the end aspired to by Christianity be compared with that of the
Law-Book of Manu; if only these two utterly opposed aims be put under
a strong light The critic of Christianity simply cannot avoid making
Christianity _contemptible._—A Law-Book like that of Manu comes into
being like every good law-book: it epitomises the experience, the
precautionary measures, and the experimental morality of long ages,
it settles things definitely, it no longer creates. The prerequisite
for a codification of this kind, is the recognition of the fact that
the means which procure authority for a _truth_ to which it has cost
both time and great pains to attain, are fundamentally different from
those with which that same truth would be proved. A law-book never
relates the utility, the reasons, the preliminary casuistry, of a
law: for it would be precisely in this way that it would forfeit its
imperative tone, the “thou shalt,” the first condition of its being
obeyed. The problem lies exactly in this.—At a certain stage in the
development of a people, the most far-seeing class within it (that is
to say, the class that sees farthest backwards and forwards), declares
the experience of how its fellow-creatures ought to live—_can_
live—to be finally settled. Its object is, to reap as rich and as
complete a harvest as possible, in return for the ages of experiment
and _terrible_ experience it has traversed. Consequently, that which
has to be avoided, above all, is any further experimentation, the
continuation of the state when values are still fluid, the testing,
choosing, and criticising of values _in infinitum. _ Against all this a
double wall is built up: in the first place, _Revelation,_ which is the
assumption that the rationale of every law is not human in its origin,
that it was not sought and found after ages of error, but that it is
divine in its origin, completely and utterly without a history, gift, a
miracle, a mere communication.... And secondly, _tradition,_ which is
the assumption that the law has obtained since the most primeval times,
that it is impious and a crime against one’s ancestors to attempt to
doubt it. The authority of law is established on the principles: God
_gave_ it, the ancestors _lived_ it.—The superior reason of such a
procedure lies in the intention to draw consciousness off step by step
from that mode of life which has been recognised as correct (_i.e.,
proved_ after enormous and carefully examined experience), so that
perfect automatism of the instincts may be attained,—this being the
only possible basis of all mastery of every kind of perfection in
the Art of Life. To draw up a law-book like Manu’s, is tantamount
to granting a people mastership for the future, perfection for the
future,—the right to aspire to the highest Art of Life. _To that
end it must be made unconscious;_ this is the object of every holy
lie.—_The order of castes,_ the highest, the dominating law, is only
the sanction of a _natural order,_ of a natural legislation of the
first rank, over which no arbitrary innovation, no “modern idea” has
any power. Every healthy society falls into three distinct types, which
reciprocally condition one another and which gravitate differently in
the physiological sense; and each of these has its own hygiene, its
own sphere of work, its own special feeling of perfection, and its
own mastership. It is Nature, not Manu, that separates from the rest,
those individuals preponderating in intellectual power, those excelling
in muscular strength and temperament, and the third class which is
distinguished neither in one way nor the other, the mediocre,—the
latter as the greatest number, the former as the _élite._ The superior
caste—I call them the _fewest,_—has, as the perfect caste, the
privileges of the fewest: it devolves upon them to represent happiness,
beauty and goodness on earth. Only the most intellectual men have
the right to beauty, to the beautiful: only in them is goodness not
weakness. _Pulchrum est paucorum hominum:_ goodness is a privilege.
On the other hand there is nothing which they should be more strictly
forbidden than repulsive manners or a pessimistic look, a look that
makes everything _seem ugly,_—or even indignation at the general
aspect of things. Indignation is the privilege of the Chandala, and so
is pessimism. “_The world is perfect_”—that is what the instinct of
the most intellectual says, the yea-saying instinct; “imperfection,
every kind of _inferiority_ to us, distance, the pathos of distance,
even the Chandala belongs to this perfection.” The most intellectual
men, as the _strongest_ find their happiness where others meet
with their ruin: in the labyrinth, in hardness towards themselves
and others, in endeavour; their delight is self-mastery: with them
asceticism becomes a second nature, a need, an instinct They regard
a difficult task as their privilege; to play with burdens which crush
their fellows is to them a _recreation...._ Knowledge, a form of
asceticism.—They are the most honourable kind of men: but that does
not prevent them from being the most cheerful and most gracious. They
rule, not because they will, but because they _are;_ they are not at
liberty to take a second place.—The second in rank are the guardians
of the law, the custodians of order and of security, the noble
warriors, the king, above all, as the highest formula of the warrior,
the judge, and keeper of the law. The second in rank are the executive
of the most intellectual, the nearest to them in duty, relieving them
of all that is _coarse_ in the work of ruling,—their retinue, their
right hand, their best disciples. In all this, I repeat, there is
nothing arbitrary, nothing “artificial,” that which is _otherwise_ is
artificial,—by that which is otherwise, nature is put to shame.... The
order of castes, and the order of rank merely formulates the supreme
law of life itself; the differentiation of the three types is necessary
for the maintenance of society, and for enabling higher and highest
types to be reared,—the _inequality_ of rights is the only condition
of there being rights at all.—A right is a privilege. And in his
way, each has his privilege. Let us not underestimate the privileges
of the _mediocre._ Life always gets harder towards the summit,—the
cold increases, responsibility increases. A high civilisation is a
pyramid: it can stand only upon a broad base, its first prerequisite is
a strongly and soundly consolidated mediocrity. Handicraft, commerce,
agriculture, science, the greater part of art,—in a word, the whole
range of professional and business callings, is compatible only with
mediocre ability and ambition; such pursuits would be out of place
among exceptions, the instinct pertaining thereto would oppose not
only aristocracy but anarchy as well. The fact that one is publicly
useful, a wheel, a function, presupposes a certain natural destiny: it
is not _society,_ but the only kind of _happiness_ of which the great
majority are capable, that makes them intelligent machines. For the
mediocre it is a joy to be mediocre; in them mastery in one thing, a
speciality, is a natural instinct. It would be absolutely unworthy of
a profound thinker to see any objection in mediocrity _per se._ For
in itself it is the first essential condition under which exceptions
are possible; a high culture is determined by it. When the exceptional
man treats the mediocre with more tender care than he does himself or
his equals, this is not mere courtesy of heart on his part—but simply
his _duty._ ... Whom do I hate most among the rabble of the present
day? The socialistic 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. What is _bad?_ But I have already replied to
this: Everything that proceeds from weakness, envy and _revenge._—The
anarchist and the Christian are offspring of the same womb....
58
In point of fact, it matters greatly to what end one lies: whether one
preserves or _destroys_ by means of falsehood. It is quite justifiable
to bracket the _Christian_ and the _Anarchist_ together: their object,
their instinct, is concerned only with destruction. The proof of this
proposition can be read quite plainly from history: history spells it
with appalling distinctness. Whereas we have just seen a religious
legislation, whose object was to render the highest possible means of
making life _flourish,_ and of making a grand organisation of society,
eternal,—Christianity found its mission in putting an end to such an
organisation, _precisely because life flourishes through it._ In the
one case, the net profit to the credit of reason, acquired through
long ages of experiment and of insecurity, is applied usefully to the
most remote ends, and the harvest, which is as large, as rich and
as complete as possible, is reaped and garnered: in the other case,
on the contrary, the harvest is _blighted_ in a single night That
which stood there, _ære perennius,_ the _imperium Romanum,_ the most
magnificent form of organisation, under difficult conditions, that has
ever been achieved, and compared with which everything that preceded,
and everything which followed it, is mere patchwork, gimcrackery,
and dilettantism,—those holy anarchists made it their “piety,” to
destroy “the world”—that is to say, the _imperium Romanum,_ until
no two stones were left standing one on the other,—until even the
Teutons and other clodhoppers were able to become master of it The
Christian and the anarchist are both decadents; they are both incapable
of acting in any other way than disintegratingly, poisonously and
witheringly, like _blood-suckers;_ 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....
Christianity was the vampire of the _imperium Romanum,_—in a night
it shattered the stupendous achievement of the Romans, which was to
acquire the territory for a vast civilisation which could _bide its
time._—Does no one understand this yet? The _imperium Romanum_ that
we know, and which the history of the Roman province teaches us to
know ever more thoroughly, this most admirable work of art on a grand
scale, was the beginning, its construction was calculated _to prove_
its worth by millenniums,—unto this day nothing has ever again been
built in this fashion, nor have men even dreamt since of building on
this scale _sub specie aterni!_—This organisation was sufficiently
firm to withstand bad emperors: the accident of personalities must
have nothing to do with such matters—the _first_ principle of all
great architecture. But it was not sufficiently firm to resist the
_corruptest_ form of corruption, to resist the Christians.... These
stealthy canker-worms, which under the shadow of night, mist and
duplicity, insinuated themselves into the company of every individual,
and proceeded to drain him of all seriousness for _real_ things,
of all his instinct for _realities;_ this cowardly, effeminate and
sugary gang have step by step alienated all “souls” from this colossal
edifice,—those valuable, virile and noble natures who felt that
the cause of Rome was their own personal cause, their own personal
seriousness, their own personal _pride._ The stealth of the bigot,
the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell such as
the sacrifice of the innocent, the _unto mystica_ in the drinking
of blood, above all the slowly kindled fire of revenge, of Chandala
revenge—such things became master of Rome, the same kind of religion
on the pre-existent form of which Epicurus had waged war. One has
only to read Lucretius in order to understand what Epicurus combated,
_not_ Paganism, but “Christianity,” that is to say the corruption of
souls through the concept of guilt, through the concept of punishment
and immortality. He combated the _subterranean_ cults, the whole of
latent Christianity—to deny immortality was at that time a genuine
_deliverance._—And Epicurus had triumphed, every respectable thinker
in the Roman Empire was an Epicurean: _then St Paul appeared_ ... St
Paul, the Chandala hatred against Rome, against “the world,” the Jew,
the eternal Jew _par excellence,_ become flesh and genius. ... What
he divined was, how, by the help of the small sectarian Christian
movement, independent of Judaism, a universal conflagration could be
kindled; how, with the symbol of the “God on the Cross,” everything
submerged, everything secretly insurrectionary, the whole offspring
of anarchical intrigues could be gathered together to constitute an
enormous power. “For salvation is of the Jews.”—Christianity is
the formula for the supersession, _and_ epitomising of all kinds of
subterranean cults, that of Osiris, of the Great Mother, of Mithras for
example: St Paul’s genius consisted in his discovery of this. In this
matter his instinct was so certain, that, regardless of doing violence
to truth, he laid the ideas by means of which those Chandala religions
fascinated, upon the very lips of the “Saviour” he had invented, and
not only upon his lips,—that he _made_ out of him something which even
a Mithras priest could understand.... This was his moment of Damascus:
he saw that he had _need of_ the belief in immortality in order to
depreciate “the world,” that the notion of “hell” would become master
of Rome, that with a “Beyond” _this life_ can be killed. ... Nihilist
and Christian,—they rhyme in German, and they do not only rhyme.
59
The whole labour of the ancient world _in vain:_ I am at a loss for a
word which could express my feelings at something so atrocious.—And
in view of the fact that its labour was only preparatory, that with
adamantine self-consciousness it laid the substructure, alone, to
a work which was to last millenniums, the whole _significance_ of
the ancient world was certainly in vain!... What was the use of the
Greeks? what was the use of the Romans?—All the prerequisites of a
learned culture, all the scientific methods already existed, the great
and peerless art of reading well had already been established—that
indispensable condition to tradition, to culture and to scientific
unity; natural science hand in hand with mathematics and mechanics
was on the best possible road,—the sense for facts, the last and
most valuable of all senses, had its schools, and its tradition was
already centuries old! Is this understood? Everything _essential_ had
been discovered to make it possible for work to be begun:—methods,
and this cannot be said too often, are the essential thing, also the
most difficult thing, while they moreover have to wage the longest war
against custom and indolence. That which to-day we have successfully
reconquered for ourselves, by dint of unspeakable self-discipline—for
in some way or other all of us still have the bad instincts, the
Christian instincts, in our body,—the impartial eye for reality,
the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest details,
complete _uprightness_ in knowledge,—all this was already there; it
had been there over two thousand years before! And in addition to this
there was also that excellent and subtle tact and taste! _Not_ in the
form of brain drilling! _Not_ in the form of “German” culture with the
manners of a boor! But incarnate, manifesting itself in men’s bearing
and in their instinct,—in short constituting reality.... _All this
in vain!_ In one night it became merely a memory!—The Greeks! The
Romans! Instinctive nobility, instinctive taste, methodic research,
the genius of organisation and administration, faith, the _will_ to
the future of mankind, the great _yea_ to all things materialised
in the _imperium Romanum,_ become visible to all the senses, grand
style no longer manifested in mere art, but in reality, in truth,
in _life._—And buried in a night, not by a natural catastrophe!
Not stamped to death by Teutons and other heavy-footed vandals!
But destroyed by crafty, stealthy, invisible anæmic vampires! Not
conquered,—but only drained of blood!... The concealed lust of
revenge, miserable envy become _master!_ Everything wretched, inwardly
ailing, and full of ignoble feelings, the whole Ghetto-world of souls,
was in a trice _uppermost!_—One only needs to read any one of the
Christian agitators—St Augustine, for instance,—in order to realise,
in order to _smell,_ what filthy fellows came to the top in this
movement. You would deceive yourselves utterly if you supposed that the
leaders of the Christian agitation showed any lack of understanding
—Ah! they were shrewd, shrewd to the point of holiness were these
dear old Fathers of the Church I What they lack is something quite
different. Nature neglected them,—it forgot to give them a modest
dowry of decent, of respectable and of _cleanly_ instincts.... Between
ourselves, they are not even men. If Islam despises Christianity, it is
justified a thousand times over; for Islam presupposes men.
60
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 rare and refined luxuries of the Moors!
... Later on the Crusaders waged war upon something before which it
would have been more seemly in them to grovel in the dust,—a culture,
beside which even our Nineteenth Century would seem very poor and
very “senile.”—Of course they wanted booty: the Orient was rich....
For goodness’ sake let us forget our prejudices! Crusades—superior
piracy, that is all! German nobility—that is to say, a Viking nobility
at bottom, was in its element in such wars: the Church was only too
well aware of how German nobility is to be won.... German nobility
was always the “Swiss Guard” of the Church, always at the service of
all the bad instincts of the Church; but it was _well paid for it
all...._ Fancy the Church having waged its deadly war upon everything
noble on earth, precisely with the help of German swords, German blood
and courage! A host of painful _questions_ might be raised on this
point German nobility scarcely takes a place in the history of higher
culture: the reason of this is obvious; Christianity, alcohol—the two
_great_ means of corruption. As a matter of fact choice ought to be
just as much out of the question between Islam and Christianity, as
between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already self-evident; nobody
is at liberty to exercise a choice in this matter. A man is either of
the Chandala or he is _not ..._ “War with Rome to the knife! Peace
and friendship with Islam”: this is what that great free spirit, that
genius among German emperors,—Frederick the Second, not only felt
but also _did._ What? Must a German in the first place be a genius, a
free-spirit, in order to have _decent_ feelings? I cannot understand
how a German was ever able to have _Christian_ feelings.
Here it is necessary to revive a memory which will be a hundred times
more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed the last great
harvest of culture which was to be garnered for Europe,—it destroyed
the _Renaissance._ Does anybody at last understand, _will_ anybody
understand what the Renaissance was? _The transvaluation of Christian
values,_ the attempt undertaken with all means, all instincts and all
genius to make the _opposite_ values, the _noble_ values triumph,...
Hitherto there has been only _this_ great war: there has never yet
been a more decisive question than the Renaissance,—_my_ question
is the question of the Renaissance:—there has never been a more
fundamental, a more direct and a more severe _attack,_ delivered with
a whole front upon the centre of the foe. To attack at the decisive
quarter, at the very seat of Christianity, and there to place _noble_
values on the throne,—that is to say, to _introduce_ them into the
instincts, into the most fundamental needs and desires of those
sitting there.... I see before me a possibility perfectly magic in
its charm and glorious colouring—it seems to me to scintillate
with all the quivering grandeur of refined beauty, that there is
an art at work within it which is so divine, so infernally divine,
that one might seek through millenniums in vain for another such
possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in meaning and so wonderfully
paradoxical to boot, that it would be enough to make all the gods of
Olympus rock with immortal laughter,—_Cæsar Borgia as Pope._ ...
Do you understand me? ... Very well then, this would have been the
triumph which I alone am longing for to-day:—this would have _swept_
Christianity _away!_—What happened? A German monk, Luther, came to
Rome. This monk, with all the vindictive instincts of an abortive
priest in his body, foamed with rage over the Renaissance in Rome....
Instead of, with the profoundest gratitude, understanding the vast
miracle that had taken place, the overcoming of Christianity at its
_headquarters,_—the fire of his hate knew only how to draw fresh fuel
from this spectacle. A religious man thinks only of himself.—Luther
saw the corruption of the Papacy when the very reverse stared him in
the face: the old corruption, the _peceatum originate,_ Christianity
_no_ longer sat upon the Papal chair! But Life! The triumph of
Life! The great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things!...
And Luther reinstated the Church; he attacked it The Renaissance
thus became an event without meaning, a great _in vain!_—Ah these
Germans, what have they not cost us already! In vain—this has always
been the achievement of the Germans.—The Reformation, Leibniz,
Kant and so-called German philosophy, the Wars of Liberation, the
Empire—in each case are in vain for something which had already
existed, for something which _cannot be recovered._ ... I confess it,
these Germans are my enemies: I despise every sort of uncleanliness
in concepts and valuations in them, every kind of cowardice in the
face of every honest yea or nay. For almost one thousand years, now,
they have tangled and confused everything they have laid their hands
on; they have on their conscience all the half-measures, all the
three-eighth measures of which Europe is sick; they also have the
most unclean, the most incurable, and the most irrefutable kind of
Christianity—Protestantism—on their conscience.... If we shall never
be able to get rid of Christianity, the _Germans_ will be to blame.
62
—With this I will now conclude and pronounce my judgment. 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 He, and every honest impulse into an ignominy of the
soul. Let anyone 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....
And _time_ is reckoned from the _dies nefastus_ upon which this
fatality came into being—from the first day of Christianity!—_why
not rather from its last day?—From to-day?_—Transvaluation of all
Values!...
[1] The German “_Tüchtigkeit_” has a nobler ring than our word
“efficiency.”—TR.
[2] _Cf._ Disraeli: “But enlightened Europe is not happy. Its existence
is a fever which it calls progress. Progress to what?” (“Tancred,” Book
III., Chap, vii.).—TR.
[3] It will be seen from this that in spite of Nietzsche’s ruthless
criticism of the priests, he draws a sharp distinction between
Christianity and the Church. As the latter still contained elements
of order, it was more to his taste than the denial of authority
characteristic of real Christianity.—TR.
[4] “_reine Thorheit_” in the German text, referring once again to
Parsifal.—Tr.
[5] This applies apparently to Bismarck, the forger of the Ems telegram
and a sincere Christian.—Tr.
[6] An adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Well roared, lion” (_Mid. N. D.,_
Act 5, Sc. i.), the lion, as is well known, being the symbol for St
Mark in Christian literature and Art—TR.
[7] A parody on a line in Schiller’s “_Jungfrau von Orleans_” (Act 3,
Sc. vi.): “_Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens._” (With
stupidity even the gods themselves struggle in vain).—TR.
[8] ἒφεξις = Lat. Retentio, Inhibitio (Stephanus, Thesaurus Græcæ
Linguæ); therefore: reserve, caution. The Greek Sceptics were also
called Ephectics owing to their caution in judging and in concluding
from facts.—TR.
[9] The following passage from Multatuti will throw light on this
passage:—
“Father:—‘Behold, my son, how wisely Providence has arranged
everything! This bird lays its eggs in its nest and the young will be
hatched just about the time when there will be worms and flies with
which to feed them. Then they will sing a song of praise in honour of
the Creator who overwhelms his creatures with blessings.’—
“Son:—‘Will the worms join in the song, Dad?’”.—TR.
[10] “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” The Priests.—TR.
[11] I Corinthians vii. 2, 9.—TR.
THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE
AND
EXPLANATORY NOTES TO “THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.”
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
The notes concerning the Eternal Recurrence, in this volume, are said
by Mrs Foerster-Nietzsche to have been the first that Nietzsche ever
wrote on the subject of his great doctrine. This being so, they must
have been composed towards the autumn of the year 1881.