No More Learning

In any sense, it is
a question, always, of self preservation. Socrates and Plato are right:
whatever man does he always does right: that is, does what seems to him
good (advantageous) according to the degree of advancement his intellect
has attained, which is always the measure of his rational capacity.


103

=The Inoffensive in Badness. =--Badness has not for its object the
infliction of pain upon others but simply our own satisfaction as, for
instance, in the case of thirst for vengeance or of nerve excitation.
Every act of teasing shows what pleasure is caused by the display of
our power over others and what feelings of delight are experienced in
the sense of domination. Is there, then, anything immoral in feeling
pleasure in the pain of others? Is malicious joy devilish, as
Schopenhauer says? In the realm of nature we feel joy in breaking
boughs, shattering rocks, fighting with wild beasts, simply to attest
our strength thereby. Should not the knowledge that another suffers on
our account here, in this case, make the same kind of act, (which, by
the way, arouses no qualms of conscience in us) immoral also? But if we
had not this knowledge there would be no pleasure in one's own
superiority or power, for this pleasure is experienced only in the
suffering of another, as in the case of teasing. All pleasure is, in
itself, neither good nor bad. Whence comes the conviction that one
should not cause pain in others in order to feel pleasure oneself?
Simply from the standpoint of utility, that is, in consideration of the
consequences, of ultimate pain, since the injured party or state will
demand satisfaction and revenge. This consideration alone can have led
to the determination to renounce such pleasure. --Sympathy has the
satisfaction of others in view no more than, as already stated, badness
has the pain of others in view. For there are at least two (perhaps many
more) elementary ingredients in personal gratification which enter
largely into our self satisfaction: one of them being the pleasure of
the emotion, of which species is sympathy with tragedy, and another,
when the impulse is to action, being the pleasure of exercising one's
power. Should a sufferer be very dear to us, we divest ourselves of pain
by the performance of acts of sympathy. --With the exception of some few
philosophers, men have placed sympathy very low in the rank of moral
feelings: and rightly.


104

=Self Defence. =--If self defence is in general held a valid
justification, then nearly every manifestation of so called immoral
egoism must be justified, too. Pain is inflicted, robbery or killing
done in order to maintain life or to protect oneself and ward off harm.
A man lies when cunning and delusion are valid means of self
preservation. To injure intentionally when our safety and our existence
are involved, or the continuance of our well being, is conceded to be
moral. The state itself injures from this motive when it hangs
criminals. In unintentional injury the immoral, of course, can not be
present, as accident alone is involved. But is there any sort of
intentional injury in which our existence and the maintenance of our
well being be not involved? Is there such a thing as injuring from
absolute badness, for example, in the case of cruelty? If a man does not
know what pain an act occasions, that act is not one of wickedness. Thus
the child is not bad to the animal, not evil. It disturbs and rends it
as if it were one of its playthings. Does a man ever fully know how much
pain an act may cause another? As far as our nervous system extends, we
shield ourselves from pain. If it extended further, that is, to our
fellow men, we would never cause anyone else any pain (except in such
cases as we cause it to ourselves, when we cut ourselves, surgically, to
heal our ills, or strive and trouble ourselves to gain health). We
conclude from analogy that something pains somebody and can in
consequence, through recollection and the power of imagination, feel
pain also. But what a difference there always is between the tooth ache
and the pain (sympathy) that the spectacle of tooth ache occasions!
Therefore when injury is inflicted from so called badness the degree of
pain thereby experienced is always unknown to us: in so far, however, as
pleasure is felt in the act (a sense of one's own power, of one's own
excitation) the act is committed to maintain the well being of the
individual and hence comes under the purview of self defence and lying
for self preservation. Without pleasure, there is no life; the struggle
for pleasure is the struggle for life. Whether the individual shall
carry on this struggle in such a way that he be called good or in such a
way that he be called bad is something that the standard and the
capacity of his own intellect must determine for him.


105

=Justice that Rewards. =--Whoever has fully understood the doctrine of
absolute irresponsibility can no longer include the so called rewarding
and punishing justice in the idea of justice, if the latter be taken to
mean that to each be given his due. For he who is punished does not
deserve the punishment. He is used simply as a means to intimidate
others from certain acts. Equally, he who is rewarded does not merit the
reward. He could not act any differently than he did act. Hence the
reward has only the significance of an encouragement to him and others
as a motive for subsequent acts. The praise is called out only to him
who is running in the race and not to him who has arrived at the goal.
Something that comes to someone as his own is neither a punishment nor a
reward. It is given to him from utiliarian considerations, without his
having any claim to it in justice. Hence one must say "the wise man
praises not because a good act has been done" precisely as was once
said: "the wise man punishes not because a bad act has been done but in
order that a bad act may not be done. " If punishment and reward ceased,
there would cease with them the most powerful incentives to certain acts
and away from other acts. The purposes of men demand their continuance
[of punishment and reward] and inasmuch as punishment and reward, blame
and praise operate most potently upon vanity, these same purposes of men
imperatively require the continuance of vanity.


106

=The Water Fall. =--At the sight of a water fall we may opine that in the
countless curves, spirations and dashes of the waves we behold freedom
of the will and of the impulses. But everything is compulsory,
everything can be mathematically calculated. Thus it is, too, with human
acts. We would be able to calculate in advance every single action if we
were all knowing, as well as every advance in knowledge, every delusion,
every bad deed. The acting individual himself is held fast in the
illusion of volition. If, on a sudden, the entire movement of the world
stopped short, and an all knowing and reasoning intelligence were there
to take advantage of this pause, he could foretell the future of every
being to the remotest ages and indicate the path that would be taken in
the world's further course. The deception of the acting individual as
regards himself, the assumption of the freedom of the will, is a part of
this computable mechanism.


107

=Non-Responsibility and Non-Guilt. =--The absolute irresponsibility of
man for his acts and his nature is the bitterest drop in the cup of him
who has knowledge, if he be accustomed to behold in responsibility and
duty the patent of nobility of his human nature. All his estimates,
preferences, dislikes are thus made worthless and false. His deepest
sentiment, with which he honored the sufferer, the hero, sprang from an
error. He may no longer praise, no longer blame, for it is irrational to
blame and praise nature and necessity. Just as he cherishes the
beautiful work of art, but does not praise it (as it is incapable of
doing anything for itself), just as he stands in the presence of plants,
he must stand in the presence of human conduct, his own included. He may
admire strength, beauty, capacity, therein, but he can discern no merit.
The chemical process and the conflict of the elements, the ordeal of
the invalid who strives for convalescence, are no more merits than the
soul-struggles and extremities in which one is torn this way and that by
contending motives until one finally decides in favor of the
strongest--as the phrase has it, although, in fact, it is the strongest
motive that decides for us. All these motives, however, whatever fine
names we may give them, have grown from the same roots in which we
believe the baneful poisons lurk. Between good and bad actions there is
no difference in kind but, at most, in degree. Good acts are sublimated
evil. Bad acts are degraded, imbruted good. The very longing of the
individual for self gratification (together with the fear of being
deprived of it) obtains satisfaction in all circumstances, let the
individual act as he may, that is, as he must: be it in deeds of vanity,
revenge, pleasure, utility, badness, cunning, be it in deeds of self
sacrifice, sympathy or knowledge. The degrees of rational capacity
determine the direction in which this longing impels: every society,
every individual has constantly present a comparative classification of
benefits in accordance with which conduct is determined and others are
judged. But this standard perpetually changes. Many acts are called bad
that are only stupid, because the degree of intelligence that decided
for them was low. Indeed, in a certain sense, all acts now are stupid,
for the highest degree of human intelligence that has yet been attained
will in time most certainly be surpassed and then, in retrospection, all
our present conduct and opinion will appear as narrow and petty as we
now deem the conduct and opinion of savage peoples and ages. --To
perceive all these things may occasion profound pain but there is,
nevertheless, a consolation. Such pains are birth pains. The butterfly
insists upon breaking through the cocoon, he presses through it, tears
it to pieces, only to be blinded and confused by the strange light, by
the realm of liberty. By such men as are capable of this sadness--how
few there are! --will the first attempt be made to see if humanity may
convert itself from a thing of morality to a thing of wisdom. The sun of
a new gospel sheds its first ray upon the loftiest height in the souls
of those few: but the clouds are massed there, too, thicker than ever,
and not far apart are the brightest sunlight and the deepest gloom.
Everything is necessity--so says the new knowledge: and this knowledge
is itself necessity. All is guiltlessness, and knowledge is the way to
insight into this guiltlessness. If pleasure, egoism, vanity be
necessary to attest the moral phenomena and their richest blooms, the
instinct for truth and accuracy of knowledge; if delusion and confusion
of the imagination were the only means whereby mankind could gradually
lift itself up to this degree of self enlightenment and self
emancipation--who would venture to disparage the means? Who would have
the right to feel sad if made aware of the goal to which those paths
lead? Everything in the domain of ethic is evolved, changeable,
tottering; all things flow, it is true--but all things are also in the
stream: to their goal. Though within us the hereditary habit of
erroneous judgment, love, hate, may be ever dominant, yet under the
influence of awaking knowledge it will ever become weaker: a new habit,
that of understanding, not-loving, not-hating, looking from above, grows
up within us gradually and in the same soil, and may, perhaps, in
thousands of years be powerful enough to endow mankind with capacity to
develop the wise, guiltless man (conscious of guiltlessness) as
unfailingly as it now developes the unwise, irrational, guilt-conscious
man--that is to say, the necessary higher step, not the opposite of it.




THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.


108

=The Double Contest Against Evil. =--If an evil afflicts us we can either
so deal with it as to remove its cause or else so deal with it that its
effect upon our feeling is changed: hence look upon the evil as a
benefit of which the uses will perhaps first become evident in some
subsequent period. Religion and art (and also the metaphysical
philosophy) strive to effect an alteration of the feeling, partly by an
alteration of our judgment respecting the experience (for example, with
the aid of the dictum "whom God loves, he chastizes") partly by the
awakening of a joy in pain, in emotion especially (whence the art of
tragedy had its origin). The more one is disposed to interpret away and
justify, the less likely he is to look directly at the causes of evil
and eliminate them. An instant alleviation and narcotizing of pain, as
is usual in the case of tooth ache, is sufficient for him even in the
severest suffering. The more the domination of religions and of all
narcotic arts declines, the more searchingly do men look to the
elimination of evil itself, which is a rather bad thing for the tragic
poets--for there is ever less and less material for tragedy, since the
domain of unsparing, immutable destiny grows constantly more
circumscribed--and a still worse thing for the priests, for these last
have lived heretofore upon the narcoticizing of human ill.


109

=Sorrow is Knowledge. =--How willingly would not one exchange the false
assertions of the homines religiosi that there is a god who commands us
to be good, who is the sentinel and witness of every act, every moment,
every thought, who loves us, who plans our welfare in every
misfortune--how willingly would not one exchange these for truths as
healing, beneficial and grateful as those delusions! But there are no
such truths. Philosophy can at most set up in opposition to them other
metaphysical plausibilities (fundamental untruths as well). The tragedy
of it all is that, although one cannot believe these dogmas of religion
and metaphysics if one adopts in heart and head the potent methods of
truth, one has yet become, through human evolution, so tender,
susceptible, sensitive, as to stand in need of the most effective means
of rest and consolation. From this state of things arises the danger
that, through the perception of truth or, more accurately, seeing
through delusion, one may bleed to death. Byron has put this into
deathless verse:

"Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most
Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth,
The tree of knowledge is not that of life. "

Against such cares there is no better protective than the light fancy of
Horace, (at any rate during the darkest hours and sun eclipses of the
soul) expressed in the words

"quid aeternis minorem
consiliis animum fatigas?
cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac
pinu jacentes. "[22]

[22] Then wherefore should you, who are mortal, outwear
Your soul with a profitless burden of care
Say, why should we not, flung at ease neath this pine,
Or a plane-tree's broad umbrage, quaff gaily our wine?
(Translation of Sir Theodore Martin. )

At any rate, light fancy or heavy heartedness of any degree must be
better than a romantic retrogression and desertion of one's flag, an
approach to Christianity in any form: for with it, in the present state
of knowledge, one can have nothing to do without hopelessly defiling
one's intellectual integrity and surrendering it unconditionally. These
woes may be painful enough, but without pain one cannot become a leader
and guide of humanity: and woe to him who would be such and lacks this
pure integrity of the intellect!


110

=The Truth in Religion. =--In the ages of enlightenment justice was not
done to the importance of religion, of this there can be no doubt. It is
also equally certain that in the ensuing reaction of enlightenment, the
demands of justice were far exceeded inasmuch as religion was treated
with love, even with infatuation and proclaimed as a profound, indeed
the most profound knowledge of the world, which science had but to
divest of its dogmatic garb in order to possess "truth" in its
unmythical form. Religions must therefore--this was the contention of
all foes of enlightenment--sensu allegorico, with regard for the
comprehension of the masses, give expression to that ancient truth which
is wisdom in itself, inasmuch as all science of modern times has led up
to it instead of away from it. So that between the most ancient wisdom
of man and all later wisdom there prevails harmony, even similarity of
viewpoint; and the advancement of knowledge--if one be disposed to
concede such a thing--has to do not with its nature but with its
propagation. This whole conception of religion and science is through
and through erroneous, and none would to-day be hardy enough to
countenance it had not Schopenhauer's rhetoric taken it under
protection, this high sounding rhetoric which now gains auditors after
the lapse of a generation. Much as may be gained from Schopenhauer's
religio-ethical human and cosmical oracle as regards the comprehension
of Christianity and other religions, it is nevertheless certain that he
erred regarding the value of religion to knowledge. He himself was in
this but a servile pupil of the scientific teachers of his time who had
all taken romanticism under their protection and renounced the spirit of
enlightenment. Had he been born in our own time it would have been
impossible for him to have spoken of the sensus allegoricus of religion.
He would instead have done truth the justice to say: never has a
religion, directly or indirectly, either as dogma or as allegory,
contained a truth. For all religions grew out of dread or necessity, and
came into existence through an error of the reason. They have, perhaps,
in times of danger from science, incorporated some philosophical
doctrine or other into their systems in order to make it possible to
continue one's existence within them. But this is but a theological work
of art dating from the time in which a religion began to doubt of
itself. These theological feats of art, which are most common in
Christianity as the religion of a learned age, impregnated with
philosophy, have led to this superstition of the sensus allegoricus, as
has, even more, the habit of the philosophers (namely those
half-natures, the poetical philosophers and the philosophising artists)
of dealing with their own feelings as if they constituted the
fundamental nature of humanity and hence of giving their own religious
feelings a predominant influence over the structure of their systems. As
the philosophers mostly philosophised under the influence of hereditary
religious habits, or at least under the traditional influence of this
"metaphysical necessity," they naturally arrived at conclusions
closely resembling the Judaic or Christian or Indian religious
tenets--resembling, in the way that children are apt to look like their
mothers: only in this case the fathers were not certain as to the
maternity, as easily happens--but in the innocence of their admiration,
they fabled regarding the family likeness of all religion and science.
In reality, there exists between religion and true science neither
relationship nor friendship, not even enmity: they dwell in different
spheres. Every philosophy that lets the religious comet gleam through
the darkness of its last outposts renders everything within it that
purports to be science, suspicious. It is all probably religion,
although it may assume the guise of science. --Moreover, though all the
peoples agree concerning certain religious things, for example, the
existence of a god (which, by the way, as regards this point, is not
the case) this fact would constitute an argument against the thing
agreed upon, for example the very existence of a god. The consensus
gentium and especially hominum can probably amount only to an absurdity.
Against it there is no consensus omnium sapientium whatever, on any
point, with the exception of which Goethe's verse speaks:

"All greatest sages to all latest ages
Will smile, wink and slily agree
'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate
Has learned to be knowing and free.
So children of wisdom must look upon fools
As creatures who're never the better for schools. "

Stated without rhyme or metre and adapted to our case: the consensus
sapientium is to the effect that the consensus gentium amounts to an
absurdity.


111

=Origin of Religious Worship. =--Let us transport ourselves back to the
times in which religious life flourished most vigorously and we will
find a fundamental conviction prevalent which we no longer share and
which has resulted in the closing of the door to religious life once for
all so far as we are concerned: this conviction has to do with nature
and intercourse with her. In those times nothing is yet known of
nature's laws. Neither for earth nor for heaven is there a must. A
season, sunshine, rain can come or stay away as it pleases. There is
wanting, in particular, all idea of natural causation. If a man rows, it
is not the oar that moves the boat, but rowing is a magical ceremony
whereby a demon is constrained to move the boat. All illness, death
itself, is a consequence of magical influences. In sickness and death
nothing natural is conceived. The whole idea of "natural course" is
wanting. The idea dawns first upon the ancient Greeks, that is to say in
a very late period of humanity, in the conception of a Moira [fate]
ruling over the gods. If any person shoots off a bow, there is always an
irrational strength and agency in the act. If the wells suddenly run
dry, the first thought is of subterranean demons and their pranks. It
must have been the dart of a god beneath whose invisible influence a
human being suddenly collapses. In India, the carpenter (according to
Lubbock) is in the habit of making devout offerings to his hammer and
hatchet. A Brahmin treats the plume with which he writes, a soldier the
weapon that he takes into the field, a mason his trowel, a laborer his
plow, in the same way. All nature is, in the opinion of religious
people, a sum total of the doings of conscious and willing beings, an
immense mass of complex volitions. In regard to all that takes place
outside of us no conclusion is permissible that anything will result
thus and so, must result thus and so, that we are comparatively
calculable and certain in our experiences, that man is the rule, nature
the ruleless. This view forms the fundamental conviction that dominates
crude, religion-producing, early civilizations. We contemporary men feel
exactly the opposite: the richer man now feels himself inwardly, the
more polyphone the music and the sounding of his soul, the more
powerfully does the uniformity of nature impress him. We all, with
Goethe, recognize in nature the great means of repose for the soul. We
listen to the pendulum stroke of this great clock with longing for rest,
for absolute calm and quiescence, as if we could drink in the uniformity
of nature and thereby arrive first at an enjoyment of oneself. Formerly
it was the reverse: if we carry ourselves back to the periods of crude
civilization, or if we contemplate contemporary savages, we will find
them most strongly influenced by rule, by tradition. The individual is
almost automatically bound to rule and tradition and moves with the
uniformity of a pendulum. To him nature--the uncomprehended, fearful,
mysterious nature--must seem the domain of freedom, of volition, of
higher power, indeed as an ultra-human degree of destiny, as god. Every
individual in such periods and circumstances feels that his existence,
his happiness, the existence and happiness of the family, the state,
the success or failure of every undertaking, must depend upon these
dispositions of nature. Certain natural events must occur at the proper
time and certain others must not occur. How can influence be exercised
over this fearful unknown, how can this domain of freedom be brought
under subjection? thus he asks himself, thus he worries: Is there no
means to render these powers of nature as subject to rule and tradition
as you are yourself? --The cogitation of the superstitious and
magic-deluded man is upon the theme of imposing a law upon nature: and
to put it briefly, religious worship is the result of such cogitation.
The problem which is present to every man is closely connected with this
one: how can the weaker party dictate laws to the stronger, control its
acts in reference to the weaker? At first the most harmless form of
influence is recollected, that influence which is acquired when the
partiality of anyone has been won. Through beseeching and prayer,
through abject humiliation, through obligations to regular gifts and
propitiations, through flattering homages, it is possible, therefore, to
impose some guidance upon the forces of nature, to the extent that their
partiality be won: love binds and is bound. Then agreements can be
entered into by means of which certain courses of conduct are mutually
concluded, vows are made and authorities prescribed. But far more potent
is that species of power exercised by means of magic and incantation. As
a man is able to injure a powerful enemy by means of the magician and
render him helpless with fear, as the love potion operates at a
distance, so can the mighty forces of nature, in the opinion of weaker
mankind, be controlled by similar means. The principal means of
effecting incantations is to acquire control of something belonging to
the party to be influenced, hair, finger nails, food from his table,
even his picture or his name. With such apparatus it is possible to act
by means of magic, for the basic principle is that to everything
spiritual corresponds something corporeal. With the aid of this
corporeal element the spirit may be bound, injured or destroyed. The
corporeal affords the handle by which the spiritual can be laid hold of.
In the same way that man influences mankind does he influences some
spirit of nature, for this latter has also its corporeal element that
can be grasped. The tree, and on the same basis, the seed from which it
grew: this puzzling sequence seems to demonstrate that in both forms the
same spirit is embodied, now large, now small. A stone that suddenly
rolls, is the body in which the spirit works. Does a huge boulder lie in
a lonely moor? It is impossible to think of mortal power having placed
it there. The stone must have moved itself there. That is to say some
spirit must dominate it. Everything that has a body is subject to magic,
including, therefore, the spirits of nature. If a god is directly
connected with his portrait, a direct influence (by refraining from
devout offerings, by whippings, chainings and the like) can be brought
to bear upon him. The lower classes in China tie cords around the
picture of their god in order to defy his departing favor, when he has
left them in the lurch, and tear the picture to pieces, drag it through
the streets into dung heaps and gutters, crying: "You dog of a spirit,
we housed you in a beautiful temple, we gilded you prettily, we fed you
well, we brought you offerings, and yet how ungrateful you are! " Similar
displays of resentment have been made against pictures of the mother of
god and pictures of saints in Catholic countries during the present
century when such pictures would not do their duty during times of
pestilence and drought.

Through all these magical relationships to nature countless ceremonies
are occasioned, and finally, when their complexity and confusion grow
too great, pains are taken to systematize them, to arrange them so that
the favorable course of nature's progress, namely the great yearly
circle of the seasons, may be brought about by a corresponding course of
the ceremonial progress. The aim of religious worship is to influence
nature to human advantage, and hence to instil a subjection to law into
her that originally she has not, whereas at present man desires to find
out the subjection to law of nature in order to guide himself thereby.
In brief, the system of religious worship rests upon the idea of magic
between man and man, and the magician is older than the priest. But it
rests equally upon other and higher ideas. It brings into prominence the
sympathetic relation of man to man, the existence of benevolence,
gratitude, prayer, of truces between enemies, of loans upon security, of
arrangements for the protection of property. Man, even in very inferior
degrees of civilization, does not stand in the presence of nature as a
helpless slave, he is not willy-nilly the absolute servant of nature. In
the Greek development of religion, especially in the relationship to the
Olympian gods, it becomes possible to entertain the idea of an existence
side by side of two castes, a higher, more powerful, and a lower, less
powerful: but both are bound together in some way, on account of their
origin and are one species. They need not be ashamed of one another.
This is the element of distinction in Greek religion.


112

=At the Contemplation of Certain Ancient Sacrificial Proceedings. =--How
many sentiments are lost to us is manifest in the union of the farcical,
even of the obscene, with the religious feeling. The feeling that this
mixture is possible is becoming extinct. We realize the mixture only
historically, in the mysteries of Demeter and Dionysos and in the
Christian Easter festivals and religious mysteries. But we still
perceive the sublime in connection with the ridiculous, and the like,
the emotional with the absurd. Perhaps a later age will be unable to
understand even these combinations.


113

=Christianity as Antiquity. =--When on a Sunday morning we hear the old
bells ringing, we ask ourselves: Is it possible? All this for a Jew
crucified two thousand years ago who said he was God's son?
The proof of
such an assertion is lacking. --Certainly, the Christian religion
constitutes in our time a protruding bit of antiquity from very remote
ages and that its assertions are still generally believed--although men
have become so keen in the scrutiny of claims--constitutes the oldest
relic of this inheritance. A god who begets children by a mortal woman;
a sage who demands that no more work be done, that no more justice be
administered but that the signs of the approaching end of the world be
heeded; a system of justice that accepts an innocent as a vicarious
sacrifice in the place of the guilty; a person who bids his disciples
drink his blood; prayers for miracles; sins against a god expiated upon
a god; fear of a hereafter to which death is the portal; the figure of
the cross as a symbol in an age that no longer knows the purpose and the
ignominy of the cross--how ghostly all these things flit before us out
of the grave of their primitive antiquity! Is one to believe that such
things can still be believed?


114

=The Un-Greek in Christianity. =--The Greeks did not look upon the
Homeric gods above them as lords nor upon themselves beneath as
servants, after the fashion of the Jews. They saw but the counterpart as
in a mirror of the most perfect specimens of their own caste, hence an
ideal, but no contradiction of their own nature. There was a feeling of
mutual relationship, resulting in a mutual interest, a sort of alliance.
Man thinks well of himself when he gives himself such gods and places
himself in a relationship akin to that of the lower nobility with the
higher; whereas the Italian races have a decidedly vulgar religion,
involving perpetual anxiety because of bad and mischievous powers and
soul disturbers. Wherever the Olympian gods receded into the background,
there even Greek life became gloomier and more perturbed. --Christianity,
on the other hand, oppressed and degraded humanity completely and sank
it into deepest mire: into the feeling of utter abasement it suddenly
flashed the gleam of divine compassion, so that the amazed and
grace-dazzled stupefied one gave a cry of delight and for a moment
believed that the whole of heaven was within him. Upon this unhealthy
excess of feeling, upon the accompanying corruption of heart and head,
Christianity attains all its psychological effects. It wants to
annihilate, debase, stupefy, amaze, bedazzle. There is but one thing
that it does not want: measure, standard (das Maas) and therefore is it
in the worst sense barbarous, asiatic, vulgar, un-Greek.


115

=Being Religious to Some Purpose. =--There are certain insipid,
traffic-virtuous people to whom religion is pinned like the hem of some
garb of a higher humanity. These people do well to remain religious: it
adorns them. All who are not versed in some professional
weapon--including tongue and pen as weapons--are servile: to all such
the Christian religion is very useful, for then their servility assumes
the aspect of Christian virtue and is amazingly adorned. --People whose
daily lives are empty and colorless are readily religious. This is
comprehensible and pardonable, but they have no right to demand that
others, whose daily lives are not empty and colorless, should be
religious also.


116

=The Everyday Christian. =--If Christianity, with its allegations of an
avenging God, universal sinfulness, choice of grace, and the danger of
eternal damnation, were true, it would be an indication of weakness of
mind and character not to be a priest or an apostle or a hermit, and
toil for one's own salvation. It would be irrational to lose sight of
one's eternal well being in comparison with temporary advantage:
Assuming these dogmas to be generally believed, the every day Christian
is a pitiable figure, a man who really cannot count as far as three, and
who, for the rest, just because of his intellectual incapacity, does not
deserve to be as hard punished as Christianity promises he shall be.


117

=Concerning the Cleverness of Christianity. =--It is a master stroke of
Christianity to so emphasize the unworthiness, sinfulness and
degradation of men in general that contempt of one's fellow creatures
becomes impossible. "He may sin as much as he pleases, he is not by
nature different from me. It is I who in every way am unworthy and
contemptible. " So says the Christian to himself. But even this feeling
has lost its keenest sting for the Christian does not believe in his
individual degradation. He is bad in his general human capacity and he
soothes himself a little with the assertion that we are all alike.


118

=Personal Change. =--As soon as a religion rules, it has for its
opponents those who were its first disciples.


119

=Fate of Christianity. =--Christianity arose to lighten the heart, but
now it must first make the heart heavy in order to be able to lighten it
afterwards. Christianity will consequently go down.


120

=The Testimony of Pleasure. =--The agreeable opinion is accepted as true.
This is the testimony of pleasure (or as the church says, the evidence
of strength) of which all religions are so proud, although they should
all be ashamed of it. If a belief did not make blessed it would not be
believed. How little it would be worth, then!


121

=Dangerous Play. =--Whoever gives religious feeling room, must then also
let it grow. He can do nothing else. Then his being gradually changes.
The religious element brings with it affinities and kinships. The whole
circle of his judgment and feeling is clouded and draped in religious
shadows. Feeling cannot stand still. One should be on one's guard.


122

=The Blind Pupil. =--As long as one knows very well the strength and the
weakness of one's dogma, one's art, one's religion, its strength is
still low. The pupil and apostle who has no eye for the weaknesses of a
dogma, a religion and so on, dazzled by the aspect of the master and by
his own reverence for him, has, on that very account, generally more
power than the master. Without blind pupils the influence of a man and
his work has never become great. To give victory to knowledge, often
amounts to no more than so allying it with stupidity that the brute
force of the latter forces triumph for the former.


123

=The Breaking off of Churches. =--There is not sufficient religion in the
world merely to put an end to the number of religions.


124

=Sinlessness of Men. =--If one have understood how "Sin came into the
world," namely through errors of the reason, through which men in their
intercourse with one another and even individual men looked upon
themselves as much blacker and wickeder than was really the case, one's
whole feeling is much lightened and man and the world appear together in
such a halo of harmlessness that a sentiment of well being is instilled
into one's whole nature. Man in the midst of nature is as a child left
to its own devices. This child indeed dreams a heavy, anxious dream. But
when it opens its eyes it finds itself always in paradise.


125

=Irreligiousness of Artists. =--Homer is so much at home among his gods
and is as a poet so good natured to them that he must have been
profoundly irreligious. That which was brought to him by the popular
faith--a mean, crude and partially repulsive superstition--he dealt with
as freely as the Sculptor with his clay, therefore with the same freedom
that AEschylus and Aristophanes evinced and with which in later times the
great artists of the renaissance, and also Shakespeare and Goethe, drew
their pictures.


126

=Art and Strength of False Interpretation. =--All the visions, fears,
exhaustions and delights of the saint are well known symptoms of
sickness, which in him, owing to deep rooted religious and psychological
delusions, are explained quite differently, that is not as symptoms of
sickness. --So, too, perhaps, the demon of Socrates was nothing but a
malady of the ear that he explained, in view of his predominant moral
theory, in a manner different from what would be thought rational
to-day. Nor is the case different with the frenzy and the frenzied
speeches of the prophets and of the priests of the oracles. It is always
the degree of wisdom, imagination, capacity and morality in the heart
and mind of the interpreters that got so much out of them. It is among
the greatest feats of the men who are called geniuses and saints that
they made interpreters for themselves who, fortunately for mankind, did
not understand them.


127

=Reverence for Madness. =--Because it was perceived that an excitement of
some kind often made the head clearer and occasioned fortunate
inspirations, it was concluded that the utmost excitement would occasion
the most fortunate inspirations. Hence the frenzied being was revered as
a sage and an oracle giver. A false conclusion lies at the bottom of all
this.


128

=Promises of Wisdom. =--Modern science has as its object as little pain
as possible, as long a life as possible--hence a sort of eternal
blessedness, but of a very limited kind in comparison with the promises
of religion.


129

=Forbidden Generosity. =--There is not enough of love and goodness in the
world to throw any of it away on conceited people.


130

=Survival of Religious Training in the Disposition. =--The Catholic
Church, and before it all ancient education, controlled the whole domain
of means through which man was put into certain unordinary moods and
withdrawn from the cold calculation of personal advantage and from calm,
rational reflection. A church vibrating with deep tones; gloomy,
regular, restraining exhortations from a priestly band, who
involuntarily communicate their own tension to their congregation and
lead them to listen almost with anxiety as if some miracle were in
course of preparation; the awesome pile of architecture which, as the
house of a god, rears itself vastly into the vague and in all its
shadowy nooks inspires fear of its nerve-exciting power--who would care
to reduce men to the level of these things if the ideas upon which they
rest became extinct? But the results of all these things are
nevertheless not thrown away: the inner world of exalted, emotional,
prophetic, profoundly repentant, hope-blessed moods has become inborn in
man largely through cultivation. What still exists in his soul was
formerly, as he germinated, grew and bloomed, thoroughly disciplined.


131

=Religious After-Pains. =--Though one believe oneself absolutely weaned
away from religion, the process has yet not been so thorough as to make
impossible a feeling of joy at the presence of religious feelings and
dispositions without intelligible content, as, for example, in music;
and if a philosophy alleges to us the validity of metaphysical hopes,
through the peace of soul therein attainable, and also speaks of "the
whole true gospel in the look of Raphael's Madonna," we greet such
declarations and innuendoes with a welcome smile. The philosopher has
here a matter easy of demonstration. He responds with that which he is
glad to give, namely a heart that is glad to accept. Hence it is
observable how the less reflective free spirits collide only with dogmas
but yield readily to the magic of religious feelings; it is a source of
pain to them to let the latter go simply on account of the
former. --Scientific philosophy must be very much on its guard lest on
account of this necessity--an evolved and hence, also, a transitory
necessity--delusions are smuggled in. Even logicians speak of
"presentiments" of truth in ethics and in art (for example of the
presentiment that the essence of things is unity) a thing which,
nevertheless, ought to be prohibited. Between carefully deduced truths
and such "foreboded" things there lies the abysmal distinction that the
former are products of the intellect and the latter of the necessity.
Hunger is no evidence that there is food at hand to appease it. Hunger
merely craves food. "Presentiment" does not denote that the existence of
a thing is known in any way whatever. It denotes merely that it is
deemed possible to the extent that it is desired or feared. The
"presentiment" is not one step forward in the domain of certainty. --It
is involuntarily believed that the religious tinted sections of a
philosophy are better attested than the others, but the case is at
bottom just the opposite: there is simply the inner wish that it may be
so, that the thing which beautifies may also be true. This wish leads us
to accept bad grounds as good.


132

=Of the Christian Need of Salvation. =--Careful consideration must render
it possible to propound some explanation of that process in the soul of
a Christian which is termed need of salvation, and to propound an
explanation, too, free from mythology: hence one purely psychological.
Heretofore psychological explanations of religious conditions and
processes have really been in disrepute, inasmuch as a theology calling
itself free gave vent to its unprofitable nature in this domain; for its
principal aim, so far as may be judged from the spirit of its creator,
Schleier-macher, was the preservation of the Christian religion and the
maintenance of the Christian theology. It appeared that in the
psychological analysis of religious "facts" a new anchorage and above
all a new calling were to be gained. Undisturbed by such predecessors,
we venture the following exposition of the phenomena alluded to. Man is
conscious of certain acts which are very firmly implanted in the general
course of conduct: indeed he discovers in himself a predisposition to
such acts that seems to him to be as unalterable as his very being. How
gladly he would essay some other kind of acts which in the general
estimate of conduct are rated the best and highest, how gladly he would
welcome the consciousness of well doing which ought to follow unselfish
motive! Unfortunately, however, it goes no further than this longing:
the discontent consequent upon being unable to satisfy it is added to
all other kinds of discontent which result from his life destiny in
particular or which may be due to so called bad acts; so that a deep
depression ensues accompanied by a desire for some physician to remove
it and all its causes. --This condition would not be found so bitter if
the individual but compared himself freely with other men: for then he
would have no reason to be discontented with himself in particular as he
is merely bearing his share of the general burden of human discontent
and incompleteness. But he compares himself with a being who alone must
be capable of the conduct that is called unegoistic and of an enduring
consciousness of unselfish motive, with God. It is because he gazes into
this clear mirror, that his own self seems so extraordinarily distracted
and so troubled. Thereupon the thought of that being, in so far as it
flits before his fancy as retributive justice, occasions him anxiety. In
every conceivable small and great experience he believes he sees the
anger of the being, his threats, the very implements and manacles of his
judge and prison. What succors him in this danger, which, in the
prospect of an eternal duration of punishment, transcends in hideousness
all the horrors that can be presented to the imagination?


133

Before we consider this condition in its further effects, we would admit
to ourselves that man is betrayed into this condition not through his
"fault" and "sin" but through a series of delusions of the reason; that
it was the fault of the mirror if his own self appeared to him in the
highest degree dark and hateful, and that that mirror was his own work,
the very imperfect work of human imagination and judgment. In the first
place a being capable of absolutely unegoistic conduct is as fabulous as
the phoenix. Such a being is not even thinkable for the very reason that
the whole notion of "unegoistic conduct," when closely examined,
vanishes into air. Never yet has a man done anything solely for others
and entirely without reference to a personal motive; indeed how could he
possibly do anything that had no reference to himself, that is without
inward compulsion (which must always have its basis in a personal need)?
How could the ego act without ego? --A god, who, on the other hand, is
all love, as he is usually represented, would not be capable of a
solitary unegoistic act: whence one is reminded of a reflection of
Lichtenberg's which is, in truth, taken from a lower sphere: "We cannot
possibly feel for others, as the expression goes; we feel only for
ourselves. The assertion sounds hard, but it is not, if rightly
understood. A man loves neither his father nor his mother nor his wife
nor his child, but simply the feelings which they inspire. " Or, as La
Rochefoucauld says: "If you think you love your mistress for the mere
love of her, you are very much mistaken. " Why acts of love are more
highly prized than others, namely not on account of their nature, but on
account of their utility, has already been explained in the section on
the origin of moral feelings. But if a man should wish to be all love
like the god aforesaid, and want to do all things for others and nothing
for himself, the procedure would be fundamentally impossible because he
_must_ do a great deal for himself before there would be any possibility
of doing anything for the love of others. It is also essential that
others be sufficiently egoistic to accept always and at all times this
self sacrifice and living for others, so that the men of love and self
sacrifice have an interest in the survival of unloving and selfish
egoists, while the highest morality, in order to maintain itself must
formally enforce the existence of immorality (wherein it would be really
destroying itself. )--Further: the idea of a god perturbs and discourages
as long as it is accepted but as to how it originated can no longer, in
the present state of comparative ethnological science, be a matter of
doubt, and with the insight into the origin of this belief all faith
collapses. What happens to the Christian who compares his nature with
that of God is exactly what happened to Don Quixote, who depreciated his
own prowess because his head was filled with the wondrous deeds of the
heroes of chivalrous romance. The standard of measurement which both
employ belongs to the domain of fable. --But if the idea of God
collapses, so too, does the feeling of "sin" as a violation of divine
rescript, as a stain upon a god-like creation. There still apparently
remains that discouragement which is closely allied with fear of the
punishment of worldly justice or of the contempt of one's fellow men.
The keenest thorn in the sentiment of sin is dulled when it is perceived
that one's acts have contravened human tradition, human rules and human
laws without having thereby endangered the "eternal salvation of the
soul" and its relations with deity. If finally men attain to the
conviction of the absolute necessity of all acts and of their utter
irresponsibility and then absorb it into their flesh and blood, every
relic of conscience pangs will disappear.


134

If now, as stated, the Christian, through certain delusive feelings, is
betrayed into self contempt, that is by a false and unscientific view of
his acts and feelings, he must, nevertheless, perceive with the utmost
amazement that this state of self contempt, of conscience pangs, of
despair in particular, does not last, that there are hours during which
all these things are wafted away from the soul and he feels himself once
more free and courageous. The truth is that joy in his own being, the
fulness of his own powers in connection with the inevitable decline of
his profound excitation with the lapse of time, bore off the palm of
victory. The man loves himself once more, he feels it--but this very new
love, this new self esteem seems to him incredible. He can see in it
only the wholly unmerited stream of the light of grace shed down upon
him. If he formerly saw in every event merely warnings, threats,
punishments and every kind of indication of divine anger, he now reads
into his experiences the grace of god. The latter circumstance seems to
him full of love, the former as a helpful pointing of the way, and his
entirely joyful frame of mind now seems to him to be an absolute proof
of the goodness of God. As formerly in his states of discouragement he
interpreted his conduct falsely so now he does the same with his
experiences. His state of consolation is now regarded as the effect
produced by some external power. The love with which, at bottom, he
loves himself, seems to be the divine love. That which he calls grace
and the preliminary of salvation is in reality self-grace,
self-salvation.


135

Therefore a certain false psychology, a certain kind of imaginativeness
in the interpretation of motives and experiences is the essential
preliminary to being a Christian and to experiencing the need of
salvation. Upon gaining an insight into this wandering of the reason and
the imagination, one ceases to be a Christian.


136

=Of Christian Asceticism and Sanctity. =--Much as some thinkers have
exerted themselves to impart an air of the miraculous to those singular
phenomena known as asceticism and sanctity, to question which or to
account for which upon a rational basis would be wickedness and
sacrilege, the temptation to this wickedness is none the less great. A
powerful impulse of nature has in every age led to protest against such
phenomena. At any rate science, inasmuch as it is the imitation of
nature, permits the casting of doubts upon the inexplicable character
and the supernal degree of such phenomena. It is true that heretofore
science has not succeeded in its attempts at explanation. The phenomena
remain unexplained still, to the great satisfaction of those who revere
moral miracles. For, speaking generally, the unexplained must rank as
the inexplicable, the inexplicable as the non-natural, supernatural,
miraculous--so runs the demand in the souls of all the religious and all
the metaphysicians (even the artists if they happen to be thinkers),
whereas the scientific man sees in this demand the "evil
principle. "--The universal, first, apparent truth that is encountered in
the contemplation of sanctity and asceticism is that their nature is
complicated; for nearly always, within the physical world as well as in
the moral, the apparently miraculous may be traced successfully to the
complex, the obscure, the multi-conditioned. Let us venture then to
isolate a few impulses in the soul of the saint and the ascetic, to
consider them separately and then view them as a synthetic development.


137

There is an obstinacy against oneself, certain sublimated forms of which
are included in asceticism. Certain kinds of men are under such a strong
necessity of exercising their power and dominating impulses that, if
other objects are lacking or if they have not succeeded with other
objects they will actually tyrannize over some portions of their own
nature or over sections and stages of their own personality. Thus do
many thinkers bring themselves to views which are far from likely to
increase or improve their fame. Many deliberately bring down the
contempt of others upon themselves although they could easily have
retained consideration by silence. Others contradict earlier opinions
and do not shrink from the ordeal of being deemed inconsistent. On the
contrary they strive for this and act like eager riders who enjoy
horseback exercise most when the horse is skittish. Thus will men in
dangerous paths ascend to the highest steeps in order to laugh to scorn
their own fear and their own trembling limbs. Thus will the philosopher
embrace the dogmas of asceticism, humility, sanctity, in the light of
which his own image appears in its most hideous aspect. This crushing of
self, this mockery of one's own nature, this spernere se sperni out of
which religions have made so much is in reality but a very high
development of vanity. The whole ethic of the sermon on the mount
belongs in this category: man has a true delight in mastering himself
through exaggerated pretensions or excessive expedients and later
deifying this tyrannically exacting something within him. In every
scheme of ascetic ethics, man prays to one part of himself as if it were
god and hence it is necessary for him to treat the rest of himself as
devil.


138

=Man is Not at All Hours Equally Moral=; this is established. If one's
morality be judged according to one's capacity for great, self
sacrificing resolutions and abnegations (which when continual, and made
a habit are known as sanctity) one is, in affection, or disposition, the
most moral: while higher excitement supplies wholly new impulses which,
were one calm and cool as ordinarily, one would not deem oneself even
capable of. How comes this? Apparently from the propinquity of all great
and lofty emotional states. If a man is brought to an extraordinary
pitch of feeling he can resolve upon a fearful revenge or upon a fearful
renunciation of his thirst for vengeance indifferently. He craves, under
the influences of powerful emotion, the great, the powerful, the
immense, and if he chances to perceive that the sacrifice of himself
will afford him as much satisfaction as the sacrifice of another, or
will afford him more, he will choose self sacrifice. What concerns him
particularly is simply the unloading of his emotion. Hence he readily,
to relieve his tension, grasps the darts of the enemy and buries them in
his own breast. That in self abnegation and not in revenge the element
of greatness consisted must have been brought home to mankind only after
long habituation. A god who sacrifices himself would be the most
powerful and most effective symbol of this sort of greatness. As the
conquest of the most hardly conquered enemy, the sudden mastering of a
passion--thus does such abnegation _appear_: hence it passes for the
summit of morality. In reality all that is involved is the exchange of
one idea for another whilst the temperament remained at a like altitude,
a like tidal state. Men when coming out of the spell, or resting from
such passionate excitation, no longer understand the morality of such
instants, but the admiration of all who participated in the occasion
sustains them. Pride is their support if the passion and the
comprehension of their act weaken. Therefore, at bottom even such acts
of self-abnegation are not moral inasmuch as they are not done with a
strict regard for others. Rather do others afford the high strung
temperament an opportunity to lighten itself through such abnegation.


139

=Even the Ascetic Seeks to Make Life Easier=, and generally by means of
absolute subjection to another will or to an all inclusive rule and
ritual, pretty much as the Brahmin leaves absolutely nothing to his own
volition but is guided in every moment of his life by some holy
injunction or other. This subjection is a potent means of acquiring
dominion over oneself. One is occupied, hence time does not bang heavy
and there is no incitement of the personal will and of the individual
passion. The deed once done there is no feeling of responsibility nor
the sting of regret. One has given up one's own will once for all and
this is easier than to give it up occasionally, as it is also easier
wholly to renounce a desire than to yield to it in measured degree. When
we consider the present relation of man to the state we perceive
unconditional obedience is easier than conditional. The holy person also
makes his lot easier through the complete surrender of his life
personality and it is all delusion to admire such a phenomenon as the
loftiest heroism of morality. It is always more difficult to assert
one's personality without shrinking and without hesitation than to give
it up altogether in the manner indicated, and it requires moreover more
intellect and thought.


140

After having discovered in many of the less comprehensible actions mere
manifestations of pleasure in emotion for its own sake, I fancy I can
detect in the self contempt which characterises holy persons, and also
in their acts of self torture (through hunger and scourgings,
distortions and chaining of the limbs, acts of madness) simply a means
whereby such natures may resist the general exhaustion of their will to
live (their nerves). They employ the most painful expedients to escape
if only for a time from the heaviness and weariness in which they are
steeped by their great mental indolence and their subjection to a will
other than their own.


141

=The Most Usual Means= by which the ascetic and the sanctified
individual seeks to make life more endurable comprises certain combats
of an inner nature involving alternations of victory and prostration.
For this purpose an enemy is necessary and he is found in the so called
"inner enemy. " That is, the holy individual makes use of his tendency to
vanity, domineering and pride, and of his mental longings in order to
contemplate his life as a sort of continuous battle and himself as a
battlefield, in which good and evil spirits wage war with varying
fortune. It is an established fact that the imagination is restrained
through the regularity and adequacy of sexual intercourse while on the
other hand abstention from or great irregularity in sexual intercourse
will cause the imagination to run riot. The imaginations of many of the
Christian saints were obscene to a degree; and because of the theory
that sexual desires were in reality demons that raged within them, the
saints did not feel wholly responsible for them. It is to this
conviction that we are indebted for the highly instructive sincerity of
their evidence against themselves. It was to their interest that this
contest should always be kept up in some fashion because by means of
this contest, as already stated, their empty lives gained distraction.
In order that the contest might seem sufficiently great to inspire
sympathy and admiration in the unsanctified, it was essential that
sexual capacity be ever more and more damned and denounced. Indeed the
danger of eternal damnation was so closely allied to this capacity that
for whole generations Christians showed their children with actual
conscience pangs. What evil may not have been done to humanity through
this! And yet here the truth is just upside down: an exceedingly
unseemly attitude for the truth. Christianity, it is true, had said that
every man is conceived and born in sin, and in the intolerable and
excessive Christianity of Calderon this thought is again perverted and
entangled into the most distorted paradox extant in the well known lines

The greatest sin of man
Is the sin of being born.

In all pessimistic religions the act of procreation is looked upon as
evil in itself.