quite the reverse when I read the law-book of _Manu, an_
incomparably superior and more intellectual work, which it would be
a sin against the _spirit_ even to _mention_ in the same breath with
the Bible. You will guess immediately why: it has a genuine philosophy
behind it, _in_ it, not merely an evil-smelling Jewish distillation
of Rabbinism and superstition,—it gives something to chew even
to the most fastidious psychologist. And, _not_ to forget the most
important point of all, it is fundamentally different from every kind
of Bible: by means of it the _noble classes,_ the philosophers and the
warriors guard and guide the masses; it is replete with noble values,
it is filled with a feeling of perfection, with a saying of yea to
life, and a triumphant sense of well-being in regard to itself and to
life,—the sun shines upon the whole book.—All those things which
Christianity smothers with its bottomless vulgarity: procreation,
woman, marriage, are here treated with earnestness, with revere nee,
with love and confidence. How can one possibly place in the hands of
children and women, a book that contains those vile words: “to avoid
fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman
have her own husband ... it is better to marry than to burn.”[11]
And is it decent to be a Christian so long as the very origin of
man is Christianised,—that is to say, befouled, by the idea of the
_immaculata conceptio?_ ... I know of no book in which so many delicate
and kindly things are said to woman, as in the Law-Rook of Manu; these
old grey-beards and saints have a manner of being gallant to women
which, perhaps, cannot be surpassed. “The mouth of a woman,” says Manu
on one occasion, “the breast of a maiden, the prayer of a child, and
the smoke of the sacrifice, are always pure.” Elsewhere he says: “there
is nothing purer than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow,
air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden.” And finally—perhaps this
is also a holy lie:—“all the openings of the body above the navel are
pure, all those below the navel are impure. Only in a maiden is the
whole body pure.”
57