No More Learning

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


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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,"
”


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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-


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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)


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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


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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


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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


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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


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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-


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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).


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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


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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. The Church is the
barbarisation of Christianity.
.
214.
Among the powers that have mastered Chris-
tianity are: Judaism (Paul); Platonism (Augustine);
The cult of mystery (the teaching of salvation,


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
177
1
>
the emblem of the “cross "); Asceticism (hostility
towards “Nature,” “Reason,” the "senses,”—the
Orient . ).
215.
Christianity is a denaturalisation of gregarious
morality: under the power of the most complete
misapprehensions and self-deceptions. Demo-
cracy is a more natural form of it, and less sown
with falsehood. It is a fact that the oppressed,
the low, and whole mob of slaves and half-castes,
will prevail.
First step: they make themselves free-they
detach themselves, at first in fancy only; they
recognise each other; they make themselves
paramount.
Second step: they enter the lists, they demand
acknowledgment, equal rights, “ Justice. ”
Third step: they demand privileges (they
draw the representatives of power over to their
side).
Fourth step: they alone want all power, and
they have it.
There are three elements in Christianity which
must be distinguished: (a) the oppressed of all
kinds, (6) the mediocre of all kinds, (c) the dis-
satisfied and diseased of all kinds.
The first
struggle against the politically noble and their
ideal; the second contend with the exceptions
and those who are in any way privileged (mentally
of physically); the third oppose the natural
instinct of the happy and the sound.
Whenever a triumph is achieved, the second
M
VOL. I.


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THE WILL TO POWER.
element steps to the fore; for then Christianity
has won over the sound and happy to its side (as
warriors in its cause), likewise the powerful (inter-
ested to this extent in the conquest of the crowd)
--and now it is the gregarious instinct, that
mediocre nature which is valuable in every respect,
that now gets its highest sanction through Chris-
tianity. This mediocre nature ultimately becomes
so conscious of itself (gains such courage in
regard to its own opinions), that it arrogates to
itself even political power.
Democracy is Christianity made natural: a
sort of "return to Nature," once Christianity,
owing to extreme anti-naturalness, might have
been overcome by the opposite valuation. Result:
the aristocratic ideal begins to lose its natural
character (“the higher man,” “noble," "artist,”
“passion,” “knowledge”; Romanticism as the cult
of the exceptional, genius, etc. etc. ).
216.
When the "masters" may also become Christians.
- It is of the nature of a community (race, family,
herd, tribe) to regard all those conditions and
aspirations which favour its survival, as in them-
selves valuable ; for instance: obedience, mutual
assistance, respect, moderation, pity—as also, to
suppress everything that happens to stand in the
way of the above.
It is likewise of the nature of the rulers
(whether they are individuals or classes) to
patronise and applaud those virtues which make


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
179
-
their subjects amenable and submissive—(condi-
tions and passions which inay be utterly different
from their own).
The gregarious instinct and the instinct of the
rulers sometimes agree in approving of a certain
number of qualities and conditions, but for
different reasons: the first do so out of direct
egoism, the second out of indirect egoism.
The submission to Christianity on the part of
master races is essentially the result of the con-
viction that Christianity is a religion for the herd,
that it teaches obedience: in short, that Christians
are more easily ruled than non-Christians. With
a hint of this nature, the Pope, even nowadays,
recommends Christian propaganda to the ruling
Sovereign of China.
It should also be added that the seductive
power of the Christian ideal works most strongly
upon natures that love danger, adventure, and
contrasts; that love everything that entails a risk,
and wherewith a non plus ultra of powerful feeling
may be attained.
In this respect, one has only
to think of Saint Theresa, surrounded by the
heroic instincts of her brothers :-Christianity
appears in those circumstances as a dissipation of
the will, as strength of will, as a sort of Quixotic
heroism.
3. CHRISTIAN IDEALS.
217.
War against the Christian ideal, against the
doctrine of "blessedness” and “salvation" as the


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aims of life, against the supremacy of the fools, of
the pure in heart, of the suffering and of the
botched !
When and where has any man, of any note at all,
resembled the Christian ideal —at least in the eyes
of those who are psychologists and triers of the
heart and reins. Look at all Plutarch's heroes !
218.
Our claim to superiority: we live in an age of
Comparisons; we are able to calculate as men
have never yet calculated ; in every way we are
history become self-conscious. We enjoy things
in a different way; we suffer in a different way:
our instinctive activity is the comparison of an
enormous variety of things. We understand
everything; we experience everything, we no
longer have a hostile feeling left within us. How-
ever disastrous the results may be to ourselves, our
plunging and almost lustful inquisitiveness, attacks,
unabashed, the most dangerous of subjects. . .
“Everything is good ”-it gives us pain to say
“nay” to anything.
"
We suffer when we feel that
we are sufficiently foolish to make a definite stand
against anything. . . . At bottom, it is
scholars who to-day are fulfilling Christ's teaching
most thoroughly.
219.
we
We cannot suppress a certain irony when we
contemplate those who think they have overcome
Christianity by means of modern natural science.
Christian values are by no means overcome by


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
181
such people. “Christ on the cross” is still the
most sublime symbol—even now
220.
The two great Nihilistic movements are: (a)
Buddhism, (6) Christianity. The latter has only
just about reached a state of culture in which it
can fulfil its original object,—it has found its
level, and now it can manifest itself without
disguise.
.
.
221.
We have re-established the Christian ideal, it
now only remains to determine its value.
(1) Which values does it deny? What does
the ideal that opposes it stand for? —Pride, pathos
of distance, great responsibility, exuberant spirits,
splendid animalism, the instincts of war and of
conquest, the deification of passion, revenge, ,
cunning, anger, voluptuousness, adventure, know-
ledge ;-the noble ideal is denied : the beauty,
wisdom, power, pomp, and awfulness of the type
man: the man who postulates aims, the “ future"
man (here Christianity presents itself as the
logical result of Judaism).
(2) Can it be realised ? —Yes, of course, when the
climatic conditions are favourable—as in the case
of the Indian ideal. Both neglect the factor work.
-It separates a creature from a people, a state,
a
a civilised community, and jurisdiction; it rejects
education, wisdom, the cultivation of good man-
ners, acquisition and commerce; it cuts adrift


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THE WILL TO POWER.
everything which is of use and value to men-by
means of an idiosyncrasy of sentiment it isolates
a man. It is non-political, anti-national, neither
aggressive nor defensive, — and only possible
within a strictly-ordered State or state of society,
which allows these holy parasites to flourish at
the cost of their neighbours.
(3) It has now become the will to be happy
-and nothing else! “Blessedness” stands for
something self-evident, that no longer requires
any justification—everything else (the way to
live and let live) is only a means to an end.
But what follows is the result of a low order of
thought: the fear of pain, of defilement, of cor-
ruption, is great enough to provide ample grounds
for allowing everything to go to the dogs. . . .
This is a poor way of thinking, and is the sign of
an exhausted race; we must not allow ourselves
to be deceived. (“ Become as little children. ”
Natures of the same order: Francis of Assisi,
neurotic, epileptic, visionary, like Jesus. )
.
9
222.
The higher man distinguishes himself from the
lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to
challenge misfortune: it is a sign of degeneration
when eudemonistic values begin to prevail (physio-
logical fatigue and enfeeblement of will-power).
Christianity, with its prospect of "blessedness,” is
the typical attitude of mind of a suffering and
impoverished species of man. Abundant strength
will be active, will suffer, and will go under: to it


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
183
the bigotry of Christian salvation is bad music and
hieratic posing and vexation.
223.
Poverty, humility, and chastity are dangerous
and slanderous ideals ; but like poisons, which are
useful cures in the case of certain diseases, they
were also necessary in the time of the Roman
Empire.
All ideals are dangerous: because they lower
and brand realities; they are all poisons, but
occasionally indispensable as cures.
224.
.
God created man, happy, idle, innocent, and
immortal: our actual life is a false, decadent, and
sinful existence, a punishment. . . . Suffering,
struggle, work, and death are raised as objections
against life, they make life questionable, unnatural
-something that must cease, and for which one
not only requires but also has-remedies !
Since the time of Adam, man has been in an
abnormal state: God Himself delivered up His
Son for Adam's sin, in order to put an end to
the abnormal condition of things: the natural
character of life is a curse; to those who believe
in Him, Christ restores normal life: He makes
them happy, idle, and innocent. But the world
did not become fruitful without labour; women
do not bear children without pain ; illness has not
ceased : believers are served just as badly as un-
believers in this respect. All that has happened


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184
THE WILL TO POWER.
is, that man is delivered from death and sin
two assertions which allow of no verification, and
which are therefore emphasised by the Church
with more than usual heartiness. “ He is free
from sin,"—not owing to his own efforts, not
owing to a vigorous struggle on his part, but
redeemed by the death of the Saviour,conse-
quently, perfectly innocent and paradisaical.
Actual life is nothing more than an illusion
(that is to say, a deception, an insanity). . The
whole of struggling, fighting, and real existence-
so full of light and shade, is only bad and false :
everybody's duty is to be delivered from it.
“Man, innocent, idle, immortal, and happy
this concept, which is the object of the “most
supreme desires," must be criticised before any-
thing else. Why should guilt, work, death, and
pain (and, from the Christian point of view, also
knowledge . ) be contrary to all supreme desires ?
-The lazy Christian notions: “ blessedness,"
“innocence,” “immortality. ”
.
6
225.
The eccentric concept “holiness" does not
exist-"God” and “man” have not been divorced
from each other, “ Miracles” do not exist-such
spheres do not exist : the only one to be con-
sidered is the “intellectual” (that is to say, the
symbolically-psychological). As decadence: a
counterpart to “Epicureanism. " . . . Paradise
according to Greek notions was only “Epicurus'
Garden. ”
»
.


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
185
A life of this sort lacks a purpose: it strives
after nothing ;-a form of the “Epicurean gods”.
there is no longer any reason to aim at anything,
- not even at having children :-everything has
been done.
226.
:
.
They despised the body: they did not reckon
with it: nay, more-they treated it as an enemy.
It was their delirium to think that a man could
carry a “beautiful soul ” about in a body that was
a cadaverous abortion. . . . In order to inoculate
others with this insanity they had to present the
concept "beautiful soul” in a different way, and
to transvalue the natural value, until, at last, a
pale, sickly, idiotically exalted creature, some-
thing angelic, some extreme perfection and trans-
figuration was declared to be the higher man.
227.
Ignorance in matters psychological. —The
Christian has no nervous system ;-contempt for,
and deliberate and wilful turning away from, the
demands of the body, from discoveries about the
body; it is assumed that all this is in keeping
with man's nature, and must perforce work the
ultimate good of the soul;-all functions of the
body are systematically reduced to moral values ;
illness itself is regarded as determined by morality,
it is held to be the result of sin, or it is a trial
or a state of salvation, through which man becomes
more perfect than he could become in a state


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186
THE WILL TO POWER.
of health (Pascal's idea); under certain circum-
stances, there are wilful attempts at inducing
illness.
228.
What in sooth is this struggle" against Nature”
on the part of the Christian? We shall not, of
course, let ourselves be deceived by his words and
explanations. It is Nature against something
which is also Nature. With many, it is fear;
with others, it is loathing; with yet others, it is
the sign of a certain intellectuality, the love of a
bloodless and passionless ideal; and in the case
of the most superior men, it is love of an abstract
Nature—these try to live up to their ideal. It is
easily understood that humiliation in the place of
self-esteem, anxious cautiousness towards the
passions, emancipation from the usual duties
(whereby a higher notion of rank is created), the
incitement to constant war on behalf of enormous
issues, habituation to effusiveness of feelings-all
this goes to constitute a type: in such a type
the hypersensitiveness of a perishing body pre-
ponderates; but the nervousness and the in-
spirations it engenders are interpreted differently.
The taste of this kind of creature tends either (1)
to subtilise, (2) to indulge in bombastic eloquence,
or (3) to go in for extreme feelings. The natural
inclinations do get satisfied, but they are interpreted
in a new way; for instance, as “justification before
God," " the feeling of redemption through grace,"
(every undeniable feeling of pleasure becomes
interpreted in this way! ) pride, voluptuousness,
)


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
187
etc. General problem: what will become of the
man who slanders and practically denies and
belittles what is natural ? As a matter of fact,
the Christian is an example of exaggerated self-
control : in order to tame his passions, he seems
to find it necessary to extirpate or crucify them.
229.
»
Man did not know himself physiologically
throughout the ages his history covers; he does
not even know himself now. The knowledge, for
instance, that man has a nervous system (but no
“soul") is still the privilege of the most educated
people. But man is not satisfied, in this respect,
to say he does not know. A man must be very
human to be able to say: "I do not know this,"
—that is to say, to be able to admit his ignorance.
Suppose he is in pain or in a good mood, he
never questions that he can find the reason of
either condition if only he seeks. . . . And so he
seeks for it. In truth he cannot find the reason;
for he does not even suspect where it lies. .
What happens? . . . He takes a result of his
condition for its cause ; for instance, if he should
undertake some work (really undertaken because
his good mood gave him the courage to do so)
and carry it through successfully : behold, the
work itself is the reason of his good mood.
As a matter of fact, his success was determined by
the same cause as that which brought about his
good mood—that is to say, the happy co-ordina-
tion of physiological powers and functions.


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188
THE WILL TO POWER.
He feels bad: consequently he cannot overcome
a care, a scruple, or an attitude of self-criticism.
. . . He really fancies that his disagreeable con-
dition is the result of his scruple, of his "sin," or
of his “self-criticism. "
But after profound exhaustion and prostration,
a state of recovery sets in. “ How is it possible
that I can feel so free, so happy? It is a
miracle; only a God could have effected this
change. ”—Conclusion: “He has forgiven my
sin. "
From this follow certain practices : in order to
provoke feelings of sinfulness and to prepare the
way for crushed spirits it is necessary to induce
a condition of morbidity and nervousness in
the body. The methods of doing this are well
known. Of course, nobody suspects the causal
logic of the fact: the maceration of the flesh is
interpreted religiously, it seems like an end in
itself, whereas it is no more than a means of
bringing about that morbid state of indigestion
which is known as repentance (the “fixed idea ”
of sin, the hypnotising of the hen by means of the
chalk-line "sin").
The mishandling of the body prepares the
ground for the required range of “guilty feelings”
- that is to say, for that general state of pain
which demands an explanation, . . .
On the other hand, the method of “salvation'
may also develop from the above: every dis-
sipation of the feelings, whether prayers, move-
ments, attitudes, or oaths, has been provoked, and
exhaustion follows; very often it is acute, or it
C
»


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CRITICISM OF RELIGION.
189
appears in the form of epilepsy. And behind this
condition of deep somnolence there come signs of
recovery-or, in religious parlance, “ Salvation. ”
»
230.
Formerly, the conditions and results of physio-
logical exhaustion were considered more important
than healthy conditions and their results, and this
was owing to the suddenness, fearfulness, and
mysteriousness of the former. Men were terrified
by themselves, and postulated the existence of a
higher world. People have ascribed the origin
of the idea of two worlds—one this side of the
grave and the other beyond it-to sleep and
dreams, to shadows, to night, and to the fear of
Nature: but the symptoms of physiological ex-
haustion should, above all, have been considered.
Ancient religions have quite special methods
of disciplining the pious into states of exhaustion,
in which they must experience such things. .
The idea was, that one entered into a new order
of things, where everything ceases to be known.
The semblance of a higher power, . . .
.
231.
Sleep is the result of every kind of exhaus-
tion; exhaustion follows upon all excessive
excitement. .
In all pessimistic religions and philosophies
there is a yearning for sleep; the very notion
"sleep" is deified and worshipped.
In this case the exhaustion is racial; sleep
)


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THE WILL TO POWER.
.