They
understood Him only according to the limitations
of their own spirit.
understood Him only according to the limitations
of their own spirit.
Nietzsche - v14 - Will to Power - a
The awaken-
ing of such a feeling must be pictured; it is a sort
of ecstasy, a strange language, a “Gospel”-it was
this newness which did not allow man to attribute
love to himself—he thought it was God leading
him on and taking shape in his heart. “God
descends among men," one's neighbour is trans-
figured and becomes a God (in so far as he provokes
the sentiment of love). Jesus
Jesus is the neighbour, the
moment He is transfigured in thought into a God,
and into a cause provoking the feeling of power.
177.
Believers are aware that they owe an infinite
amount to Christianity, and therefore conclude
that its Founder must have been a man of the
first rank. . . . This conclusion is false, but it is
typical of the reverents. Regarded objectively,
it is, in the first place, just possible that they are
mistaken concerning the extent of their debt to
Christianity: a man's convictions prove nothing
concerning the thing he is convinced about, and
in religions they are more likely to give rise to
suspicions. . . . Secondly, it is possible that the
debt owing to Christianity is not due to its
Founder at all, but to the whole structure, the
## p. 149 (#173) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
149
whole thing--to the Church, etc. The notion
“Founder" is so very equivocal, that it may stand
even for the accidental cause of a movement:
the person of the Founder has been inflated in
proportion as the Church has grown: but even
this process of veneration allows of the conclusion
that, at one time or other, this Founder was some-
thing exceedingly insecure and doubtful—in the
beginning. . . . Let any one think of the free and
easy way in which Paul treats the problem of the
personality of Jesus, how he almost juggles with
it: some one who died, who was seen after His
death,—some one whom the Jews delivered up to
death—all this was only the theme-Paul wrote
the music to it.
C
178.
The founder of a religion may be quite insignifi-
cant-a wax vesta and no more!
179.
Concerning the psychological problem of Christi-
anity. — The driving forces are: resentment,
popular insurrection, the revolt of the bungled and
the botched. (In Buddhism it is different: it is
not born of resentment. It rather combats resent-
ment because the latter leads to action. )
This party, which stands for freedom, under-
stands that the abandonment of antagonism in
thought and deed is a condition of distinction and
preservation.
Here lies the psychological difficulty
which has stood in the way of Christianity being
## p. 150 (#174) ############################################
150
THE WILL TO POWER.
understood : the force which created it, urges to
a struggle against itself.
Only as a party standing for peace and innocence
can this insurrectionary movement hope to be
successful: it must conquer by means of excessive
mildness, sweetness, softness, and its instincts are
aware of this. The feat was to deny and con-
demn the force, of which man is the expression,
and to press the reverse of that force continually
to the fore, by word and deed.
180.
The pretence of youthfulness. It is a mistake
to imagine that, with Christianity, an ingenuous
and youthful people rose against an old culture;
the story goes that it was out of the lowest levels
of society, where Christianity flourished and shot
its roots, that the more profound source of life
gushed forth afresh : but nothing can be under-
stood of the psychology of Christianity, if it be
supposed that it was the expression of revived
youth among a people, or of the resuscitated
strength of a race. It is rather a typical form of
decadence, of moral-softening and of hysteria,
amid a general hotch-potch of races and people
that had lost all aims and had grown weary and
sick. The wonderful company which gathered
round this master-seducer of the populace, would
not be at all out of place in a Russian novel : all
the diseases of the nerves seem to give one
another rendezvous in
in this crowd the
absence of a known duty, the feeling that every-
a
## p. 151 (#175) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
151
thing is nearing its end, that nothing is any longer
worth while, and that contentment lies in dolce
far niente.
The power and certainty of the future in the
Jew's instinct, its monstrous will for life and for
power, lies in its ruling classes; the people who
upheld primitive Christianity are best dis-
tinguished by this exhausted condition of their
instincts. On the one hand, they are sick of every-
thing; on the other, they are content with each
other, with themselves and for themselves.
>
181.
Christianity regarded as emancipated Judaism
(just as a nobility which is both racial and in-
digenous ultimately emancipates itself from these
conditions, and goes in search of kindred
elements. . . . ).
(1) As a Church (community) on the territory
of the State, as an unpolitical institution.
(2) As life, breeding, practice, art of living.
(3) As a religion of sin (sin committed against
God, being the only recognised kind, and the only
cause of all suffering), with a universal cure for it.
There is no sin save against God; what is done
against men, man shall not sit in judgment upon,
nor call to account, except in the name of God.
At the same time, all commandments (love):
everything is associated with God, and all acts are
performed according to God's will. Beneath this
arrangement there lies exceptional intelligence
(a very narrow life, such as that led by the
## p. 152 (#176) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
Esquimaux, can only be endured by most peaceful
and indulgent people: the Judæo-Christian dogma
turns against sin in favour of the “ sinner").
182.
The Jewish priesthood understood how to
present everything it claimed to be right as a
divine precept, as an act of obedience to God, and
also to introduce all those things which conduced
to preserve Israel and were the conditions of its
existence (for instance: the large number of
“ works”: circumcision and the cult of sacrifices, as
the very pivot of the national conscience), not as
Nature, but as God.
This process continued; within the very heart of
Judaism, where the need of these “works” was not
felt (that is to say, as a means of keeping a race
distinct), a priestly sort of man was pictured, whose
bearing towards the aristocracy was like that of
“noble nature”; a spontaneous and non-caste
sacerdotalism of the soul, which now, in order to
throw its opposite into strong relief, attaches value,
not to the “dutiful acts” themselves, but to the
sentiment. i . .
At bottom, the problem was once again, how
to make a certain kind of soul prevail : it was also
a popular insurrection in the midst of a priestly
people-a pietistic movement coming from below
(sinners, publicans, women, and children). Jesus
of Nazareth was the symbol of their sect. And
again, in order to believe in themselves, they were
in need of a theological transfiguration: they
require nothing less than “the Son of God” in
## p. 153 (#177) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
153
order to create a belief for themselves. And just
as the priesthood had falsified the whole history
of Israel, another attempt was made, here, to alter
and falsify the whole history of mankind in such
a way as to make Christianity seem like the most
important event it contained. This movement
could have originated only upon the soil of Judaism,
the main feature of which was the confounding of
guilt with sorrow and the reduction of all sin to
sin against God. Of all this, Christianity is the
second degree of power.
183.
The symbolism of Christianity is based upo
that of Judaism, which had already transfigured
all reality (history, Nature) into a holy and
artificial unreality—which refused to recognise
real history, and which showed no more interest
in a natural course of things.
184.
--
.
.
The Jews made the attempt to prevail, after
two of their castes—the warrior and the agri-
cultural castes, had disappeared from their midst.
In this sense they are the “castrated people”: they
have their priests and then their Chandala.
How easily a disturbance occurs among them-
an insurrection of their Chandala. This was the
origin of Christianity.
Owing to the fact that they had no knowledge of
warriors except as their masters, they introduced
## p. 154 (#178) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
enmity towards the nobles, the men of honour,
pride, and power, and the ruling classes, into their
religion: they are pessimists from indignation. . . .
Thus they created a very important and novel
position: the priests in the van of the Chandala
-against the noble classes. . .
Christianity was the logical conclusion of this
movement: even in the Jewish priesthood, it still
scented the existence of the caste, of the privileged
and noble minority-it therefore did away with
priests.
Christ is the unit of the Chandala who removes
the priest
the Chandala who redeems
himself.
That is why the French Revolution is the lineal
descendant and the continuator of Christianity-
it is characterised by an instinct of hate towards
castes, nobles, and the last privileges.
.
.
185.
The “Christian Ideal” put on the stage with
Jewish astuteness these are the fundamental
psychological forces of its “nature":-
Revolt against the ruling spiritual powers ;
The attempt to make those virtues which facili-
tate the happiness of the lowly, a standard of all
values—in fact, to call God that which is no
more than the self-preservative instinct of that
class of man possessed of least vitality;
Obedience and absolute abstention from war
and resistance, justified by this ideal ;
## p. 155 (#179) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION,
155
The love of one another as a result of the love
of God.
The trick : The denial of all natural mobilia,
and their transference to the spiritual world
beyond . . . the exploitation of virtue and its
veneration for wholly interested motives, gradual
denial of virtue in everything that is not Christian.
.
186.
The profound contempt with which the Christian
was treated by the noble people of antiquity, is of
the same order as the present instinctive aversion
to Jews: it is the hatred which free and self-
respecting classes feel towards those who wish to
creep in secretly, and who combine an awkward
bearing with foolish self-sufficiency.
The New Testament is the gospel of a com-
pletely ignoble species of man; its pretensions to
highest values—yea, to all values, is, as a matter
of fact, revolting-even nowadays.
187.
How little the subject matters ! It is the spirit
which gives the thing life! What a quantity o
stuffy and sick-room air there is in all that chattet
about“ redemption,”“ love," “ blessedness," “ faith,"
"truth" ”
, ,” “eternal life”! Let any one look into a
really pagan book and compare the two; for in-
stance, in Petronius, nothing at all is done, said,
desired, and valued, which, according to a bigoted
Christian estimate, is not sin, or even deadly sin.
And yet how happy one feels with the purer air, the
>
## p. 156 (#180) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
superior intellectuality, the quicker pace, and the free
overflowing strength which is certain of the future!
In the whole of the New Testament there is not
one bouffonnerie: but that fact alone would suffice
to refute any book. . . .
188.
The profound lack of dignity with which all life,
which is not Christian, is condemned: it does not
suffice them to think meanly of their actual oppon-
ents, they cannot do with less than a general
slander of everything that is not themselves. . . .
An abject and crafty soul is in the most perfect
harmony with the arrogance of piety, as witness
the early Christians.
The future : they see that they are heavily paid
for it. . . . Theirs is the muddiest kind of spirit
that exists. The whole of Christ's life is so arranged
as to confirm the prophecies of the Scriptures :
He behaves in suchwise in order that they may be
right.
189.
The deceptive interpretation of the words, the
doings, and the condition of dying people; the
natural fear of death, for instance, is systematically
confounded with the supposed fear of what is to
happen "after death. ”
190.
The Christians have done exactly what the Jews
did before them. They introduced what they
## p. 157 (#181) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
157
conceived to be an innovation and a thing
necessary to self-preservation into their Master's
teaching, and wove His life into it. They likewise
credited Him with all the wisdom of a maker of
proverbs—in short, they represented their every-
day life and activity as an act of obedience, and
thus sanctified their propaganda.
What it all depends upon, may be gathered
from Paul : it is not much. What remains is
the development of a type of saint, out of the
values which these people regarded as saintly.
The whole of the “ doctrine of miracles,” in-
cluding the resurrection, is the result of self-
glorification on the part of the community, which
ascribed to its Master those qualities it ascribed
to itself, but in a higher degree (or, better still, it
derived its strength from Him. . . . ).
.
191.
The Christians have never led the life which
Jesus commanded them to lead, and the impudent
fable of the “justification by faith,” and its unique
and transcendental significance, is only the result
of the Church's lack of courage and will in acknow-
ledging those "works" which Jesus commanded.
The Buddhist behaves differently from the non-
Buddhist; but the Christian behaves as all the rest
of the world does, and possesses a Christianity of
ceremonies and states of the soul.
The profound and contemptible falsehood of
Christianity in Europe makes us deserve the con-
tempt of the Arabs, Hindoos, and Chinese,
.
## p. 158 (#182) ############################################
158
THE WILL TO POWER.
Let any one listen to the words of the first German
statesman, concerning that which has preoccupied
Europe for the last forty years.
192.
“ Faith" or "works "'? —But that the “works,"
the habit of particular works may engender a certain
set of values or thoughts, is just as natural as it
would be unnatural for “works" to proceed from
mere valuations. Man must practise, not how to
strengthen feelings of value, but how to strengthen
action: first of all, one must be able to do some-
thing. . . . Luther's Christian Dilettantism. Faith
is an asses' bridge. The background consists of
a profound conviction on the part of Luther and
his peers, that they are unable to accomplish
Christian “works," a personal fact, disguised
under an extreme doubt as to whether all action
is not sin and devil's work, so that the worth of
life depends upon isolated and highly-strained
conditions of inactivity (prayer, effusion, etc. ). —
Ultimately, Luther would be right: the instincts
which are expressed by the whole bearing of the
reformers are the most brutal that exist. Only
in turning absolutely away from themselves, and in
becoming absorbed in the opposite of themselves,
only by means of an illusion ("faith") was
existence endurable to them.
193
“What was to be done in order to believe? ”-
an absurd question. That which is wrong with
## p. 159 (#183) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
159
Christianity is, that it does none of the things
that Christ commanded.
It is a mean life, but seen through the eye of
contempt.
194.
The entrance into the real life-a man saves
his own life by living the life of the multitude.
195.
Christianity has become something fundament-
ally different from what its Founder wished it to
be. It is the great anti-pagan movement of anti-
quity, formulated with the use of the life, teaching,
and “words” of the Founder of Christianity, but
interpreted quite arbitrarily, according to a scheme
embodying profoundly different needs : translated
into the language of all the subterranean religions
then existing.
It is the rise of Pessimism (whereas Jesus
wished to bring the peace and the happiness of
the lambs): and moreover the Pessimism of the
weak, of the inferior, of the suffering, and of the
oppressed.
Its mortal enemies are (1) Power, whether in
the form of character, intellect, or taste, and
“ worldliness"; (2) the “good cheer” of classical
times, the noble levity and scepticism, hard pride,
eccentric dissipation, and cold frugality of the sage,
Greek refinement in manners, words, and form.
Its mortal enemy is as much the Roman as the
Greek,
«
## p. 160 (#184) ############################################
160
THE WILL TO POWER.
The attempt on the part of anti-paganism to
establish itself on a philosophical basis, and to
make its tenets possible: it shows a taste for the
ambiguous figures of antique culture, and above
all for Plato, who was, more than any other, an
anti-Hellene and Semite in instinct.
. . . It also
shows a taste for Stoicism, which is essentially
the work of Semites (“ dignity” is regarded as
severity, law; virtue is held to be greatness, self-
responsibility, authority, greatest sovereignty over
oneself-this is Semitic. The Stoic is an Arabian
sheik wrapped in Greek togas and notions.
196.
Christianity only resumes the fight which had
already been begun against the classical ideal and
noble religion.
As a matter of fact, the whole process of
transformation is only an adaptation to the
needs and to the level of intelligence of religious
masses then existing :—those masses
which
believed in Isis, Mithras, Dionysos, and the
“ great mother," and which demanded the follow-
ing things of a religion: (1) hopes of a beyond,
(2) the bloody phantasmagoria of animal sacrifice
(the mystery), (3) holy legend and the redeeming
deed, (4) asceticism, denial of the world, super-
stitious "purification," (5) a hierarchy as a part
of the community. In
short, Christianity
everywhere fitted the already prevailing and
increasing anti-pagan tendency—those cults which
Epicurus combated,- or more exactly, those
## p. 161 (#185) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
161
religions proper to the lower herd, women, slaves,
and ignoble classes.
The misunderstandings are therefore the
following:-
(1) The immortality of the individual;
(2) The assumed existence of another world;
(3) The absurd notion of punishment and
expiation in the heart of the interpretation of
existence;
(4) The profanation of the divine nature of
man, instead of its accentuation, and the con-
struction of a very profound chasm, which can
only be crossed by the help of a miracle or by
means of the most thorough self-contempt;
(5) The whole world of corrupted imagination
and morbid passion, instead of a simple and
loving life of action, instead of Buddhistic
happiness attainable on earth;
(6) An ecclesiastical order with a priesthood,
theology, cults, and sacraments; in short, every-
thing that Jesus of Nazareth combated;
(7) The miraculous in everything and every-
body, superstition too: while precisely the trait
which distinguished Judaism and primitive
Christianity was their repugnance to miracles and
their relative rationalism.
197.
The psychological pre-requisites :Ignorance and
lack of culture,—the sort of ignorance which has un-
learned every kind of shame: let any one imagine
those impudent saints in the heart of Athens;
L
VOL I.
## p. 162 (#186) ############################################
162
THE WILL TO POWER.
The Jewish instinct of a chosen people: they
appropriate all the virtues, without further ado,
as their own, and regard the rest of the world as
their opposite; this is a profound sign of spiritual
depravity;
The total lack of real aims and real duties, for
which other virtues are required than those of the
bigot—the State undertook this work for them:
and the impudent people still behaved as though
they had no need of the State.
“Except ye
become as little children"-oh, how far we are
from this psychological ingenuousness !
198.
The Founder of Christianity had to pay dearly
for having directed His teaching at the lowest
classes of Jewish society and intelligence.
They
understood Him only according to the limitations
of their own spirit. . . . It was a disgrace to concoct
a history of salvation, a personal God, a personal
Saviour, a personal immortality, and to have
retained all the meanness of the “person," and of
the "history" of a doctrine which denies the
reality of all that is personal and historical.
The legend of salvation takes the place of the
symbolic "now" and "all time,” of the symbolic
“ here ” and “everywhere"; and miracles appear
instead of the psychological symbol.
(
199.
Nothing is less innocent than the New Testa-
ment. The soil from which it sprang is known.
## p. 163 (#187) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
163
:
These people, possessed of an inflexible will to
assert themselves, and who, once they had lost
all natural hold on life, and had long existed
without any right to existence, still knew how to
prevail by means of hypotheses which were as
unnatural as they were imaginary (calling them-
selves the chosen people, the community of
saints, the people of the promised land, and the
“ Church”): these people made use of their pia
fraus with such skill, and with such “clean
consciences," that one cannot be too cautious
when they preach morality. When Jews step
forward as the personification of innocence, the
danger must be great. While reading the New
Testament a man should have his small fund of
intelligence, mistrust, and wickedness constantly
at hand.
People of the lowest origin, partly mob, out-
casts not only from good society, but also from
respectable society; grown away from the
atmosphere of culture, and free from discipline;
ignorant, without even a suspicion of the fact that
conscience can also rule in spiritual matters; in a
word—the Jews : an instinctively crafty people,
able to create an advantage, a means of seduction
out of every conceivable hypothesis of superstition,
even out of ignorance itself.
-
200.
I regard Christianity as the most fatal and
seductive lie that has ever yet existed as the
greatest and most impious lie: I can discern the
## p. 164 (#188) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
last sprouts and branches of its ideal beneath
every form of disguise, I decline to enter into any
compromise or false position in reference to it
I urge people to declare open war with it.
The morality of paltry people as the measure
of all things: this is the most repugnant kind of
degeneracy that civilisation has ever yet brought
into existence. And this kind of ideal is hanging
still, under the name of God," over men's
heads! !
201.
However modest one's demands may be
concerning intellectual cleanliness, when one
touches the New Testament one cannot help
experiencing a sort of inexpressible feeling of dis-
comfort; for the unbounded cheek with which
the least qualified people will have their say in
its pages, in regard to the greatest problems
of existence, and claim to sit in judgment on
such matters, exceeds all limits. The impudent
levity with which the most unwieldy problems
are spoken of here (life, the world, God, the
purpose of life), as if they were not problems at
all, but the most simple things which these little
bigots know all about! ! !
202.
This was the most fatal form of insanity that
has ever yet existed on earth :-when these
little lying abortions of bigotry begin laying claim
to the words “God,” “last judgment,” “truth,"
”
## p. 165 (#189) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
165
“ love," “wisdom,” “Holy Spirit," and thereby
distinguishing themselves from the rest of the
world; when such men begin to transvalue values
to suit themselves, as though they were the sense,
the salt, the standard, and the measure of all
things; then all that one should do is this:
build lunatic asylums for their incarceration. To
persecute them was an egregious act of antique
folly: this was taking them too seriously; it was
making them serious.
The whole fatality was made possible by the
fact that a similar form of megalomania was
already in existence, the Jewish form (once the
gulf separating the Jews from the Christian-Jews
was bridged, the Christian-Jews were compelled to
employ those self-preservative measures afresh
which were discovered by the Jewish instinct, for
their own self-preservation, after having accent-
uated them); and again through the fact that
Greek moral philosophy had done everything
that could be done to prepare the way for
moral-fanaticism, even among Greeks and Romans,
and to render it palatable. . . Plato, the
great importer of corruption, who was the first
who refused to see Nature in morality, and who
had already deprived the Greek gods of all their
worth by his notion "good," was already tainted
with Jewish bigotry (in Egypt? ).
203.
These small virtues of gregarious animals do
not by any means lead to "eternal life”: to put
## p. 166 (#190) ############################################
166
THE WILL TO POWER.
them on the stage in such a way, and oneself
with them is perhaps very smart; but to him who
keeps his eyes open, even here, it remains, in spite
of all, the most ludicrous performance. A man by
no means deserves privileges, either on earth or
in heaven, because he happens to have attained
to perfection in the art of behaving like a good-
natured little sheep; at best, he only remains a
dear, absurd little ram with horns-provided, of
course, he does not burst with vanity or excite
indignation by assuming the airs of a supreme
judge.
What a terrible glow of false colouring here
floods the meanest virtues--as though they were
the reflection of divine qualities !
The natural purpose and utility of every
virtue is systematically hushed up; it can only be
valuable in the light of a divine command or
model, or in the light of the good which belongs
to a beyond or a spiritual world. (This is
magnificent ! - As if it were
·
a question of
the salvation of the soul: but it was a means
of making things bearable here with as many
beautiful sentiments as possible. )
204.
The law, which is the fundamentally realistic
formula of certain self-preservative measures of a
community, forbids certain actions that have a
definite tendency to jeopardise the welfare of that
community: it does not forbid the attitude of mind
which gives rise to these actions for in the pur-
## p. 167 (#191) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
167
suit of other ends the community requires these
forbidden actions, namely, when it is a matter of
opposing its enemies. The moral idealist now
steps forward and says: “ God sees into men's
hearts: the action itself counts for nothing; the
reprehensible attitude of mind from which it pro-
ceeds must be extirpated. . . . " In normal
conditions men laugh at such things; it is only
in exceptional cases, when a community lives quite
beyond the need of waging war in order to main-
tain itself, that an ear is lent to such things. Any
attitude of mind is abandoned, the utility of which
cannot be conceived.
This was the case, for example, when Buddha
appeared among a people that was both peaceable
and afflicted with great intellectual weariness.
This was also the case in regard to the first
Christian community (as also the Jewish), the
primary condition of which was the absolutely
unpolitical Jewish society. Christianity could grow
only upon the soil of Judaism—that is to say,
among a people that had already renounced the
political life, and which led a sort of parasitic
existence within the Roman sphere of government.
Christianity goes a step farther : it allows men to
"emasculate” themselves even more ; the circum-
stances actually favour their doing so. —Nature is
expelled from morality when it is said, “ Love ye
your enemies”: for Nature's injunction, “ Ye shall
love your neighbour and hate your enemy," has
now become senseless in the law (in instinct);
now, even the love a man feels for his neighbour
must first be based upon something (a sort of love
9)
## p. 168 (#192) ############################################
168
THE WILL TO POWER.
.
of God). God is introduced everywhere, and
utility is withdrawn; the natural origin of morality
is denied everywhere: the veneration of Nature,
which lies in acknowledging a natural morality, is
destroyed to the roots. .
Whence comes the seductive charm of this
emasculate ideal of man? Why are we not disgusted
by it, just as we are disgusted at the thought of a
eunuch? . . . The answer is obvious: it is not the
voice of the eunuch that revolts us, despite the
cruel mutilation of which it is the result; for, as a
matter of fact, it has grown sweeter. . . . And
owing to the very fact that the “male organ” has
been amputated from virtue, its voice now has
a feminine ring, which, formerly, was not to be
discerned.
On the other hand, we have only to think of
the terrible hardness, dangers, and accidents to
which a life of manly virtues leads
the life of a
Corsican, even at the present day, or that of a
heathen Arab (which resembles the Corsican's life
even to the smallest detail : the Arab's songs might
have been written by Corsicans)—in order to
perceive how the most robust type of man was
fascinated and moved by the voluptuous ring of
this “goodness” and “purity. " . . . A pastoral
melody . . . an idyll . . . the “good man”: such
things have most effect in ages when tragedy is
abroad.
*
With this, we have realised to what extent the
“idealist " (the ideal eunuch) also proceeds from a
## p. 169 (#193) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
169
.
.
.
definite reality and is not merely a visionary.
He has perceived precisely that, for his kind of
reality, a brutal injunction of the sort which pro-
hibits certain actions has no sense (because the
instinct which would urge him to these actions is
weakened, thanks to a long need of practice, and
of compulsion to practise). The castrator formu-
lates a host of new self-preservative measures for
a perfectly definite species of men: in this sense
he is a realist. The means to which he has
recourse for establishing his legislation, are the
same as those of ancient legislators: he appeals
to all authorities, to "God," and he exploits the
notions "guilt and punishment"—that is to say,
he avails himself of the whole of the older ideal,
but interprets it differently; for instance: punish-
ment is given a place in the inner self (it is called
the pang of conscience).
In practice this kind of man meets with his end
the moment the exceptional conditions favouring
his existence cease to prevail—a sort of insular
happiness, like that of Tahiti, and of the little Jews
in the Roman provinces. Their only natural foe
is the soil from which they spring : they must wage
war against that, and once more give their offensive
and defensive passions rope in order to be equal to
it: their opponents are the adherents of the old
ideal (this kind of hostility is shown on a grand
scale by Paul in relation to Judaism, and by Luther
in relation to the priestly ascetic ideal). The
mildest form of this antagonism is certainly that
of the first Buddhists; perhaps nothing has given
rise to so much work, as the enfeeblement and
## p. 170 (#194) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
discouragement of the feeling of antagonism. The
struggle against resentment almost seems the
Buddhist's first duty ; thus only is his peace of soul
secured. To isolate oneself without bitterness,
this presupposes the existence of a surprisingly
mild and sweet order of men,-saints.
The Astuteness of moral castration. --How is war
waged against the virile passions and valuations ?
No violent physical means are available; the war
;
must therefore be one of ruses, spells, and lies—in
short, a "spiritual war. "
First recipe : One appropriates virtue in general,
and makes it the main feature of one's ideal; the
older ideal is denied and declared to be the reverse
of all ideals. Slander has to be carried to a fine
art for this purpose.
Second recipe: One's own type is set up as a
general standard; and this is projected into all
things, behind all things, and behind the destiny
of all things—as God.
Third recipe : The opponents of one's ideal are
declared to be the opponents of God; one arro-
gates to oneself a right to great pathos, to power,
and a right to curse and to bless.
Fourth recipe: All suffering, all gruesome,
terrible, and fatal things are declared to be the
results of opposition to one's ideal—all suffering is
punishment even in the case of one's adherents
(except it be a trial, etc. ).
Fifth recipe: One goes so far as to regard
Nature as the reverse of one's ideal, and the lengthy
## p. 171 (#195) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
171
sojourn amid natural conditions is considered a
great trial of patience—a sort of martyrdom; one
studies contempt, both in one's attitudes and one's
looks towards all “natural things. "
Sixth recipe : The triumph of anti-naturalism
and ideal castration, the triumph of the world of
the pure, good, sinless, and blessed, is projected
into the future as the consummation, the finale,
the great hope, and the “Coming of the Kingdom
of God. ”
I hope that one may still be allowed to laugh
at this artificial hoisting up of a small species of
man to the position of an absolute standard of all
things?
205.
What I do not at all like in Jesus of Nazareth
and His Apostle Paul, is that they stuffed so much
into the heads of paltry people, as if their modest
virtues were worth so much ado. We have had
to pay dearly for it all; for they brought the most
valuable qualities of both virtue and man into ill
repute; they set the guilty conscience and the
self-respect of noble souls at loggerheads, and
they led the braver, more magnanimous, more daring,
and more excessive tendencies of strong souls astray
even to self-destruction.
206.
In the New Testament, and especially in the
Gospels, I discern absolutely no sign of a “ Divine"
voice: but rather an indirect form of the most
## p. 172 (#196) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
subterranean fury, both in slander and destructive-
ness--one of the most dishonest forms of hatred.
It lacks all knowledge of the qualities of a higher
nature. It makes an impudent abuse of all
kinds of plausibilities, and the whole stock of
proverbs is used up and foisted upon one in its
pages. Was it necessary to make a God come in
order to appeal to those publicans and to say to
them, etc. etc. ?
Nothing could be more vulgar than this struggle
with the Pharisees, carried on with a host of absurd
and unpractical moral pretences; the mob, of course,
has always been entertained by such feats. Fancy
the reproach of “hypocrisy ! " coming from those
lips! Nothing could be more vulgar than this
treatment of one's opponents—a most insidious
sign of nobility or its reverse.
207.
Primitive Christianity is the abolition of the
State: it prohibits oaths, military service, courts of
justice, self-defence or the defence of a community,
and denies the difference between fellow-country-
men and strangers, as also the order of castes.
Christ's example : He does not withstand those
who ill-treat Him; He does not defend Himself;
He does more, He "offers the left cheek" (to the
demand : “Tell us whether thou be the Christ? "
He replies: "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of
man sitting on the right hand of power, and
coming in the clouds of heaven"). He forbids His
disciples to defend Him; He calls attention to
## p. 173 (#197) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
173
"
the fact that He could get help if He wished to,
but will not.
Christianity also means the abolition of society,
it prizes everything that society despises, its very
growth takes place among the outcasts, the con-
demned, and the leprous of all kinds, as also among
"publicans," "sinners,” prostitutes, and the most
foolish of men (the "fisher folk”); it despises the
rich, the scholarly, the noble, the virtuous, and the
"punctilious. "
208.
The war against the noble and the powerful,
as it is waged in the New Testament, is reminis-
cent of Reynard the Fox and his methods : but
plus the priestly unction and the more absolute
refusal to recognise one's own craftiness.
209.
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 ex-
## p. 174 (#198) ############################################
174
THE WILL TO POWER.
plosion, of a concentrated loathing of the
“masters," the instinct which discerns the
happiness of freedom after such long oppression. . . .
(Mostly a symptom of the fact that the inferior
classes have been treated too humanely, that their
tongues already taste a joy which is forbidden
them. . . . It is not hunger that provokes revolu-
tions, but the fact that the mob have contracted
an appetite en mangeant. . . . . )
.
210.
-
Let the New Testament only be read as a book
of seduction : in it virtue is appropriated, with
the idea that public opinion is best won with it,-
and as a matter of fact it is a very modest kind of
virtue, which recognises only the ideal gregarious
animal and nothing more (including, of course,
the herdsmen): a puny, soft, benevolent, helpful,
and gushingly-satisfied kind of virtue which to
the outside world is quite devoid of pretensions-
and which separates the “world” entirely from
itself. The crassest arrogance which fancies that
the destiny of man turns around it, and it alone,
and that on the one side the community of
believers represents what is right, and on the
other the world represents what is false and
eternally to be reproved and rejected. The most
imbecile hatred of all things in power, which, how-
ever, never goes so far as to touch these things.
A kind of inner detachment which, outwardly,
leaves everything as it was (servitude and slavery;
and knowing how to convert everything into a
means of serving God and virtue).
## p. 175 (#199) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
175
211.
Christianity is possible as the most private
form of life; it presupposes the existence of a
narrow, isolated, and absolutely unpolitical society
-it belongs to the conventicle. On the other
hand, a “ Christian State," “Christian politics,” are
pieces of downright impudence; they are lies, like,
for instance, a Christian leadership of an army,
which in the end regards “the God of hosts" as
chief of the staff. Even the Papacy has never
been able to carry on politics in a Christian
way . . . ; and when Reformers indulge in politics,
as Luther did, it is well known that they are just
as ardent followers of Machiavelli as any other im-
moralists or tyrants.
212.
Christianity is still possible at any moment.
It is not bound to any one of the impudent
dogmas that have adorned themselves with its
name: it needs neither the teaching of the
personal God, nor of sin, nor of immortality, nor of
redemption, nor of faith; it has absolutely no need
whatever of metaphysics, and it needs asceticism
and Christian “natural science" still less. Christi-
anity is a method of life, not a system of belief.
It tells us how we should behave, not what we
should believe.
He who says to-day: "I refuse to be a
“
soldier," " I care not for tribunals," "I lay no
claim to the services of the police," " I will not do
anything that disturbs the peace within me:
C
## p. 176 (#200) ############################################
176
THE WILL TO POWER.
and if I must suffer on that account, nothing can
so well maintain my inward peace as suffering”-
such a man would be a Christian.
.
.
213
Concerning the history of Christianity. —Con-
tinual change of environment: Christian teaching
is thus continually changing its centre of gravity.
The favouring of low and paltry people. . . The
development of caritas. . The type “ Chris-
tian " gradually adopts everything that it originally
rejected (and in the rejection of which it asserted
its right to exist). The Christian becomes a
citizen, a soldier, a judge, a workman, a merchant,
a scholar, a theologian, a priest, a philosopher, a
farmer, an artist, a patriot, a politician, a prince
. . . he re-enters all those departments of active
life which he had forsworn (he defends himself,
he establishes tribunals, he punishes, he swears,
he differentiates between people and people, he
contemns, and he shows anger). The whole
life of the Christian is ultimately exactly that
life from which Christ preached deliverance.
The Church is just as much a factor in the
triumph of the Antichrist, as the modern State
and modern Nationalism.
ing of such a feeling must be pictured; it is a sort
of ecstasy, a strange language, a “Gospel”-it was
this newness which did not allow man to attribute
love to himself—he thought it was God leading
him on and taking shape in his heart. “God
descends among men," one's neighbour is trans-
figured and becomes a God (in so far as he provokes
the sentiment of love). Jesus
Jesus is the neighbour, the
moment He is transfigured in thought into a God,
and into a cause provoking the feeling of power.
177.
Believers are aware that they owe an infinite
amount to Christianity, and therefore conclude
that its Founder must have been a man of the
first rank. . . . This conclusion is false, but it is
typical of the reverents. Regarded objectively,
it is, in the first place, just possible that they are
mistaken concerning the extent of their debt to
Christianity: a man's convictions prove nothing
concerning the thing he is convinced about, and
in religions they are more likely to give rise to
suspicions. . . . Secondly, it is possible that the
debt owing to Christianity is not due to its
Founder at all, but to the whole structure, the
## p. 149 (#173) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
149
whole thing--to the Church, etc. The notion
“Founder" is so very equivocal, that it may stand
even for the accidental cause of a movement:
the person of the Founder has been inflated in
proportion as the Church has grown: but even
this process of veneration allows of the conclusion
that, at one time or other, this Founder was some-
thing exceedingly insecure and doubtful—in the
beginning. . . . Let any one think of the free and
easy way in which Paul treats the problem of the
personality of Jesus, how he almost juggles with
it: some one who died, who was seen after His
death,—some one whom the Jews delivered up to
death—all this was only the theme-Paul wrote
the music to it.
C
178.
The founder of a religion may be quite insignifi-
cant-a wax vesta and no more!
179.
Concerning the psychological problem of Christi-
anity. — The driving forces are: resentment,
popular insurrection, the revolt of the bungled and
the botched. (In Buddhism it is different: it is
not born of resentment. It rather combats resent-
ment because the latter leads to action. )
This party, which stands for freedom, under-
stands that the abandonment of antagonism in
thought and deed is a condition of distinction and
preservation.
Here lies the psychological difficulty
which has stood in the way of Christianity being
## p. 150 (#174) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
understood : the force which created it, urges to
a struggle against itself.
Only as a party standing for peace and innocence
can this insurrectionary movement hope to be
successful: it must conquer by means of excessive
mildness, sweetness, softness, and its instincts are
aware of this. The feat was to deny and con-
demn the force, of which man is the expression,
and to press the reverse of that force continually
to the fore, by word and deed.
180.
The pretence of youthfulness. It is a mistake
to imagine that, with Christianity, an ingenuous
and youthful people rose against an old culture;
the story goes that it was out of the lowest levels
of society, where Christianity flourished and shot
its roots, that the more profound source of life
gushed forth afresh : but nothing can be under-
stood of the psychology of Christianity, if it be
supposed that it was the expression of revived
youth among a people, or of the resuscitated
strength of a race. It is rather a typical form of
decadence, of moral-softening and of hysteria,
amid a general hotch-potch of races and people
that had lost all aims and had grown weary and
sick. The wonderful company which gathered
round this master-seducer of the populace, would
not be at all out of place in a Russian novel : all
the diseases of the nerves seem to give one
another rendezvous in
in this crowd the
absence of a known duty, the feeling that every-
a
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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
151
thing is nearing its end, that nothing is any longer
worth while, and that contentment lies in dolce
far niente.
The power and certainty of the future in the
Jew's instinct, its monstrous will for life and for
power, lies in its ruling classes; the people who
upheld primitive Christianity are best dis-
tinguished by this exhausted condition of their
instincts. On the one hand, they are sick of every-
thing; on the other, they are content with each
other, with themselves and for themselves.
>
181.
Christianity regarded as emancipated Judaism
(just as a nobility which is both racial and in-
digenous ultimately emancipates itself from these
conditions, and goes in search of kindred
elements. . . . ).
(1) As a Church (community) on the territory
of the State, as an unpolitical institution.
(2) As life, breeding, practice, art of living.
(3) As a religion of sin (sin committed against
God, being the only recognised kind, and the only
cause of all suffering), with a universal cure for it.
There is no sin save against God; what is done
against men, man shall not sit in judgment upon,
nor call to account, except in the name of God.
At the same time, all commandments (love):
everything is associated with God, and all acts are
performed according to God's will. Beneath this
arrangement there lies exceptional intelligence
(a very narrow life, such as that led by the
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THE WILL TO POWER.
Esquimaux, can only be endured by most peaceful
and indulgent people: the Judæo-Christian dogma
turns against sin in favour of the “ sinner").
182.
The Jewish priesthood understood how to
present everything it claimed to be right as a
divine precept, as an act of obedience to God, and
also to introduce all those things which conduced
to preserve Israel and were the conditions of its
existence (for instance: the large number of
“ works”: circumcision and the cult of sacrifices, as
the very pivot of the national conscience), not as
Nature, but as God.
This process continued; within the very heart of
Judaism, where the need of these “works” was not
felt (that is to say, as a means of keeping a race
distinct), a priestly sort of man was pictured, whose
bearing towards the aristocracy was like that of
“noble nature”; a spontaneous and non-caste
sacerdotalism of the soul, which now, in order to
throw its opposite into strong relief, attaches value,
not to the “dutiful acts” themselves, but to the
sentiment. i . .
At bottom, the problem was once again, how
to make a certain kind of soul prevail : it was also
a popular insurrection in the midst of a priestly
people-a pietistic movement coming from below
(sinners, publicans, women, and children). Jesus
of Nazareth was the symbol of their sect. And
again, in order to believe in themselves, they were
in need of a theological transfiguration: they
require nothing less than “the Son of God” in
## p. 153 (#177) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
153
order to create a belief for themselves. And just
as the priesthood had falsified the whole history
of Israel, another attempt was made, here, to alter
and falsify the whole history of mankind in such
a way as to make Christianity seem like the most
important event it contained. This movement
could have originated only upon the soil of Judaism,
the main feature of which was the confounding of
guilt with sorrow and the reduction of all sin to
sin against God. Of all this, Christianity is the
second degree of power.
183.
The symbolism of Christianity is based upo
that of Judaism, which had already transfigured
all reality (history, Nature) into a holy and
artificial unreality—which refused to recognise
real history, and which showed no more interest
in a natural course of things.
184.
--
.
.
The Jews made the attempt to prevail, after
two of their castes—the warrior and the agri-
cultural castes, had disappeared from their midst.
In this sense they are the “castrated people”: they
have their priests and then their Chandala.
How easily a disturbance occurs among them-
an insurrection of their Chandala. This was the
origin of Christianity.
Owing to the fact that they had no knowledge of
warriors except as their masters, they introduced
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THE WILL TO POWER.
enmity towards the nobles, the men of honour,
pride, and power, and the ruling classes, into their
religion: they are pessimists from indignation. . . .
Thus they created a very important and novel
position: the priests in the van of the Chandala
-against the noble classes. . .
Christianity was the logical conclusion of this
movement: even in the Jewish priesthood, it still
scented the existence of the caste, of the privileged
and noble minority-it therefore did away with
priests.
Christ is the unit of the Chandala who removes
the priest
the Chandala who redeems
himself.
That is why the French Revolution is the lineal
descendant and the continuator of Christianity-
it is characterised by an instinct of hate towards
castes, nobles, and the last privileges.
.
.
185.
The “Christian Ideal” put on the stage with
Jewish astuteness these are the fundamental
psychological forces of its “nature":-
Revolt against the ruling spiritual powers ;
The attempt to make those virtues which facili-
tate the happiness of the lowly, a standard of all
values—in fact, to call God that which is no
more than the self-preservative instinct of that
class of man possessed of least vitality;
Obedience and absolute abstention from war
and resistance, justified by this ideal ;
## p. 155 (#179) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION,
155
The love of one another as a result of the love
of God.
The trick : The denial of all natural mobilia,
and their transference to the spiritual world
beyond . . . the exploitation of virtue and its
veneration for wholly interested motives, gradual
denial of virtue in everything that is not Christian.
.
186.
The profound contempt with which the Christian
was treated by the noble people of antiquity, is of
the same order as the present instinctive aversion
to Jews: it is the hatred which free and self-
respecting classes feel towards those who wish to
creep in secretly, and who combine an awkward
bearing with foolish self-sufficiency.
The New Testament is the gospel of a com-
pletely ignoble species of man; its pretensions to
highest values—yea, to all values, is, as a matter
of fact, revolting-even nowadays.
187.
How little the subject matters ! It is the spirit
which gives the thing life! What a quantity o
stuffy and sick-room air there is in all that chattet
about“ redemption,”“ love," “ blessedness," “ faith,"
"truth" ”
, ,” “eternal life”! Let any one look into a
really pagan book and compare the two; for in-
stance, in Petronius, nothing at all is done, said,
desired, and valued, which, according to a bigoted
Christian estimate, is not sin, or even deadly sin.
And yet how happy one feels with the purer air, the
>
## p. 156 (#180) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
superior intellectuality, the quicker pace, and the free
overflowing strength which is certain of the future!
In the whole of the New Testament there is not
one bouffonnerie: but that fact alone would suffice
to refute any book. . . .
188.
The profound lack of dignity with which all life,
which is not Christian, is condemned: it does not
suffice them to think meanly of their actual oppon-
ents, they cannot do with less than a general
slander of everything that is not themselves. . . .
An abject and crafty soul is in the most perfect
harmony with the arrogance of piety, as witness
the early Christians.
The future : they see that they are heavily paid
for it. . . . Theirs is the muddiest kind of spirit
that exists. The whole of Christ's life is so arranged
as to confirm the prophecies of the Scriptures :
He behaves in suchwise in order that they may be
right.
189.
The deceptive interpretation of the words, the
doings, and the condition of dying people; the
natural fear of death, for instance, is systematically
confounded with the supposed fear of what is to
happen "after death. ”
190.
The Christians have done exactly what the Jews
did before them. They introduced what they
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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
157
conceived to be an innovation and a thing
necessary to self-preservation into their Master's
teaching, and wove His life into it. They likewise
credited Him with all the wisdom of a maker of
proverbs—in short, they represented their every-
day life and activity as an act of obedience, and
thus sanctified their propaganda.
What it all depends upon, may be gathered
from Paul : it is not much. What remains is
the development of a type of saint, out of the
values which these people regarded as saintly.
The whole of the “ doctrine of miracles,” in-
cluding the resurrection, is the result of self-
glorification on the part of the community, which
ascribed to its Master those qualities it ascribed
to itself, but in a higher degree (or, better still, it
derived its strength from Him. . . . ).
.
191.
The Christians have never led the life which
Jesus commanded them to lead, and the impudent
fable of the “justification by faith,” and its unique
and transcendental significance, is only the result
of the Church's lack of courage and will in acknow-
ledging those "works" which Jesus commanded.
The Buddhist behaves differently from the non-
Buddhist; but the Christian behaves as all the rest
of the world does, and possesses a Christianity of
ceremonies and states of the soul.
The profound and contemptible falsehood of
Christianity in Europe makes us deserve the con-
tempt of the Arabs, Hindoos, and Chinese,
.
## p. 158 (#182) ############################################
158
THE WILL TO POWER.
Let any one listen to the words of the first German
statesman, concerning that which has preoccupied
Europe for the last forty years.
192.
“ Faith" or "works "'? —But that the “works,"
the habit of particular works may engender a certain
set of values or thoughts, is just as natural as it
would be unnatural for “works" to proceed from
mere valuations. Man must practise, not how to
strengthen feelings of value, but how to strengthen
action: first of all, one must be able to do some-
thing. . . . Luther's Christian Dilettantism. Faith
is an asses' bridge. The background consists of
a profound conviction on the part of Luther and
his peers, that they are unable to accomplish
Christian “works," a personal fact, disguised
under an extreme doubt as to whether all action
is not sin and devil's work, so that the worth of
life depends upon isolated and highly-strained
conditions of inactivity (prayer, effusion, etc. ). —
Ultimately, Luther would be right: the instincts
which are expressed by the whole bearing of the
reformers are the most brutal that exist. Only
in turning absolutely away from themselves, and in
becoming absorbed in the opposite of themselves,
only by means of an illusion ("faith") was
existence endurable to them.
193
“What was to be done in order to believe? ”-
an absurd question. That which is wrong with
## p. 159 (#183) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
159
Christianity is, that it does none of the things
that Christ commanded.
It is a mean life, but seen through the eye of
contempt.
194.
The entrance into the real life-a man saves
his own life by living the life of the multitude.
195.
Christianity has become something fundament-
ally different from what its Founder wished it to
be. It is the great anti-pagan movement of anti-
quity, formulated with the use of the life, teaching,
and “words” of the Founder of Christianity, but
interpreted quite arbitrarily, according to a scheme
embodying profoundly different needs : translated
into the language of all the subterranean religions
then existing.
It is the rise of Pessimism (whereas Jesus
wished to bring the peace and the happiness of
the lambs): and moreover the Pessimism of the
weak, of the inferior, of the suffering, and of the
oppressed.
Its mortal enemies are (1) Power, whether in
the form of character, intellect, or taste, and
“ worldliness"; (2) the “good cheer” of classical
times, the noble levity and scepticism, hard pride,
eccentric dissipation, and cold frugality of the sage,
Greek refinement in manners, words, and form.
Its mortal enemy is as much the Roman as the
Greek,
«
## p. 160 (#184) ############################################
160
THE WILL TO POWER.
The attempt on the part of anti-paganism to
establish itself on a philosophical basis, and to
make its tenets possible: it shows a taste for the
ambiguous figures of antique culture, and above
all for Plato, who was, more than any other, an
anti-Hellene and Semite in instinct.
. . . It also
shows a taste for Stoicism, which is essentially
the work of Semites (“ dignity” is regarded as
severity, law; virtue is held to be greatness, self-
responsibility, authority, greatest sovereignty over
oneself-this is Semitic. The Stoic is an Arabian
sheik wrapped in Greek togas and notions.
196.
Christianity only resumes the fight which had
already been begun against the classical ideal and
noble religion.
As a matter of fact, the whole process of
transformation is only an adaptation to the
needs and to the level of intelligence of religious
masses then existing :—those masses
which
believed in Isis, Mithras, Dionysos, and the
“ great mother," and which demanded the follow-
ing things of a religion: (1) hopes of a beyond,
(2) the bloody phantasmagoria of animal sacrifice
(the mystery), (3) holy legend and the redeeming
deed, (4) asceticism, denial of the world, super-
stitious "purification," (5) a hierarchy as a part
of the community. In
short, Christianity
everywhere fitted the already prevailing and
increasing anti-pagan tendency—those cults which
Epicurus combated,- or more exactly, those
## p. 161 (#185) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
161
religions proper to the lower herd, women, slaves,
and ignoble classes.
The misunderstandings are therefore the
following:-
(1) The immortality of the individual;
(2) The assumed existence of another world;
(3) The absurd notion of punishment and
expiation in the heart of the interpretation of
existence;
(4) The profanation of the divine nature of
man, instead of its accentuation, and the con-
struction of a very profound chasm, which can
only be crossed by the help of a miracle or by
means of the most thorough self-contempt;
(5) The whole world of corrupted imagination
and morbid passion, instead of a simple and
loving life of action, instead of Buddhistic
happiness attainable on earth;
(6) An ecclesiastical order with a priesthood,
theology, cults, and sacraments; in short, every-
thing that Jesus of Nazareth combated;
(7) The miraculous in everything and every-
body, superstition too: while precisely the trait
which distinguished Judaism and primitive
Christianity was their repugnance to miracles and
their relative rationalism.
197.
The psychological pre-requisites :Ignorance and
lack of culture,—the sort of ignorance which has un-
learned every kind of shame: let any one imagine
those impudent saints in the heart of Athens;
L
VOL I.
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162
THE WILL TO POWER.
The Jewish instinct of a chosen people: they
appropriate all the virtues, without further ado,
as their own, and regard the rest of the world as
their opposite; this is a profound sign of spiritual
depravity;
The total lack of real aims and real duties, for
which other virtues are required than those of the
bigot—the State undertook this work for them:
and the impudent people still behaved as though
they had no need of the State.
“Except ye
become as little children"-oh, how far we are
from this psychological ingenuousness !
198.
The Founder of Christianity had to pay dearly
for having directed His teaching at the lowest
classes of Jewish society and intelligence.
They
understood Him only according to the limitations
of their own spirit. . . . It was a disgrace to concoct
a history of salvation, a personal God, a personal
Saviour, a personal immortality, and to have
retained all the meanness of the “person," and of
the "history" of a doctrine which denies the
reality of all that is personal and historical.
The legend of salvation takes the place of the
symbolic "now" and "all time,” of the symbolic
“ here ” and “everywhere"; and miracles appear
instead of the psychological symbol.
(
199.
Nothing is less innocent than the New Testa-
ment. The soil from which it sprang is known.
## p. 163 (#187) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
163
:
These people, possessed of an inflexible will to
assert themselves, and who, once they had lost
all natural hold on life, and had long existed
without any right to existence, still knew how to
prevail by means of hypotheses which were as
unnatural as they were imaginary (calling them-
selves the chosen people, the community of
saints, the people of the promised land, and the
“ Church”): these people made use of their pia
fraus with such skill, and with such “clean
consciences," that one cannot be too cautious
when they preach morality. When Jews step
forward as the personification of innocence, the
danger must be great. While reading the New
Testament a man should have his small fund of
intelligence, mistrust, and wickedness constantly
at hand.
People of the lowest origin, partly mob, out-
casts not only from good society, but also from
respectable society; grown away from the
atmosphere of culture, and free from discipline;
ignorant, without even a suspicion of the fact that
conscience can also rule in spiritual matters; in a
word—the Jews : an instinctively crafty people,
able to create an advantage, a means of seduction
out of every conceivable hypothesis of superstition,
even out of ignorance itself.
-
200.
I regard Christianity as the most fatal and
seductive lie that has ever yet existed as the
greatest and most impious lie: I can discern the
## p. 164 (#188) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
last sprouts and branches of its ideal beneath
every form of disguise, I decline to enter into any
compromise or false position in reference to it
I urge people to declare open war with it.
The morality of paltry people as the measure
of all things: this is the most repugnant kind of
degeneracy that civilisation has ever yet brought
into existence. And this kind of ideal is hanging
still, under the name of God," over men's
heads! !
201.
However modest one's demands may be
concerning intellectual cleanliness, when one
touches the New Testament one cannot help
experiencing a sort of inexpressible feeling of dis-
comfort; for the unbounded cheek with which
the least qualified people will have their say in
its pages, in regard to the greatest problems
of existence, and claim to sit in judgment on
such matters, exceeds all limits. The impudent
levity with which the most unwieldy problems
are spoken of here (life, the world, God, the
purpose of life), as if they were not problems at
all, but the most simple things which these little
bigots know all about! ! !
202.
This was the most fatal form of insanity that
has ever yet existed on earth :-when these
little lying abortions of bigotry begin laying claim
to the words “God,” “last judgment,” “truth,"
”
## p. 165 (#189) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
165
“ love," “wisdom,” “Holy Spirit," and thereby
distinguishing themselves from the rest of the
world; when such men begin to transvalue values
to suit themselves, as though they were the sense,
the salt, the standard, and the measure of all
things; then all that one should do is this:
build lunatic asylums for their incarceration. To
persecute them was an egregious act of antique
folly: this was taking them too seriously; it was
making them serious.
The whole fatality was made possible by the
fact that a similar form of megalomania was
already in existence, the Jewish form (once the
gulf separating the Jews from the Christian-Jews
was bridged, the Christian-Jews were compelled to
employ those self-preservative measures afresh
which were discovered by the Jewish instinct, for
their own self-preservation, after having accent-
uated them); and again through the fact that
Greek moral philosophy had done everything
that could be done to prepare the way for
moral-fanaticism, even among Greeks and Romans,
and to render it palatable. . . Plato, the
great importer of corruption, who was the first
who refused to see Nature in morality, and who
had already deprived the Greek gods of all their
worth by his notion "good," was already tainted
with Jewish bigotry (in Egypt? ).
203.
These small virtues of gregarious animals do
not by any means lead to "eternal life”: to put
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THE WILL TO POWER.
them on the stage in such a way, and oneself
with them is perhaps very smart; but to him who
keeps his eyes open, even here, it remains, in spite
of all, the most ludicrous performance. A man by
no means deserves privileges, either on earth or
in heaven, because he happens to have attained
to perfection in the art of behaving like a good-
natured little sheep; at best, he only remains a
dear, absurd little ram with horns-provided, of
course, he does not burst with vanity or excite
indignation by assuming the airs of a supreme
judge.
What a terrible glow of false colouring here
floods the meanest virtues--as though they were
the reflection of divine qualities !
The natural purpose and utility of every
virtue is systematically hushed up; it can only be
valuable in the light of a divine command or
model, or in the light of the good which belongs
to a beyond or a spiritual world. (This is
magnificent ! - As if it were
·
a question of
the salvation of the soul: but it was a means
of making things bearable here with as many
beautiful sentiments as possible. )
204.
The law, which is the fundamentally realistic
formula of certain self-preservative measures of a
community, forbids certain actions that have a
definite tendency to jeopardise the welfare of that
community: it does not forbid the attitude of mind
which gives rise to these actions for in the pur-
## p. 167 (#191) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
167
suit of other ends the community requires these
forbidden actions, namely, when it is a matter of
opposing its enemies. The moral idealist now
steps forward and says: “ God sees into men's
hearts: the action itself counts for nothing; the
reprehensible attitude of mind from which it pro-
ceeds must be extirpated. . . . " In normal
conditions men laugh at such things; it is only
in exceptional cases, when a community lives quite
beyond the need of waging war in order to main-
tain itself, that an ear is lent to such things. Any
attitude of mind is abandoned, the utility of which
cannot be conceived.
This was the case, for example, when Buddha
appeared among a people that was both peaceable
and afflicted with great intellectual weariness.
This was also the case in regard to the first
Christian community (as also the Jewish), the
primary condition of which was the absolutely
unpolitical Jewish society. Christianity could grow
only upon the soil of Judaism—that is to say,
among a people that had already renounced the
political life, and which led a sort of parasitic
existence within the Roman sphere of government.
Christianity goes a step farther : it allows men to
"emasculate” themselves even more ; the circum-
stances actually favour their doing so. —Nature is
expelled from morality when it is said, “ Love ye
your enemies”: for Nature's injunction, “ Ye shall
love your neighbour and hate your enemy," has
now become senseless in the law (in instinct);
now, even the love a man feels for his neighbour
must first be based upon something (a sort of love
9)
## p. 168 (#192) ############################################
168
THE WILL TO POWER.
.
of God). God is introduced everywhere, and
utility is withdrawn; the natural origin of morality
is denied everywhere: the veneration of Nature,
which lies in acknowledging a natural morality, is
destroyed to the roots. .
Whence comes the seductive charm of this
emasculate ideal of man? Why are we not disgusted
by it, just as we are disgusted at the thought of a
eunuch? . . . The answer is obvious: it is not the
voice of the eunuch that revolts us, despite the
cruel mutilation of which it is the result; for, as a
matter of fact, it has grown sweeter. . . . And
owing to the very fact that the “male organ” has
been amputated from virtue, its voice now has
a feminine ring, which, formerly, was not to be
discerned.
On the other hand, we have only to think of
the terrible hardness, dangers, and accidents to
which a life of manly virtues leads
the life of a
Corsican, even at the present day, or that of a
heathen Arab (which resembles the Corsican's life
even to the smallest detail : the Arab's songs might
have been written by Corsicans)—in order to
perceive how the most robust type of man was
fascinated and moved by the voluptuous ring of
this “goodness” and “purity. " . . . A pastoral
melody . . . an idyll . . . the “good man”: such
things have most effect in ages when tragedy is
abroad.
*
With this, we have realised to what extent the
“idealist " (the ideal eunuch) also proceeds from a
## p. 169 (#193) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
169
.
.
.
definite reality and is not merely a visionary.
He has perceived precisely that, for his kind of
reality, a brutal injunction of the sort which pro-
hibits certain actions has no sense (because the
instinct which would urge him to these actions is
weakened, thanks to a long need of practice, and
of compulsion to practise). The castrator formu-
lates a host of new self-preservative measures for
a perfectly definite species of men: in this sense
he is a realist. The means to which he has
recourse for establishing his legislation, are the
same as those of ancient legislators: he appeals
to all authorities, to "God," and he exploits the
notions "guilt and punishment"—that is to say,
he avails himself of the whole of the older ideal,
but interprets it differently; for instance: punish-
ment is given a place in the inner self (it is called
the pang of conscience).
In practice this kind of man meets with his end
the moment the exceptional conditions favouring
his existence cease to prevail—a sort of insular
happiness, like that of Tahiti, and of the little Jews
in the Roman provinces. Their only natural foe
is the soil from which they spring : they must wage
war against that, and once more give their offensive
and defensive passions rope in order to be equal to
it: their opponents are the adherents of the old
ideal (this kind of hostility is shown on a grand
scale by Paul in relation to Judaism, and by Luther
in relation to the priestly ascetic ideal). The
mildest form of this antagonism is certainly that
of the first Buddhists; perhaps nothing has given
rise to so much work, as the enfeeblement and
## p. 170 (#194) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
discouragement of the feeling of antagonism. The
struggle against resentment almost seems the
Buddhist's first duty ; thus only is his peace of soul
secured. To isolate oneself without bitterness,
this presupposes the existence of a surprisingly
mild and sweet order of men,-saints.
The Astuteness of moral castration. --How is war
waged against the virile passions and valuations ?
No violent physical means are available; the war
;
must therefore be one of ruses, spells, and lies—in
short, a "spiritual war. "
First recipe : One appropriates virtue in general,
and makes it the main feature of one's ideal; the
older ideal is denied and declared to be the reverse
of all ideals. Slander has to be carried to a fine
art for this purpose.
Second recipe: One's own type is set up as a
general standard; and this is projected into all
things, behind all things, and behind the destiny
of all things—as God.
Third recipe : The opponents of one's ideal are
declared to be the opponents of God; one arro-
gates to oneself a right to great pathos, to power,
and a right to curse and to bless.
Fourth recipe: All suffering, all gruesome,
terrible, and fatal things are declared to be the
results of opposition to one's ideal—all suffering is
punishment even in the case of one's adherents
(except it be a trial, etc. ).
Fifth recipe: One goes so far as to regard
Nature as the reverse of one's ideal, and the lengthy
## p. 171 (#195) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
171
sojourn amid natural conditions is considered a
great trial of patience—a sort of martyrdom; one
studies contempt, both in one's attitudes and one's
looks towards all “natural things. "
Sixth recipe : The triumph of anti-naturalism
and ideal castration, the triumph of the world of
the pure, good, sinless, and blessed, is projected
into the future as the consummation, the finale,
the great hope, and the “Coming of the Kingdom
of God. ”
I hope that one may still be allowed to laugh
at this artificial hoisting up of a small species of
man to the position of an absolute standard of all
things?
205.
What I do not at all like in Jesus of Nazareth
and His Apostle Paul, is that they stuffed so much
into the heads of paltry people, as if their modest
virtues were worth so much ado. We have had
to pay dearly for it all; for they brought the most
valuable qualities of both virtue and man into ill
repute; they set the guilty conscience and the
self-respect of noble souls at loggerheads, and
they led the braver, more magnanimous, more daring,
and more excessive tendencies of strong souls astray
even to self-destruction.
206.
In the New Testament, and especially in the
Gospels, I discern absolutely no sign of a “ Divine"
voice: but rather an indirect form of the most
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THE WILL TO POWER.
subterranean fury, both in slander and destructive-
ness--one of the most dishonest forms of hatred.
It lacks all knowledge of the qualities of a higher
nature. It makes an impudent abuse of all
kinds of plausibilities, and the whole stock of
proverbs is used up and foisted upon one in its
pages. Was it necessary to make a God come in
order to appeal to those publicans and to say to
them, etc. etc. ?
Nothing could be more vulgar than this struggle
with the Pharisees, carried on with a host of absurd
and unpractical moral pretences; the mob, of course,
has always been entertained by such feats. Fancy
the reproach of “hypocrisy ! " coming from those
lips! Nothing could be more vulgar than this
treatment of one's opponents—a most insidious
sign of nobility or its reverse.
207.
Primitive Christianity is the abolition of the
State: it prohibits oaths, military service, courts of
justice, self-defence or the defence of a community,
and denies the difference between fellow-country-
men and strangers, as also the order of castes.
Christ's example : He does not withstand those
who ill-treat Him; He does not defend Himself;
He does more, He "offers the left cheek" (to the
demand : “Tell us whether thou be the Christ? "
He replies: "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of
man sitting on the right hand of power, and
coming in the clouds of heaven"). He forbids His
disciples to defend Him; He calls attention to
## p. 173 (#197) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
173
"
the fact that He could get help if He wished to,
but will not.
Christianity also means the abolition of society,
it prizes everything that society despises, its very
growth takes place among the outcasts, the con-
demned, and the leprous of all kinds, as also among
"publicans," "sinners,” prostitutes, and the most
foolish of men (the "fisher folk”); it despises the
rich, the scholarly, the noble, the virtuous, and the
"punctilious. "
208.
The war against the noble and the powerful,
as it is waged in the New Testament, is reminis-
cent of Reynard the Fox and his methods : but
plus the priestly unction and the more absolute
refusal to recognise one's own craftiness.
209.
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 ex-
## p. 174 (#198) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
plosion, of a concentrated loathing of the
“masters," the instinct which discerns the
happiness of freedom after such long oppression. . . .
(Mostly a symptom of the fact that the inferior
classes have been treated too humanely, that their
tongues already taste a joy which is forbidden
them. . . . It is not hunger that provokes revolu-
tions, but the fact that the mob have contracted
an appetite en mangeant. . . . . )
.
210.
-
Let the New Testament only be read as a book
of seduction : in it virtue is appropriated, with
the idea that public opinion is best won with it,-
and as a matter of fact it is a very modest kind of
virtue, which recognises only the ideal gregarious
animal and nothing more (including, of course,
the herdsmen): a puny, soft, benevolent, helpful,
and gushingly-satisfied kind of virtue which to
the outside world is quite devoid of pretensions-
and which separates the “world” entirely from
itself. The crassest arrogance which fancies that
the destiny of man turns around it, and it alone,
and that on the one side the community of
believers represents what is right, and on the
other the world represents what is false and
eternally to be reproved and rejected. The most
imbecile hatred of all things in power, which, how-
ever, never goes so far as to touch these things.
A kind of inner detachment which, outwardly,
leaves everything as it was (servitude and slavery;
and knowing how to convert everything into a
means of serving God and virtue).
## p. 175 (#199) ############################################
CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
175
211.
Christianity is possible as the most private
form of life; it presupposes the existence of a
narrow, isolated, and absolutely unpolitical society
-it belongs to the conventicle. On the other
hand, a “ Christian State," “Christian politics,” are
pieces of downright impudence; they are lies, like,
for instance, a Christian leadership of an army,
which in the end regards “the God of hosts" as
chief of the staff. Even the Papacy has never
been able to carry on politics in a Christian
way . . . ; and when Reformers indulge in politics,
as Luther did, it is well known that they are just
as ardent followers of Machiavelli as any other im-
moralists or tyrants.
212.
Christianity is still possible at any moment.
It is not bound to any one of the impudent
dogmas that have adorned themselves with its
name: it needs neither the teaching of the
personal God, nor of sin, nor of immortality, nor of
redemption, nor of faith; it has absolutely no need
whatever of metaphysics, and it needs asceticism
and Christian “natural science" still less. Christi-
anity is a method of life, not a system of belief.
It tells us how we should behave, not what we
should believe.
He who says to-day: "I refuse to be a
“
soldier," " I care not for tribunals," "I lay no
claim to the services of the police," " I will not do
anything that disturbs the peace within me:
C
## p. 176 (#200) ############################################
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THE WILL TO POWER.
and if I must suffer on that account, nothing can
so well maintain my inward peace as suffering”-
such a man would be a Christian.
.
.
213
Concerning the history of Christianity. —Con-
tinual change of environment: Christian teaching
is thus continually changing its centre of gravity.
The favouring of low and paltry people. . . The
development of caritas. . The type “ Chris-
tian " gradually adopts everything that it originally
rejected (and in the rejection of which it asserted
its right to exist). The Christian becomes a
citizen, a soldier, a judge, a workman, a merchant,
a scholar, a theologian, a priest, a philosopher, a
farmer, an artist, a patriot, a politician, a prince
. . . he re-enters all those departments of active
life which he had forsworn (he defends himself,
he establishes tribunals, he punishes, he swears,
he differentiates between people and people, he
contemns, and he shows anger). The whole
life of the Christian is ultimately exactly that
life from which Christ preached deliverance.
The Church is just as much a factor in the
triumph of the Antichrist, as the modern State
and modern Nationalism.
