No More Learning

In the great fatality of Christianity, Plato is that
double-faced fascination called the “ideal,” which
made it possible for the more noble natures of anti-
quity to misunderstand themselves and to tread the
bridge which led to the “cross. ” And what an amount
of Plato is still to be found in the concept “church,"
and in the construction, the system and the practice
of the church! —My recreation, my predilection, my
cure,after all Platonism, has always been Thucydides.
Thucydides and perhaps Machiavelli's principe are
most closely related to me owing to the absolute
determination which they show of refusing to deceive
themselves and of seeing reason in reality,—not in
“ rationality,” and still less in “morality. ” There is
no moreradical cure than Thucydides for the lament-


## p. 115 (#135) ############################################

THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS
115
ably rose-coloured idealisation of the Greeks which
the “classically-cultured” stripling bears with him
into life, as a reward for his public school training.
His writings must be carefully studied line by line,
and his unuttered thoughts must be read as distinctly
as what he actually says. There are few thinkers so
rich in unuttered thoughts. In him the culture “of
the Sophists "—that is to say, the culture of realism,
receives its most perfect expression: this inestim-
able movement in the midst of the moral and ideal-
istic knavery of the Socratic Schools which was then
breaking out in all directions. Greek philosophy
is the decadence of the Greek instinct: Thucydides
is the great summing up, the final manifestation
of that strong, severe positivism which lay in the
instincts of the ancient Hellene. After all, it is
courage in the face of reality that distinguishes such
natures as Thucydides from Plato: Plato is a coward
in the face of reality-consequently he takes refuge
in the ideal : Thucydides is master of himself,-
consequently he is able to master life.
»
means
3
To rout up cases of “beautiful souls,” “golden
and other perfections among the Greeks, to
admire, say, their calm grandeur, their ideal attitude
of mind, their exalted simplicity-from this “exalted
simplicity,” which after all is a piece of niaiserie
allemande, I was preserved by the psychologist within
I saw their strongest instinct, the Will to
Power, I saw them quivering with the fierce violence
of this instinct,-I saw all their institutions grow
out of measures of security calculated to preserve
me.


## p. 116 (#136) ############################################

116
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
each member of their society from the inner ex-
plosive material that lay in his neighbour's breast.
This enormous internal tension thus discharged
itself in terrible and reckless hostility outside the
state : the various states mutually tore each other
to bits, in order that each individual state could re-
main at peace with itself. It was then necessary to
be strong ; for danger lay close at hand,-it lurked
in ambush everywhere. The superb suppleness of
their bodies, the daring realism and immorality
which is peculiar to the Hellenes, was a necessity
not an inherent quality. It was a result, it had not
been there from the beginning. Even their festivals
and their arts were but means in producing a
feeling of superiority, and of showing it: they are
measures of self-glorification ; and in certain circum-
stances of making one's self terrible. . . . Fancy
judging the Greeks in the German style, from their
philosophers; fancy using the suburban respecta-
bility of the Socratic schools as a key to what is
fundamentally Hellenic! . . The philosophers are
of course the decadents of Hellas, the counter-
movement directed against the old and noble taste
against the agonal instinct, against the Polis,
against the value of the race, against the authority
of tradition). Socratic virtues were preached to the
Greeks, because the Greeks had lost virtue : irritable,
cowardly, unsteady, and all turned to play-actors,
they had more than sufficient reason to submit to
having morality preached to them. Not that it
helped them in any way; but great words and atti-
tudes are so becoming to decadents.


## p. 117 (#137) ############################################

THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS
117
4
I was the first who, in order to understand the
ancient, still rich and even superabundant Hellenic
instinct, took that marvellous phenomenon, which
bears the name of Dionysus, seriously: it can be ex-
plained only as a manifestation of excessive energy.
Whoever had studied the Greeks, as that most pro-
found of modern connoisseurs of their culture, Jakob
Burckhardt of Bâle, had done, knew at once that
something had been achieved by means of this in-
terpretation. And in his “ Cultur der Griechen,"
Burckhardt inserted a special chapter on the pheno-
menon in question. If you would like a glimpse of
the other side, you have only to refer to the almost
laughable poverty of instinct among German philo-
logists when they approach the Dionysian question.
The celebrated Lobeck, especially, who with the
venerable assurance of a worm dried up between
books, crawled into this world of mysterious states,
succeeded in convincing himself that he was scientific,
whereas he was simply revoltingly superficial and
childish,-Lobeck, with all the pomp of profound
erudition, gave us to understand that, as a matter of
fact, there was nothing at all in all these curiosities.
Truth to tell, the priests may well have communi-
cated not a few things of value to the participators
in such orgies; for instance, the fact that wine pro-
vokes desire, that man in certain circumstances lives
on fruit, that plants bloom in the spring and fade
in the autumn. As regards the astounding wealth
of rites, symbols and myths which take their origin
in the
orgy,
and with which the world of antiquity


## p. 118 (#138) ############################################

118
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
is literally smothered, Lobeck finds that it prompts
him to a feat of even greater ingenuity than the
foregoing phenomenon did. "The Greeks,” he says,
(Aglaophamus, I. p. 672), “when they had nothing
.
better to do, laughed, sprang and romped about, or,
inasmuch as men also like a change at times, they
would sit down, weep and bewail their lot. Others
then came up who tried to discover some reason for
this strange behaviour; and thus, as an explanation
of these habits, there arose an incalculable number of
festivals, legends, and myths. On the other hand it
was believed that the farcical performances which
then perchance began to take place on festival days,
necessarily formed part of the celebrations, and they
were retained as an indispensable part of the ritual. ”
- This is contemptible nonsense, and no one will
take a man like Lobeck seriously for a moment.
We are very differently affected when we examine
the notion “Hellenic," as Winckelmann and Goethe
conceived it, and find it incompatible with that ele-
ment out of which Dionysian art springs—I speak
of orgiasm. In reality I do not doubt that Goethe
would have completely excluded any such thing
from the potentialities of the Greek soul. Conse-
quently Goethe did not understand the Greeks. For
it is only in the Dionysian mysteries, in the psycho-
logy of the Dionysian state, that the fundamental
fact of the Hellenic instinct—its “will to life”—is ex-
pressed. What did the Hellene secure himself with
these mysteries? Eternal life, the eternal recurrence
of life; the future promised and hallowed in the past;
the triumphant Yea to life despite death and change;
real life conceived as the collective prolongation of


## p. 119 (#139) ############################################

THINGS I OWE TO THE ANCIENTS
119
life through procreation, through the mysteries of
sexuality. To the Greeks, the symbol of sex was
the most venerated of symbols, the really deep
significance of all the piety of antiquity. All the
details of the act of procreation, pregnancy and birth
gave rise to the loftiest and most solemn feelings.
In the doctrine of mysteries, pain was pronounced
holy: the “pains of childbirth” sanctify pain in
general,—all becoming and all growth, everything
that guarantees the future involves pain. . . . In
order that there may be eternal joy in creating, in
order that the will to life may say Yea to itself in
all eternity, the “pains of childbirth” must also be
eternal. All this is what the word Dionysus signi-
fies: I know of no higher symbolisin than this Greek
symbolism, this symbolism of the Dionysian pheno-
In it the profoundest instinct of life, the
instinct that guarantees the future of life and life
eternal, is understood religiously,—the road to life
itself, procreation, is pronounced holy. . . . It was
only Christianity which, with its fundamental resent-
ment against life, made something impure out of
sexuality: it flung filth at the very basis, the very
first condition of our life.
menon.
.
The psychology of orgiasm
conceived as the feel-
ing of a superabundance of vitality and strength,
within the scope of whicheven pain acts as a stimulus,
gave me the key to the concept tragic-feeling which
has been misunderstood not only by Aristotle, but
also even more by our pessimists. Tragedy is so far
from proving anything in regard to the pessimism of
|
1


## p. 120 (#140) ############################################

120
THE TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
the Greeks, as Schopenhauer maintains, that it ought
rather to be considered as the categorical repudiation
and condemnation thereof. The saying of Yea to
life, including even its most strange and most terrible
problems, the will to life rejoicing over its own in-
exhaustibleness in the sacrifice of its highest types
—this is what I called Dionysian, this is what I
divined as the bridge leading to the psychology of
the tragic poet. Not in order to escape from terror
and pity, not to purify one's self of a dangerous
passion by discharging it with vehemence—this is
how Aristotle understood it-but to be far beyond
terror and pity and to be the eternal lust of Becoming
itself—that lust which also involves the lust of de-
struction. And with this I once more come into
touch with the spot from which I once set out-the
“ Birth of Tragedy” was my first transvaluation of
all values : with this I again take my stand upon
soil from out of which my will and my capacity
spring—1, the last disciple of the philosopher Diony-
sus,–I, the prophet of eternal recurrence.
upon the
THE END


## p. 121 (#141) ############################################

THE HAMMER
HAMMER SPEAKETH
“Why so hard ! ”—said the diamond once unto the char-
coal ; “are we then not next of kin ? ”
“Why so soft? O my brethren; this is my question to
you. For are ye not--my brothers ?
“Why so soft, so servile and yielding? Why are your
hearts so fond of denial and self-denial? Ilow is it that so
little fate looketh out from your eyes?
“And if ye will not be men of fate and inexorable, how
can ye hope one day to conquer with me?
“And if your hardness will not sparkle, cut and divide,
how can ye hope one day to create with me?
“For all creators are hard. And it must seem to you
blessed to stamp your hand upon millenniums as upon
wax,-
-Blessed to write upon the will of millenniums as upon
brass,-harder than brass, nobler than brass. -Hard
through and through is only the noblest.
This new table of values, O my brethren, I set over your
heads : Become hard. "
_"Thus Spake Zarathustra,"
III. , 29.
-
121


## p. 122 (#142) ############################################



## p. 123 (#143) ############################################

THE ANTICHRIST
An Attempted Criticism of
Christianity


## p. 124 (#144) ############################################



## p. 125 (#145) ############################################

PREFACE
This book belongs to the very few. Maybe not
one of them is yet alive; unless he be of those
who understand my Zarathustra. How can I con-
found myself with those who to-day already find a
hearing ? -Only the day after to-morrow belongs
to me. Some are born posthumously.
I am only too well aware of the conditions under
which a man understands me, and then necessarily
understands. He must be intellectually upright to
the point of hardness, in order even to endure my
seriousness and my passion. He must be used to
living on mountain-tops, and to feeling the
wretched gabble of politics and national egotism
beneath him. He must have become indifferent; he
must never inquire whether truth is profitable or
whether it may prove fatal. . . . Possessing from
strength a predilection for questions for which no
one has enough courage nowadays; the courage for
the forbidden; his predestination must be the laby-
rinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears
for new music. New eyes for the most remote
things. A new conscience for truths which hitherto
have remained dumb. And the will to economy
on a large scale: to husband his strength and his
enthusiasm. He must honour himself, he must
love himself; he must be absolutely free with regard
125


## p. 126 (#146) ############################################

126
PREFACE
to himself. . . . Very well then! Such men alone
are my readers, my proper readers, my preordained
readers : of what account are the rest ? —the rest
are simply—humanity. —One must be superior to
humanity in power, in loftiness of soul,—in contempt.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE.


## p. 127 (#147) ############################################

I
.
LET us look each other in the face. We are hy- tre math wind,
is
a fabled race living beyond
north
perboreans,—we know well enough how far outside eten zerrenos
a land of sunshine.
eternal bliss.
the crowd we stand. “Thou wilt find the way to the
Hyperboreans neither by land nor by water”: Pindar
already knew this much about us. Beyond the north,
the ice, and death-our life, our happiness. . . . We
discovered happiness; we know the way, we found
the way out of thousands of years oflabyrinth. Who
else would have found it ? -Not the modern man,
surely –“I do not know where I am or what I am
to do; I am everything that knows not where it is
or what to do,”—sighs the modern man. We were
made quite ill by this modernity,—with its indolent
peace, its cowardly compromise, and the whole of
the virtuous filth of its Yea and Nay. This toler-
ance and largeur de cæur which “forgives" every-
thing, because it "understands” everything, is a
,
Sirocco for us. We prefer to live amid ice than to
be breathed upon by modern virtues and other
southerly winds! . . . We were brave enough; we
spared neither ourselves nor others : but we were
very far from knowing whither to direct our bravery.
We were becoming gloomy; people called us fatal-
ists. Our fate-it was the abundance, the tension
V
127


## p. 128 (#148) ############################################

128
THE ANTICHRIST
kay of
Chushanty
and the storing up of power.
We thirsted for
thunderbolts and great deeds; we kept at the most
respectful distance from the joy of the weakling,
from “resignation. ” Thunder was in our air,
that part of nature which we are, became overcast-
for we had no direction. The formula of our happi-
ness : a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal.
.
2
*
What is good ? All that enhances the feeling of
power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man.
What is bad ? —All that proceeds from weakness.
What is happiness. The feeling that power is
increasing,—that resistance has been overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at
any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency* (virtue
in the Renaissance sense, virtù, free from all moralic
acid). The weak and the botched shall perish: first
principle of our humanity. And they ought even to
be helped to perish.
What is more harmful than any vice ? - Prac-
tical sympathy with all the botched and the weak-
Christianity.
3
The problem I set in this work is not what will
replace mankind in the order of living beings
(-Man is an end--); but, what type of man must
be reared, must be willed, as having the highest
value, as being the most worthy of life and the
surest guarantee of the future.
* The German “Tüchtigkeit” has a nobler ring than our
word “efficiency. ”—TR.


## p. 129 (#149) ############################################

A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
129
This more valuable type has appeared often
enough already : but as a happy accident, as an
exception, never as willed. He has rather been
precisely the most feared ; hitherto he has been
almost the terrible in itself;—and from out the very
fear he provoked there arose the will to rear the
type which has now been reared, attained: the
domestic animal, the gregarious animal, the sick
animal man,—the Christian.
4.
Mankind does not represent a development to-
wards a better, stronger or higher type, in the sense
in which this is supposed to occur to-day. “Pro-
gress” is merely a modern idea
that is to say, a
false idea. * The modern European is still far be-
low the European of the Renaissance in value. The
process of evolution does not by any means imply
elevation, enhancement and increasing strength.
On the other hand isolated and individual cases
are continually succeeding in different places on
earth, as the outcome of the most different cultures,
and in these a higher type certainly manifests itself:
something which by the side of mankind in general,
represents a kind of superman. Such lucky strokes
of great success have always been possible and will
perhaps always be possible. And even whole races,
tribes and nations may in certain circumstances re-
present such lucky strokes.
* Cf. Disraeli: “But enlightened Europe is not happy.
Its existence is a fever which it calls progress. Progress to
what? " ("Tancred,” Book III. , Chap. vii. ). —TR.
9


## p. 130 (#150) ############################################

130
THE ANTICHRIST
OUTCAST
5
We must not deck out and adorn Christianity :
it has waged a deadly war upon this higher type of
man, it has set a ban upon all the fundamental
instincts of this type, and has distilled evil and the
devil himself out of these instincts:—the strong man
as the typical pariań, the villain. Christianity has
sided with everything weak, low, and botched ; it
has made an ideal out of antagonism towards all
the self-preservative instincts of strong life: it has
corrupted even the reason of the strongest intellects,
by teaching that the highest values of intellectuality
are sinful, misleading and full of temptations. The
most lamentable example of this was the corrup-
tion of Pascal, who believed in the perversion of his
shift from proper purpose
reason through original sin, whereas it had only
been perverted by his Christianity.
6
A painful and ghastly spectacle has just risen
before my eyes. I tore down the curtain which
concealed mankind's corruption. This word in my
mouth is at least secure from the suspicion that it
contains a moral charge against mankind. It is—I
а
would fain emphasise this again-free from moralic
acid : to such an extent is this so, that I am most
thoroughly conscious of the corruption in question
precisely in those quarters in which hitherto people
have aspired with most determination to “virtue"
and to “godliness. ” As you have already surmised,
I understand corruption in the sense of decadence.
What I maintain is this, that all the values upon


## p. 131 (#151) ############################################

A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
131
1
which mankind builds its highest hopes and desires
are decadent values.
I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt,
when it loses its instincts, when it selects and
prefers that which is detrimental to it. A history
of the “higher feelings,” of “human ideals”-and
it is not impossible that I shall have to write it-
would almost explain why man is so corrupt. Life
itself, to my mind, is nothing more nor less than
the instinct of growth, of permanence, of accumulat-
,
ing forces, of power : where the will to power is
lacking, degeneration sets in. My contention is
that all the highest values of mankind lack this will,
--that the values of decline and of Nihilism mares
exercising the sovereign power under the cover of
the holiest names.
7
Christianity is called the religion of pity. - Pity is latt
opposed to the tonic passions which enhance the
energy of the feeling of life : its action is depressing.
A man loses power when he pities.
By means of
pity the drain on strength which suffering itself
already introduces into the world is multiplied a
thousandfold. . Through pity, suffering itself be-
comes infectious in certain circumstances it may
lead to a total loss of life and vital energy, which is
absurdly out of proportion to the magnitude of
the cause (the case of the death of the Nazarene).
This is the first standpoint; but there is a stitt
more important one. Supposing one measures pity
according to the value of the reactions it usually
stimulates, its danger to life appears in a much more
telling light. On the whole, pity thwarts the law
.


## p. 132 (#152) ############################################

132
THE ANTICHRIST
-
*
[
of development which is the law of selection. It
preserves that which is ripe for death, it fights in
favour of the disinherited and the condemned of
life; thanks to the multitude of abortions of all
kinds which it maintains in life, it lends life itself a
sombre and questionable aspect. People have dared
to call pity a virtue (-in every noble culture it is con-
sidered as a weakness—); people went still further,
they exalted it to the virtue, the root and origin of
all virtues,—but, of course, what must never be for-
gotten is the fact that this was done from the stand-
point of a philosophy which was nihilistic, and on
whose shield the device The Denial of Life was
inscribed. Schopenhauer was right in this respect :
by means of pity, life is denied and made more
worthy of denial,ắpity is the praxis of Nihilism. I
repeat, thisdepressing and infectious instinct thwärts
those instincts which aim at the preservation and
enhancement of the valuelife: by multiplying misery
quite as much as by preserving all that is miserable,
it is the principal agent in promoting decadence,-
IMAGINARY PERSON
pity exhorts people to nothing, to nonentity? But
they do not say “nonentity,” they say “Beyond," or
“God,” or “the true life"; or Nirvana, or Salvation,
or Blessedness, instead. This innocent rhetoric,
which belongs to the realm of the religio-moral
idiosyncrasy, immediately appears to be very much
less innocent if one realises what the tendency is
which here tries to drape itself in the mantle of
sublime expressions—the tendency of hostility to
life. Schopenhauer was hostile to life: that is why
he elevated pity to a virtue. Aristotle, as
you know, recognised in pity a morbid and danger-
NOBLE


## p. 133 (#153) ############################################


A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
133
ous state, of which it was wise to rid one's self from
time to time by a purgative : 'he regarded tragedy
as a purgative. For the sake of the instinct of life,
it would certainly seem necessary to find some
means of lancing any such morbid and dangerous
accumulation of pity, as that which possessed
Schopenhauer (and unfortunately the whole of our
literary and artistic decadence as well, from St
Petersburg to Paris, from Tolstoi to Wagner), if
only to make it burst. . . . Nothing is more un-
healthy in the midst of our unhealthy modernity,
than Christian pity. To be doctors here, to be in-
exorable here, to wield the knife effectively here,
all this is our business, all this is our kind of love
to our fellows, this is what makes us philosophers,
us hyperboreans !
.
16
Job of
philosophers
.
8
It is necessary to state whom we regard as our
antithesis :—the theologians, and all those who have
the blood of theologians in their veins—the whole
1
of our philosophy. . . . A man must have had his
very nose upon this fatality, or better still he must
have experienced it in his own soul; he must
almost have perished through it, in order to be un-
able to treat this matter lightly (-the free-spirited-
ness of our friends the naturalists and physiologists
is, in my opinion, a joke,—what they lack in these
questions is passion, what they lack is having
suffered from these questions—). This poisoning
extends much further than people think : I un-
earthed the "arrogant” instinct of the theologian,
wherever nowadays people feel themselves idealists,
free spin. tedress
] lack of
passion


## p. 134 (#154) ############################################


134
THE ANTICHRIST
.
.
idealist
--wherever, thanks to superior antecedents, they
claim the right to rise above reality and to regard
it with suspicion. . Like the priest the idealist
has every grandiloquent concept in his hand (and
not only in his hand ! ), he wields them all with
kindly contempt against the “understanding,” the
senses,” “honours,”“ decent living,” “science”; he
regards such things as beneath him, as detrimental
and seductive forces, upon the face of which," the
Spirit” moves in pure absoluteness :-as if humility,
chastity, poverty, in a word holiness, had not done
incalculably more harm to life hitherto, than any
sort of horror and vice. . Pure spirit is pure
falsehood. As long as the priest, the profes-
sional denier, calumniatore
and poisoner of life, is
considered as the highest kind of man, there can be
no answer to the question, what is truth? Truth
has already been turned topsy-turvy, when the con-
scious advocate of nonentity and of denial passes
as the representative of “truth. ”
no pure
سہ
9
It is upon this theological instinct that I wage
war. I find traces of it everywhere. Whoever has
the blood of theologians in his veins, stands from
the start in a false and dishonest position to all
things. The påthos which grows out of this state, is
called Faith : that is to say, to shut one's eyes once
and for all, in order not to suffer at the sight of
incurable falsity. People convert this faulty view
of all things into a moral, a virtue, a thing of holi.
ness. They endow their distorted vision with a
good conscience,—they claim that no other point of
PATHOS


## p. 135 (#155) ############################################

A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
135
most
tal
ht
insto
view is any longer of value, once theirs has been
made sacrósdhet with the names “God,” “Salva-
tion,” “Eternity. ” I unearthed the instinct of the
theologian everywhere : it is the most universal, and
Hippen
actually the most skbferraheart form of falsity on
earth. That which a theologian considers true,
must-of necessity be false: this furnishes almost
the criterion of truth. It is his most profound self-
preservative instinct which forbids reality ever to self-piewer
attain to honour in any way, or even to raise its
voice. Whithersoever the influence of the theologian
extends, valuations are topsy-turvy, and the con-
cepts “true" and" false” have necessarily changed
INSYRIOUS
places: that which is most deleterious to life, is
here called “true,” that which enhances it, elevates
it, says Yea to it, justifies it and renders it triumph-
ant, is called "false. " . . . If it should happen that
theologians, via the “conscience" either of princes
or of the people, stretch out their hand for power,
let us not be in any doubt as to what results there-
from each time, namely :-the will to the end,
the nihilistic will to power.
Concepts
nonc chan
The = dingen
sky
ΙΟ
shlori
wined by
theologi
Among Germans I am immediately understood
when I say, that philosophy is ruined by the blood
of theologians. The Protestant minister is the grand-
father of German philosophy, Protestantism itself is.
the latter's peccatum originale. Definition of Protest-
antism: the partial paralysis of Christianity - and
of reason.
One needs only to pronounce the
words“ Tübingen Seminary," in order to understand
what German philosophy really is at bottom, i. e. :-
imy
-
Protestant
.
.
son
portal
paraly
rear


## p. 136 (#156) ############################################

136
THE ANTICHRIST
.
.
theology in disguise. . . . The Swabians are the
best liars in Germany, they lie innocently. .
Whence came all the rejoicing with which the
appearance of Kant was greeted by the scholastic
world of Germany, three-quarters of which consist
of clergymen's and schoolmasters' sons ? Whence
came the German conviction, which finds an echo
even now, that Kant inaugurated a change for the
better? The theologian's instinct in the German
scholar divined what had once again been made
possible. . . . A back-staircase leading into the old
ideal was discovered, the concept “true world,” the
concept morality as the essence of the world (—those
two most vicious errors that have ever existed! ), were,
thanks to a subtle and wily scepticism, once again,
if not demonstrable, at least no longer refutable. . . .
Reason, the prerogative of reason, does not extend
so far.
Out of reality they had made “appear-
ance"; and an absolutely false world—that of being
-had been declared to be reality. Kant's success
is merely a theologian's success. Like Luther, and
like Leibniz, Kant was one brake the more upon
the already squeaky wheel of German uprightness.
mas
reality
ition
we
II
One word more against Kant as a moralist. A
pirtue must be our invention, our most personal
defence and need : in every other sense it is merely
a danger. That which does not constitute a con-
dition of our life, is merely harmful to it: to possess
a virtue merely because one happens to respect the
concept“ virtue,” as Kant would have us do, is per-
nicious. “Virtue,” “Duty,” “Goodness in itself. ”
"


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A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
137
] Kantian virtue
goodness stamped with the character of imperson-
ality and universal validity—these things are mere
—]
mental hallucinations, in which decline the final
devitalisation of life and Kenigsbergian Chinadom *
find expression. The most fundamental laws of pre-
servation and growth, demand precisely the reverse,
namely that each should discover his own virtue,
his own Categorical Imperative. A nation goes to
the dogs when it confounds its concept of duty with
the general concept of duty. Nothing is more pro-
foundly, more thoroughly pernicious, than every
impersonal feeling of duty, than every sacrifice to
the Moloch of abstraction. -Fancy no one's having
thought Kant's Categorical Imperative dangerous to
life! . . . The instinct of the theologist alone took
it under its wing ! -An action stimulated by the
instinct of life, is proved to be a proper action by
the happiness that accompanies it : and that nihilist
with the bowels of a Christian dogmatist regarded
happiness as an objection. . . . What is there that
destroys a man more speedily than to work, think,
feel, as an automaton of “duty," without internal
promptings, without a profound personal predilec-
tion, without joy? This is the recipe par excellence
of decadence and even of idiocy. . . .
Kant became
an idiot. —And he was the contemporary of Goethe !
This fatal spider was regarded as the German philo-
sopher, - is still regarded as such! . . . I refrain
from saying what I think of the Germans. Did
Kant not see in the French Revolution the transi-
tion of the State from the inorganic to the organic
form 2 Did he not ask himself whether there was
a single event on record which could be explained
a
lowtomaton
of duty
1!
-
-
from inorganic
stat to
apmicone
French
Rev.


## p. 138 (#158) ############################################

138
THE ANTICHRIST
otherwise than as a moral faculty of mankind; so
that by means of it, “mankind's tendency towards
good,” might be proved once and for all? Kant's
reply: "that is the Revolution. ” Instinct at fault
in anything and everything, hostility to nature as
an instinct, German decadence made into philosophy
--that is Kant !
Kant
I2
effeninay
a
practical
toon
Except for a few sceptics, the respectable type
in the history of philosophy, the rest do not know
the very first pre-requisite of intellectual upright-
ness. They all behave like females, do these great
enthusiasts and animal prodigies, — they regard
“beautiful feelings” themselves as arguments, the
“heaving breast as the bellows of divinity, and
conviction as the criterion of truth. In the end,
even Kant, with “Teutonic" innocence, tried to
dress this lack of intellectual conscience up in a
scientific garb by means of the concept “practical
reason. He deliberately invented a kind of reason
which at times would allow one to dispense with
reason, that is to say when “morality," when the
sublime command "thou shalt,” makes itself heard.
When one remembers that in almost all nations the
philosopher is only a further development of the
priestly type, this heirloom of priesthood, this fraud
towards one's self, no longer surprises one. When
a man has a holy life-task, as for instance to im-
prove, save, or deliver mankind, when a man bears
God in his breast, and is the mouthpiece of impera-
tives from another world, with such a mission he
stands beyond the pate of alt merely reasonable
valuations. He is even sanctified by such a taste,
order
hipher
men of
.


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A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
139
"true
free spirits
incarnation
of war
rrethods
and is already the type of a higher order! What
does a priest care about science! He stands too
high for that. –And until now the priest has ruled!
-He it was who determined the concept
and
false,"
13
Do not let us undervalue the fact that we our-
selves, we free spirits,Jare already a “transvaluation
of all values," an incarnate declaration of war
against all the old concepts “true” and
” and “untrue"
and of a triumph over them. The most valuable
standpoints are always the last to be found: but the
most valuable standpoints are the methods. All
the methods and the first principles of our modern
scientific procedure, had for years to encounter the
. profoundest contempt : association with them meant
exclusion from the society of decent people-one
was regarded as an "enemy of God,” as a scoffer
at truth and as “one possessed. ” With one's
scientific nature, one belonged to the Chandala.
We have had the whole feeling of mankind against
us; hitherto their notion of that which ought to be
truth, of that which ought to serve the purpose
of truth: every “thou shalt,” has been directed
against us. Our objects, our practices, our calm,
cautious distrustful manner-everything about us
seemed to them absolutely despicable and beneath
contempt. After all, it might be asked with some
justice, whether the thing which kept mankind
blindfold so long, were not an æsthetic taste : what
they demanded of truth was a picturesque effect,
and from the man of science what they expected
was that he should make a forcible appeal to their
excluson
see
from
people
2
/
map
a


## p. 140 (#160) ############################################

140
THE ANTICHRIST
senses. It was our modesty which ran counter to
their taste so long. . And oh! how well they
guessed this, did these divine turkey-cocks ! -
man
back to
beast
(क
evolutron
14
We have altered our standpoint. In every respect
we have become more modest. We no longer derive
man from the "spirit," and from the “godhead”;
we have thrust him back) among the beasts. We
regard him as the strongest animal, because he is
the craftiest: one of the results thereof is his. intel-
lectuality. On the other hand we guard against
the vain pretension, which even here would fain
assert itself: that man is the great arrière pensée of
organic evolution! He is by no means the crown
of creation, beside him, every other creature stands
at the same stage of perfection. . . . And even in
asserting this we go a little too far; for, relatively
speaking, man is the most botched and diseased of
animals, and he has wandered furthest from his
instincts. Be all this as it may, he is certainly the
most interesting! As regards animals, Descartes
was the first, with really admirable daring, to venture
the thought that the beast was machina, and the
whole of our physiology is endeavouring to prove
this proposition. Moreover, logically we do not set
man apart, as Descartes did : the extent to which
man is understood to-day goes only so far as he
has been understood mechanistically. Formerly man
was given " free will,” as his dowry from a higher
sphere; nowadays we have robbed him even of will,
in view of the fact that no such faculty is any longer
known. The only purpose served by the old word
LE
[tos
FREE
اااا
*


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A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
141
>
will,” is to designate a result, a sort of individual
reaction which necessarily follows upon a host of
partly discordant and partly harmonious stimuli:-
the will no longer “effects” or “moves” anything.
Formerly people thought that man's consciousness,
his "spirit,” was a proof of his lofty origin, of his
divinity. With the idea of perfecting man, he was
conjured to draw his senses inside himself, after the
manner of the tortoise, to cut off all relations with
terrestrial things, and to divest himself of his mortal
shell. Then the most important thing about him,
the "pure spirit,” would remain over.
Even con-
cerning these things we have improved our stand-
point. Consciousness, “spirit,” now seems to us
rather a symptom of relative imperfection in the
organism, as an experiment, a groping, a misappre-
hension, an affliction which absorbs an unnecessary
quantity of nervous energy. We deny that any-
thing can be done perfectly so long as it is done
consciously. “Pure spirit” is a piece of “pure
stupidity”: if we discount the nervous system, the
senses and the "mortal shell,” we have miscalculated
that it is all! . . .
15*
In Christianity, neither morality nor religion comes
in touch at all with reality. Nothing but imaginary
causes. (God, the soul, the ego, spirit, free will — or
even non-free will); nothing but imaginary effects
(sin, salvation, grace, punishment, forgiveness of
sins). Imaginary beings are supposed to have inter-
course (God, spirits, souls); imaginary Natural His-
tory (anthropocentric: total lack of the notion
"natural causes "); an imaginary psychology (nothing


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142
THE ANTICHRIST
A
but misunderstandings of self, interpretations of
pleasant or unpleasant general feelings; for instance
of the states of the nervus sympathicus, with the help
of the sign language of a religio-moral idiosyncrasy,
-repentance, pangs of conscience, the temptation of
the devil, the presence of God); an imaginary tele-
ology (the Kingdom of God, the Last Judgment,
Everlasting Life). —This purely fictitious world dis-
tinguishes itself very unfavourably from the world
of dreams: the latter reflects reality, whereas the
former falsifies, depreciates and denies it. Once the
concept “nature was taken to mean the opposite
of the concept God, the word “natural” had to
acquire the meaning of abominable,—the whole of
that fictitious world takes its root in the hatred of
nature (-reality! —), it is the expression of profound
discomfiture in the presence of reality. . But
this explains everything. What is the only kind
of man who has reasons for wriggling out of reality
by lies? The man who suffers from reality. But
in order to suffer from reality one must be a bungled
portion of it. The preponderance of pain over
pleasure is the cause of that fictitious morality and
religion : but any such preponderance furnishes the
formula for decadence.
nature
Vs.
*
God
pain
pleasure
*
16
A criticism of the Christian concept of God inevit-
ably leads to the same conclusion. —A nation that
still believes in itself, also has its own God. In him
it honours the conditions which enable it to remain
uppermost,—that is to say, its virtues. It projects
its joy over itself, its feeling of power, into a being, to


## p. 143 (#163) ############################################

A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
143
]
*
a
(
ci
whom it can be thankful for such things. He who
is rich, will give of his riches: a proud people requires
a God, unto whom it can sacrifice things.
Religion, when restricted to these principles, is a form
of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence;
for this he must have a God.