In the imagination of
religious
people all nature
is a summary of the actions of conscious and
voluntary creatures, an enormous complex of
arbitrariness.
is a summary of the actions of conscious and
voluntary creatures, an enormous complex of
arbitrariness.
Nietzsche - v06 - Human All-Too-Human - a
The
I single longing of the individual for self-gratification
"(together with the fear of losing it) satisfies itself
i in all circumstances: man may act as he can,that
is as he must, be it in deeds of vanity, revenge,
pleasure, usefulness, malice, cunning; be it in deeds
of sacrifice, of pity, of knowledge. The degrees
of the power of judgment determine whither any
one lets himself be drawn through this longing;
to every society, to every individual, a scale of
possessions is continually present, according to
which he determines his actions and judges those
of others. But this standard changes constantly;
many actions are called evil and are only stupid,
because the degree of intelligence which decided
for them was very low. In a certain sense, even,
all actions are still stupid; for the highest degree
of human intelligence which can now be attained
will assuredly be yet surpassed, and then, in a
retrospect, all our actions and judgments will
appear as limited and hasty as the actions and
judgments of primitive wild peoples now appear
limited and hasty to us. To recognise all this
may be deeply painful, but consolation comes
after: such pains are the pangs of birth. The
## p. 109 (#161) ############################################
THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS. 109
butterfly wants to break through its chrysalis: it
rends and tears it, and is then blinded and confused
by the unaccustomed light, the kingdom of liberty.
In such people as are capable of such sadness—and
how few are ! —the first experiment made is to see
whether mankind can change itself from a moral
into a wise mankind. The sun of a new gospel
throws its rays upon the highest point in the soul
of each single individual, then the mists gather
thicker than ever, and the brightest light and
the dreariest shadow lie side by side. Everything
is necessity—so says the new knowledge, and
this knowledge itself is necessity. Everything is
innocence, and knowledge is the road to insight
into this innocence. Are pleasure, egoism, vanity
necessary for the production of the moral
phenomena and their highest result, the sense for
truth and justice in knowledge; were error and
the confusion of the imagination the only means
through which mankind could raise itself gradually
to this degree of self-enlightenment and self-
liberation—who would dare to undervalue these
means? Who would dare to be sad if he
perceived the goal to which those roads led?
Everything in the domain of morality has evolved,
is changeable, unstable, everything is dissolved, it
is true; but everything is also streaming towards
one goal. Even if the inherited habit of erroneous *"]
valuation, love and hatred, continue to reign in us,
yet under the influence of growing knowledge it
will become weaker; a new habit, that of com-
prehension, of not loving, not hating, of over-
looking, is gradually implanting itself in us upon
J
## p. 110 (#162) ############################################
I IO HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
the same ground, and in thousands of years will
perhaps be powerful enough to give humanity the
strength to produce wise, innocent (consciously
innocent) men, as it now produces unwise, guilt-
conscious men, that is the necessary preliminary
step, not its opposite.
## p. 110 (#163) ############################################
THIRD DIVISION.
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.
108.
The Double Fight against Evil. —When
misfortune overtakes us we can either pass over
it so lightly that its cause is removed, or so that
the result which it has on our temperament is
altered, through a changing, therefore, of the evil
into a good, the utility of which is perhaps not
visible until later on. Religion and art (also
metaphysical philosophy) work upon the changing
of the temperament, partly through the changing
of our judgment on events (for instance, with the
help of the phrase "whom the Lord loveth He
chasteneth"), partly through the awakening of a
pleasure in pain, in emotion generally (whence
the tragic art takes its starting-point). The more
a man is inclined to twist and arrange meanings
the less he will grasp the causes of evil and dis-
perse them; the momentary mitigation and in-
fluence of a narcotic, as for example in toothache,
suffices him even in more serious sufferings. The
more the dominion of creeds and all arts dispense
with narcotics, the more strictly men attend to
the actual removing of the evil, which is certainly
## p. 110 (#164) ############################################
I IG HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
exists neither relationship nor friendship, nor even
enmity; they live on different planets. Every
philosophy which shows a religious comet's tail
shining in the darkness of its last prospects r.
all the science it contains suspicious; all
is presumably also religion, even though in
guise of science. Moreover, if all nations were
agree about certain religious matters, for instal
the existence of a God (which, it may be remarke
is not the case with regard to this point), th
would only be an argument against those affirme
matters, for instance the existence of a God; th
consensus gentium and hominum in general can
only take place in case of a huge folly. On the
other hand, there is no consensus omnium sapientium,
with regard to any single thing, with that exception
mentioned in Goethe's lines:
“Alle die Weisesten aller der Zeiten
Lächeln und winken und stimmen mit ein :
Théricht, auf Bess'rung der Thoren zu harren
Kinder der Klugheit, o habet die Narren
Eben zum Narren auch, wie sich's gehört l” *
Spoken without verse and rhyme and applied to
our case, the consensus sapientium consists in
this: that the consensus gentium counts as a folly.
* “All greatest sages of all latest ages
Will chuckle and slily agree,
'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate
Has learnt to be knowing and free :
So children of wisdom, make use of the fools
And use them whenever you can as your tools. ”—J. M. K
## p. 111 (#165) ############################################
THE
RELIGIOUS LIFP
I 19
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## p. 112 (#166) ############################################
112 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
bad for writers of tragedy; for the material for
tragedy is growing scarcer because the domain of
pitiless, inexorable fate is growing ever narrower,
—but worse still for the priests, for they have
hitherto lived on the narcotisation of human
woes.
109.
Sorrow is Knowledge. —How greatly we
should like to exchange the false assertions of the
priests, that there is a god who desires good from
us, a guardian and witness of every action, every
moment, every thought, who loves us and seeks
our welfare in all misfortune,—how greatly we
\ would like to exchange these ideas for/aruths
which would be just as healing, pacifying and
beneficial as those errors! But there are no such
truths; at most philosophy can oppose to them
metaphysical appearances (at bottom also un-
truths). The tragedy consists in the fact that
we cannot believe those dogmas of religion and
metaphysics, if we have strict methods of truth
in heart and brain: on the other hand, mankind
has, through development, become so delicate,
irritable and suffering, that it has need of
/ the highest means of healing and consolation;
whence also the danger arises that man would
bleed to death from recognised truth, or, more
correctly, from discovered error. Byron has
expressed this in the immortal lines:—
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.
## p. 113 (#167) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 113
For such troubles there is no better help than to
recall the stately levity of Horace, at least for the
worst hours and eclipses of the soul, and to say
with him:
. . . quid aeternis minorem
consiliis animum fatigas?
cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac
pinu jacentes. *
But assuredly frivolity or melancholy of every
degree is better than a romantic retrospection
and desertion of the flag, an approach to
Christianity in any form; for according to the
present condition of knowledge it is absolutely
impossible to approach it without hopelessly
soiling our intellectual conscience and giving our-
selves away to ourselves and others. Those
pains may be unpleasant enough, but we cannot
become leaders and educators of mankind with-
out pain; and woe to him who would wish
to attempt this and no longer have that clear
conscience!
110.
The Truth in Religion. —In the period
of rationalism justice was not done to the
importance of religion, of that there is no doubt,
but equally there is no doubt that in the reaction
that followed this rationalism justice was far
overstepped; for religions were treated lovingly,
*Why harass with eternal designs a mind too weak to
compass them? Why do we not, as we lie beneath a lofty
plane-tree or this pine [drink while we may]? HOR. , Odes
II. ii. 11-14. —J. M. K.
VOL. I. H
## p. 114 (#168) ############################################
114 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
even amorously, and, for instance, a deeper, even
the very deepest, understanding of the world was
ascribed to them; which science has only to strip
of its dogmatic garment in order to possess the
"truth" in unmythical form. Religions should,
therefore,—this was the opinion of all opposers of
rationalism,—sensu allegorico, with all considera-
tion for the understanding of the masses, give
utterance to that ancient wisdom which is wisdom
itself, inasmuch as all true science of later times
has always led up to it instead of away from it,
so that between the oldest wisdom of mankind
and all later harmonies similarity of discernment
and a progress of knowledge—in case one should
wish to speak of such a thing—rests not upon the
nature but upon the way of communicating it.
This whole conception of religion and science is
thoroughly erroneous, and none would still dare
to profess it if Schopenhauer's eloquence had not
taken it under its protection; this resonant
eloquence which, however, only reached its hearers
a generation later. As surely as from Schopen-
hauer's religious-moral interpretations of men and
the world much may be gained for the under-
standing of the Christian and other religions, so
surely also is he mistaken about the value of
religion for knowledge. Therein he himself was
only a too docile pupil of the scientific teachers of
his time, who all worshipped romanticism and
had forsworn the spirit of enlightenment; had he
been born in our present age he could not pos-
sibly have talked about the sensus allegoricus of
religion; he would much rather have given
## p. 115 (#169) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 115
honour to truth, as he used to do, with the words,
"no religion, direct or indirect, either as dogma or as
allegory, has ever contained a truth! ' For each
has been born of fear and necessity, through the
byways of reason did it slip into existence; once,
perhaps, when imperilled by science, some philo-
sophic doctrine has lied itself into its system in
order that it may be found there later, but this
is a theological trick of the time when a religion
already doubts itself. These tricks of theology
(which certainly were practised in the early days
of Christianity, as the religion of a scholarly
period steeped in philosophy) have led to that
superstition of the sensus allegoricus, but yet more
the habits of the philosophers (especially the half-
natures, the poetical philosophers and the philo-
sophising artists), to treat all the sensations which
they discovered in themselves as the fundamental
nature of man in general, and hence to allow their
own religious feelings an important influence in
the building up of their systems. As philosophers
frequently philosophised under the custom of
religious habits, or at least under the anciently
inherited power of that " metaphysical need," they
developed doctrinal opinions which really bore a
great resemblance to the Jewish or Christian or
Indian religious views,—a resemblance, namely,
such as children usually bear to their mothers,
only that in this case the fathers were not clear
about that motherhood, as happens sometimes,—
but in their innocence romanced about a family
likeness between all religion and science. In
reality, between religions and real science there
## p. 116 (#170) ############################################
I IG HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
exists neither relationship nor friendship, nor even
enmity; they live on different planets. Every
philosophy which shows a religious comet's tail
shining in the darkness of its last prospects makes
all the science it contains suspicious; all this
is presumably also religion, even though in the
guise of science. Moreover, if all nations were to
agree about certain religious matters, for instance
the existence of a God (which, it may be remarked,
is not the case with regard to this point), this
would only be an argument against those affirmed
matters, for instance the existence of a God; the
consensus gentium and hominum in general can
only take place in case of a huge folly. On the
other hand, there is no consensus omnium sapientium,
with regard to any single thing, with that exception
mentioned in Goethe's lines:
“Alle die Weisesten aller der Zeiten
Lächeln und winken und stimmen mit ein :
Théricht, auf Bess'rung der Thoren zu harren
Kinder der Klugheit, o habet die Narren
Eben zum Narren auch, wie sich's gehört l” *
Spoken without verse and rhyme and applied to
our case, the consensus sapientium consists in
this: that the consensus gentium counts as a folly.
* “All greatest sages of all latest ages
Will chuckle and slily agree,
'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate
Has learnt to be knowing and free :
So children of wisdom, make use of the fools
And use them whenever you can as your tools. ”—J. M. K
|
|
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## p. 116 (#171) ############################################
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## p. 116 (#172) ############################################
Il6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
exists neither relationship nor friendship, nor ev»
enmity; they live on different planets. Evej
philosophy which shows a religious comet's ti
shining in the darkness of its last prospects makj fl
all the science it contains suspicious; all th
is presumably also religion, even though in th .
guise of science. Moreover, if all nations were t( . '
agree about certain religious matters, for instana
the existence of a God (which, it may be remarked!
is not the case with regard to this point), thij
would only be an argument against those affirmed
matters, for instance the existence of a God; the
consensus gentium and hominum in general can
only take place in case of a huge folly. On the
other hand, there is no consensus omnium sapientium,
with regard to any single thing, with that exception
mentioned in Goethe's lines:
"Alle die Weisesten aller der Zeiten
Lacheln und vvinken und stimmen mit ein:
Thoricht, auf Bess'rung der Thoren zu harren!
Kinder der Klugheit, o habet die Narren
Eben zum Narren auch, wie sich's gehort! " *
Spoken without verse and rhyme and applied to
our case, the consensus sapientium consists in
this: that the consensus gentium counts as a folly.
* "All greatest sages of all latest ages
Will chuckle and slily agree,
'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate
Has learnt to be knowing and free:
So children of wisdom, make use of the fools
And use them whenever you can as your tools. "—J. M. K
## p. 117 (#173) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 117
I I I.
The Origin of the Religious Cult. —If
we go back to the times in which the religious life
flourished to the greatest extent, we find a funda-
mental conviction, which we now no longer share,
'and whereby the doors leading to a religious life
are closed to us once for all,—it concerns Nature
and intercourse with her. In those times people
knew nothing of natural laws; neither for earth
nor for heaven is there a "must"; a season, the
sunshine, the rain may come or may not come.
In short, every idea of natural causality is lacking.
When one rows, it is not the rowing that moves
the boat, but rowing is only a magical ceremony
by which one compels a dcemon to move the
boat. All maladies, even death itself, are the result
of magical influences. Illness and death never
happen naturally; the whole conception of
"natural sequence" is lacking,—it dawned first
amongst the older Greeks, that is, in a very late
phase of humanity, in the conception of Moira,
enthroned above the gods. When a man shoots
with a bow, there is still always present an
irrational hand and strength; if the wells suddenly
dry up, men think first of subterranean dcemons
and their tricks; it must be the arrow of a god
beneath whose invisible blow a man suddenly
sinks down. In India (says Lubbock) a carpenter
is accustomed to offer sacrifice to his hammer, his
hatchet, and the rest of his tools; in the same way
a Brahmin treats the pen with which he writes, a
soldier the weapons he requires in the field of
.
## p. 118 (#174) ############################################
Il8 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
battle, a mason his trowel, a labourer his plough.
In the imagination of religious people all nature
is a summary of the actions of conscious and
voluntary creatures, an enormous complex of
arbitrariness. No conclusion may be drawn with
regard to everything that is outside of us, that
anything will be so and so, must be so and so;
the approximately sure, reliable are we,—man is
the rule, nature is irregularity,—this theory con-
tains the fundamental conviction which obtains in
rude, religiously productive primitive civilisations.
We latter-day men feel just the contrary,—the
richer man now feels himself inwardly, the more
polyphonous is the music and the noise of his
soul the more powerfully the symmetry of nature
works upon him; we all recognise with Goethe
the great means in nature for the appeasing of
the modern soul; we listen to the pendulum swing
of this greatest of clocks with a longing for rest,
for home and tranquillity, as if we could absorb
this symmetry into ourselves and could only
thereby arrive at the enjoyment of ourselves.
Formerly it was otherwise; if we consider the
rude, early condition of nations, or contemplate
present-day savages at close quarters, we find
them most strongly influenced by law and by
tradition: the individual is almost automatically
bound to them, and moves with the uniformity of
a pendulum. To him Nature—uncomprehended,
terrible, mysterious Nature—must appear as the
sphere of liberty, of voluntariness, of the higher
power, even as a superhuman degree of existence,
as God. In those times and conditions, however,
## p. 119 (#175) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 119
very individual felt that his existence, his happi-
f:ss, and that of the family and the State, and
e success of all undertakings, depended on those
ontaneities of nature; certain natural events
ust appear at the right time, others be absent at
e right time. How can one have any influence
n these terrible unknown things, how can one
►ind the sphere of liberty? Thus he asks himself,
hus he inquires anxiously;—is there, then, no
neans of making those powers as regular through
radition and law as you are yourself? The aim
f those who believe in magic and miracles is to
'mpose a law on nature,—and, briefly, the religious
ult is a result of this aim. The problem which
hose people have set themselves is closely related
0 this: how can the weaker race dictate laws to
the stronger, rule it, and guide its actions (in
relation to the weaker)? One would first
remember the most harmless sort of compulsion,
that compulsion which one exercises when one
has gained any one's affection. By imploring and
praying, by submission, by the obligation of regular
taxes and gifts, by flattering glorifications, it is
also possible to exercise an influence upon the
powers of nature, inasmuch as one gains the
affections; love binds and becomes bound. Then
one can make compacts by which one is mutually
bound to a certain behaviour, where one gives
pledges and exchanges vows. But far more
* important is a species of more forcible compulsion,
(by magic and witchcraft. As with the sorcerer's
help man is able to injure a more powerful enemy
'and keep him in fear, as the love-charm works at
I
J
## p. 119 (#176) ############################################
Il8 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
battle, a mason his trowel, a labourer his plough.
In the imagination of religious people all nature
is a summary of the actions of conscious and
voluntary creatures, an enormous complex of
arbitrariness. No conclusion may be drawn with
regard to everything that is outside of us, that
anything will be so and so, must be so and so;
the approximately sure, reliable are we,—man is
the rule, nature is irregularity,—this theory con-
tains the fundamental conviction which obtains in
rude, religiously productive primitive civilisations.
We latter-day men feel just the contrary,—the
richer man now feels himself inwardly, the more
polyphonous is the music and the noise of his
soul the more powerfully the symmetry of nature
works upon him; we all recognise with Goethe
the great means in nature for the appeasing of
the modern soul; we listen to the pendulum swing
of this greatest of clocks with a longing for rest,
for home and tranquillity, as if we could absorb
this symmetry into ourselves and could only
thereby arrive at the enjoyment of ourselves.
Formerly it was otherwise; if we consider the
rude, early condition of nations, or contemplate
present-day savages at close quarters, we find
them most strongly influenced by law and by
tradition: the individual is almost automatically
bound to them, and moves with the uniformity of
a pendulum. To him Nature—uncomprehended,
terrible, mysterious Nature—must appear as the
sphere of liberty, of voluntariness, of the higher
power, even as a superhuman degree of existence,
as God. In those times and conditions, however,
1
## p. 119 (#177) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 119
every individual felt that his existence, his happi-
ness, and that of the family and the State, and
the success of all undertakings, depended on those
spontaneities of nature; certain natural events
must appear at the right time, others be absent at
the right time. How can one have any influence
on these terrible unknown things, how can one
bind the sphere of liberty? Thus he asks himself,
thus he inquires anxiously;—is there, then, no
means of making those powers as regular through
tradition and law as you are yourself? The aim
of those who believe in magic and miracles is to
impose a law on nature,—and, briefly, the religious
cult is a result of this aim. The problem which
those people have set themselves is closely related
to this: how can the weaker race dictate laws to
the stronger, rule it, and guide its actions (in
relation to the weaker)? One would first
remember the most harmless sort of compulsion,
that compulsion which one exercises when one
has gained any one's affection. By imploring and
praying, by submission, by the obligation of regular
taxes and gifts, by flattering glorifications, it is
also possible to exercise an influence upon the
powers of nature, inasmuch as one gains the
affections; love binds and becomes bound. Then
one can make compacts by which one is mutually
bound to a certain behaviour, where one gives
pledges and exchanges vows. But far more
important is a species of more forcible compulsion,
by magic and witchcraft. As with the sorcerer's
help man is able to injure a more powerful enemy
and keep him in fear, as the love-charm works at
## p. 120 (#178) ############################################
120 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
a distance, so the weaker man believes he can
influence the mightier spirits of nature. The
principal thing in all witchcraft is that we must
get into our possession something that belongs to
some one, hair, nails, food from their table, even
their portrait, their name. With such apparatus
we can then practise sorcery; for the fundamental
rule is, to everything spiritual there belongs some-
thing corporeal; with the help of this we are able
to bind the spirit, to injure it, and destroy it; the
corporeal furnishes the handles with which we can
grasp the spiritual. As man controls man, so he
controls some natural spirit or other; for this has
also its corporeal part by which it may be grasped.
The tree and, compared with it, the seed from
which it sprang,—this enigmatical contrast seems
to prove that the same spirit embodied itself in
both forms, now small, now large. A stone that
begins to roll suddenly is the body in which a
spirit operates; if there is an enormous rock
lying on a lonely heath it seems impossible to
conceive human strength sufficient to have brought
it there, consequently the stone must have moved
there by itself, that is, it must be possessed by a
spirit. Everything that has a body is susceptible
to witchcraft, therefore also the natural spirits.
If a god is bound to his image we can
use the most direct compulsion against him
(through refusal of sacrificial food, scourging,
binding in fetters, and so on). In order to
obtain by force the missing favour of their god
the lower classes in China wind cords round the
image of the one who has left them in the lurch,
^
## p. 121 (#179) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 121
pull it down and drag it through the streets in
the dust and the dirt: "You dog of a spirit,"
they say, " we gave you a magnificent temple to
live in, we gilded you prettily, we fed you well,
we offered you sacrifice, and yet you are so
ungrateful. " Similar forcible measures against
pictures of the Saints and Virgin when they
refused to do their duty in pestilence or drought,
have been witnessed even during the present
century in Catholic countries. Through all these
magic relations to nature, countless ceremonies
have been called into life; and at last, when the
confusion has grown too great, an endeavour has
been made to order and systematise them, in
order that the favourable course of the whole
progress of nature, i. e. of the great succession of
the seasons, may seem to be guaranteed by a
corresponding course of a system of procedure.
The essence of the religious cult is to determine
and confine nature to human advantage, to impress
it with a legality, therefore, which it did not
originally possess; while at the present time we
wish to recognise the legality of nature in order
to adapt ourselves to it. In short, then, the
religious cult is based upon the representations
of sorcery between man and man,—and the
sorcerer is older than the priest. But it is like-
wise based upon other and nobler representations;
it premises the sympathetic relation of man to
man, the presence of goodwill, gratitude, the
hearing of pleaders, of treaties between enemies,
the granting of pledges, and the claim to the
protection of property. In very low stages of
## p. 121 (#180) ############################################
120 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
a distance, so the weaker man believes he can
influence the mightier spirits of nature. The
principal thing in all witchcraft is that we must
get into our possession something that belongs to
some one, hair, nails, food from their table, even
their portrait, their name. With such apparatus
we can then practise sorcery; for the fundamental
rule is, to everything spiritual there belongs some-
thing corporeal; with the help of this we are able
to bind the spirit, to injure it, and destroy it; the
corporeal furnishes the handles with which we can
grasp the spiritual. As man controls man, so he
controls some natural spirit or other; for this has
also its corporeal part by which it may be grasped.
The tree and, compared with it, the seed from
which it sprang,—this enigmatical contrast seems
to prove that the same spirit embodied itself in
both forms, now small, now large. A stone that
begins to roll suddenly is the body in which a
spirit operates; if there is an enormous rock
lying on a lonely heath it seems impossible to
conceive human strength sufficient to have brought
it there, consequently the stone must have moved
there by itself, that is, it must be possessed by a
spirit. Everything that has a body is susceptible
to witchcraft, therefore also the natural spirits.
If a god is bound to his image we can
use the most direct compulsion against him
(through refusal of sacrificial food, scourging,
binding in fetters, and so on). In order to
obtain by force the missing favour of their god
the lower classes in China wind cords round the
image of the one who has left them in the lurch,
## p. 121 (#181) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 121
pull it down and drag it through the streets in
the dust and the dirt: "You dog of a spirit,"
they say, "we gave you a magnificent temple to
live in, we gilded you prettily, we fed you well,
we offered you sacrifice, and yet you are so
ungrateful. " Similar forcible measures against
pictures of the Saints and Virgin when they
refused to do their duty in pestilence or drought,
have been witnessed even during the present
century in Catholic countries. Through all these
magic relations to nature, countless ceremonies
have been called into life; and at last, when the
confusion has grown too great, an endeavour has
been made to order and systematise them, in
order that the favourable course of the whole
progress of nature, i. e. of the great succession of
the seasons, may seem to be guaranteed by a
corresponding course of a system of procedure.
The essence of the religious cult is to determine
and confine nature to human advantage, to impress
it with a legality, therefore, which it did not
originally possess; while at the present time we
wish to recognise the legality of nature in order
to adapt ourselves to it. In short, then, the
religious cult is based upon the representations
of sorcery between man and man,—and the
sorcerer is older than the priest. But it is like-
wise based upon other and nobler representations;
it premises the sympathetic relation of man to
man, the presence of goodwill, gratitude, the
hearing of pleaders, of treaties between enemies,
the granting of pledges, and the claim to the
protection of property. In very low stages of
## p. 122 (#182) ############################################
122 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
civilisation man does not stand in the relation of
a helpless slave to nature, he is not necessarily its
involuntary bondsman. In the Greek grade of
religion, particularly in relation to the Olympian
gods, there may even be imagined a common life
between two castes, a nobler and more powerful
one, and one less noble; but in their origin both
belong to each other somehow, and are of one
kind; they need not be ashamed of each other.
That is the nobility of the Greek religion.
112.
At the Sight of certain Antique
Sacrificial Implements. —The fact of how
many feelings are lost to us may be seen, for
instance, in the mingling of the droll, even of the
obscene, with the religious feeling. The sensation
of the possibility of this mixture vanishes, we only
comprehend historically that it existed in the feasts
of Demeter and Dionysus, in the Christian Easter-
plays and Mysteries. But we also know that
which is noble in alliance with burlesque and such
like, the touching mingled with the laughable,
which perhaps a later age will not be able to
understand.
"3-
Christianity as Antiquity. —When on a
Sunday morning we hear the old bells ring out,
we ask ourselves, "Is it possible! This is done
on account of a Jew crucified two thousand years
ago who said he was the Son of God. The proof
ot such an assertion is wanting. " Certainly in our
## p. 123 (#183) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 123
times the Christian religion is an antiquity that
dates from very early ages, and the fact that its
assertions are still believed, when otherwise all
claims are subjected to such strict examination,
is perhaps the oldest part of this heritage. A
God who creates a son from a mortal woman; a
sage who requires that man should no longer
work, no longer judge, but should pay attention to
the signs of the approaching end of the world;
a justice that accepts an innocent being as a
substitute in sacrifice; one who commands his
disciples to drink his blood ; prayers for miraculous
intervention; sins committed against a God and
atoned for through a God; the fear of a future
to which death is the portal; the form of the
cross in an age which no longer knows the
signification and the shame of the cross,* how
terrible all this appears to us, as if risen from the
grave of the ancient past! Is it credible that
such things are still believed?
114.
What is un-Greek in Christianity. —The
Greeks did not regard the Homeric gods as raised
above them like masters, nor themselves as being
under them like servants, as the Jews did. They
only saw, as in a mirror, the most perfect examples
of their own caste; an ideal, therefore, and not an
opposite of their own nature. There is a feeling
* It may be remembered that the cross was the gallows
of the ancient world. —J. M. K.
## p. 124 (#184) ############################################
124 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
of relationship, a mutual interest arises, a kind of
symmachy. Man thinks highly of himself when
he gives himself such gods, and places himself in
a relation like that of the lower nobility towards
the higher; while the Italian nations hold a
genuine peasant-faith, with perpetual fear of evil
and mischievous powers and tormenting spirits.
Wherever the Olympian gods retreated into the
background, Greek life was more sombre and
more anxious. Christianity, on the contrary,
oppressed man and crushed him utterly, sinking
him as if in deep mire; then into the feeling of
absolute depravity it suddenly threw the light of
divine mercy, so that the surprised man, dazzled
by forgiveness, gave a cry of joy and for a moment
believed that he bore all heaven within himself.
All psychological feelings of Christianity work
upon this unhealthy excess of sentiment, and
upon the deep corruption of head and heart it
necessitates; it desires to destroy, break, stupefy,
confuse,—only one thing it does not desire, namely
moderation, and therefore it is in the deepest sense
barbaric, Asiatic, ignoble and un-Greek.
II5.
To be Religious with Advantage. —There
are sober and industrious people on whom religion
is embroidered like a hem of higher humanity;
these do well to remain religious, it beautifies
them. All people who do not understand some
kind of trade in weapons—tongue and pen included
as weapons—become servile; for such the Christian
"
## p. 125 (#185) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 125
religion is very useful, for then servility assumes
the appearance of Christian virtues and is surpris-
ingly beautified. People to whom their daily life
appears too empty and monotonous easily grow
religious; this is comprehensible and excusable,
only they have no right to demand religious
sentiments from those whose daily life is not
empty and monotonous. *
116.
The Commonplace Christian. —If Christi-
anity were right, with its theories of an avenging
God, of general sinfulness, of redemption, and the
danger of eternal damnation, it would be a sign of
weak intellect and lack of character not to become
a priest, apostle or hermit, and to work only with
fear and trembling for one's own salvation; it
would be senseless thus to neglect eternal benefits
for temporary comfort. Taking it for granted
that there is belief, the commonplace Christian is
a miserable figure, a man that really cannot add
two and two together, and who, moreover, just
because of his mental incapacity for responsibility,
did not deserve to be so severely punished as
Christianity has decreed.
117.
Of the Wisdom of Christianity. —It is a
clever stroke on the part of Christianity to teach
* This may give us one of the reasons for the religiosity
still happily prevailing in England and the United States.
—J. M. K.
## p. 125 (#186) ############################################
## p. 125 (#187) ############################################
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123-
CHURCH DISESTABLISHMENT. -There is not
enough religion in the world even to destroy
religions.
## p. 125 (#188) ############################################
I 28 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
I 24.
THE SINLESSNESS OF MAN. —If it is under-
stood how “sin came into the world,” namely
through errors of reason by which men held each
other, even the single individual held himself, to
be much blacker and much worse than was
actually the case, the whole sensation will be
much lightened, and man and the world will
appear in a blaze of innocence which it will do
one good to contemplate. In the midst of nature
man is always the child per se. This child some-
times has a heavy and terrifying dream, but when
it opens its eyes it always finds itself back again
in Paradise.
I 25.
THE IRRELIGIOUSNESS OF ARTISTS. –Homer
is so much at home amongst his gods, and is so
familiar with them as a poet, that he must have
been deeply irreligious; that which the popular
faith gave him—a meagre, rude, partly terrible
superstition—he treated as freely as the sculptor
does his clay, with the same unconcern, therefore,
which AEschylus and Aristophanes possessed, and
by which in later times the great artists of the
Renaissance distinguished themselves, as also did
Shakespeare and Goethe.
I 26.
THE ART AND POWER OF FALSE INTER-
PRETATIONS. —All the visions, terrors, torpors,
## p. 125 (#189) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. I 29
and ecstasies of saints are well-known forms of
disease, which are only, by reason of deep-rooted
religious and psychological errors, differently
explained by him, namely not as diseases. Thus,
perhaps, the Daimonion of Socrates was only an
affection of the ear, which he, in accordance with
his ruling moral mode of thought, expounded
differently from what would be the case now.
It is the same thing with the madness and
ravings of the prophets and soothsayers; it is
always the degree of knowledge, fantasy, effort,
morality in the head and heart of the interpreters
which has made so much of it. For the greatest
achievements of the people who are called geniuses
and saints it is necessary that they should secure
interpreters by force, who misunderstand them for
the good of mankind.
I 27.
THE VENERATION OF INSANITY. -Because
it was remarked that excitement frequently made
the mind clearer and produced happy inspirations,
it was believed that the happiest inspirations and
suggestions were called forth by the greatest
excitement; and so the insane were revered as
wise and oracular. This is based on a false
conclusion.
I 28.
THE PROMISES OF SCIENCE. -The aim of
modern science is: as little pain as possible, as
long a life as possible, a kind of eternal blessed-
vol. I I
## p. 126 (#190) ############################################
126 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN. _
the utter unworthiness, sinfulness, and despicable-
ness of mankind so loudly that the disdain of
their fellow-men is no longer possible. "He may
sin as much as he likes, he is not essentially
different from me,—it is I who am unworthy and
despicable in every way," says the Christian to
himself. But even this feeling has lost its sharpest
sting, because the Christian no longer believes in
his individual despicableness; he is bad as men
are generally, and comforts himself a little with
the axiom, " We are all of one kind. "
118.
Change of Front. —As soon as a religion
triumphs *it has for its enemies all those who
would have been its first disciples.
119.
The Fate of Christianity. —Christianity
arose for the purpose of lightening the heart;
but now it must first make the heart heavy in
order afterwards to lighten it. Consequently it
will perish. l\ , \
The Proof of Pleasure. —The agreeable
opinion is accepted as true,—this is the proof of
the pleasure (or, as the Church says, the proof of
the strength), of which all religions are so proud
when they ought to be ashamed of it. If Faith
did not make blessed it would not be believed
in; of how little value must it be, then!
## p. 127 (#191) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 127
121.
A Dangerous Game. —Whoever now allows
scope to his religious feelings must also let them
increase, he cannot do otherwise. His nature
then gradually changes; it favours whatever is
connected with and near to the religious element,
the whole extent of judgment and feeling becomes
clouded, overcast with religious shadows. Sensa-
tion cannot stand still; one must therefore take
care.
122.
The Blind Disciples. —So long as one
knows well the strength and weakness of one's
doctrine, one's art, one's religion, its power is
still small. The disciple and apostle who has
no eyes for the weaknesses of the doctrine, the
religion, and so forth, dazzled by the aspect of
the master and by his reverence for him, has on
that account usually more power than the master
himself. Without blind disciples the influence of
a man and his work has never yet become great.
To help a doctrine to victory often means only
so to mix it with stupidity that the weight of the
latter carries off also the victory for the former.
123.
Church Disestablishment. —There is not
enough religion in the world even to destroy
religions.
## p. 128 (#192) ############################################
128 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
124.
The Sinlessness of Man. —If it is under-
stood how "sin came into the world," namely
through errors of reason by which men held each
other, even the single individual held himself, to
be much blacker and much worse than was
actually the case, the whole sensation will be
much lightened, and man and the world will
appear in a blaze of innocence which it will do
one good to contemplate. In the midst of nature
man is always the child per se. This child some-
times has a heavy and terrifying dream, but when
it opens its eyes it always finds itself back again
in Paradise.
125.
The Irreligiousness of Artists. —Homer
is so much at home amongst his gods, and is so
familiar with them as a poet, that he must have
been deeply irreligious; that which the popular
faith gave him—a meagre, rude, partly terrible
superstition—he treated as freely as the sculptor
does his clay, with the same unconcern, therefore,
which ^Eschylus and Aristophanes possessed, and
by which in later times the great artists of the
Renaissance distinguished themselves, as also did
Shakespeare and Goethe.
I single longing of the individual for self-gratification
"(together with the fear of losing it) satisfies itself
i in all circumstances: man may act as he can,that
is as he must, be it in deeds of vanity, revenge,
pleasure, usefulness, malice, cunning; be it in deeds
of sacrifice, of pity, of knowledge. The degrees
of the power of judgment determine whither any
one lets himself be drawn through this longing;
to every society, to every individual, a scale of
possessions is continually present, according to
which he determines his actions and judges those
of others. But this standard changes constantly;
many actions are called evil and are only stupid,
because the degree of intelligence which decided
for them was very low. In a certain sense, even,
all actions are still stupid; for the highest degree
of human intelligence which can now be attained
will assuredly be yet surpassed, and then, in a
retrospect, all our actions and judgments will
appear as limited and hasty as the actions and
judgments of primitive wild peoples now appear
limited and hasty to us. To recognise all this
may be deeply painful, but consolation comes
after: such pains are the pangs of birth. The
## p. 109 (#161) ############################################
THE HISTORY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS. 109
butterfly wants to break through its chrysalis: it
rends and tears it, and is then blinded and confused
by the unaccustomed light, the kingdom of liberty.
In such people as are capable of such sadness—and
how few are ! —the first experiment made is to see
whether mankind can change itself from a moral
into a wise mankind. The sun of a new gospel
throws its rays upon the highest point in the soul
of each single individual, then the mists gather
thicker than ever, and the brightest light and
the dreariest shadow lie side by side. Everything
is necessity—so says the new knowledge, and
this knowledge itself is necessity. Everything is
innocence, and knowledge is the road to insight
into this innocence. Are pleasure, egoism, vanity
necessary for the production of the moral
phenomena and their highest result, the sense for
truth and justice in knowledge; were error and
the confusion of the imagination the only means
through which mankind could raise itself gradually
to this degree of self-enlightenment and self-
liberation—who would dare to undervalue these
means? Who would dare to be sad if he
perceived the goal to which those roads led?
Everything in the domain of morality has evolved,
is changeable, unstable, everything is dissolved, it
is true; but everything is also streaming towards
one goal. Even if the inherited habit of erroneous *"]
valuation, love and hatred, continue to reign in us,
yet under the influence of growing knowledge it
will become weaker; a new habit, that of com-
prehension, of not loving, not hating, of over-
looking, is gradually implanting itself in us upon
J
## p. 110 (#162) ############################################
I IO HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
the same ground, and in thousands of years will
perhaps be powerful enough to give humanity the
strength to produce wise, innocent (consciously
innocent) men, as it now produces unwise, guilt-
conscious men, that is the necessary preliminary
step, not its opposite.
## p. 110 (#163) ############################################
THIRD DIVISION.
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE.
108.
The Double Fight against Evil. —When
misfortune overtakes us we can either pass over
it so lightly that its cause is removed, or so that
the result which it has on our temperament is
altered, through a changing, therefore, of the evil
into a good, the utility of which is perhaps not
visible until later on. Religion and art (also
metaphysical philosophy) work upon the changing
of the temperament, partly through the changing
of our judgment on events (for instance, with the
help of the phrase "whom the Lord loveth He
chasteneth"), partly through the awakening of a
pleasure in pain, in emotion generally (whence
the tragic art takes its starting-point). The more
a man is inclined to twist and arrange meanings
the less he will grasp the causes of evil and dis-
perse them; the momentary mitigation and in-
fluence of a narcotic, as for example in toothache,
suffices him even in more serious sufferings. The
more the dominion of creeds and all arts dispense
with narcotics, the more strictly men attend to
the actual removing of the evil, which is certainly
## p. 110 (#164) ############################################
I IG HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
exists neither relationship nor friendship, nor even
enmity; they live on different planets. Every
philosophy which shows a religious comet's tail
shining in the darkness of its last prospects r.
all the science it contains suspicious; all
is presumably also religion, even though in
guise of science. Moreover, if all nations were
agree about certain religious matters, for instal
the existence of a God (which, it may be remarke
is not the case with regard to this point), th
would only be an argument against those affirme
matters, for instance the existence of a God; th
consensus gentium and hominum in general can
only take place in case of a huge folly. On the
other hand, there is no consensus omnium sapientium,
with regard to any single thing, with that exception
mentioned in Goethe's lines:
“Alle die Weisesten aller der Zeiten
Lächeln und winken und stimmen mit ein :
Théricht, auf Bess'rung der Thoren zu harren
Kinder der Klugheit, o habet die Narren
Eben zum Narren auch, wie sich's gehört l” *
Spoken without verse and rhyme and applied to
our case, the consensus sapientium consists in
this: that the consensus gentium counts as a folly.
* “All greatest sages of all latest ages
Will chuckle and slily agree,
'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate
Has learnt to be knowing and free :
So children of wisdom, make use of the fools
And use them whenever you can as your tools. ”—J. M. K
## p. 111 (#165) ############################################
THE
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## p. 112 (#166) ############################################
112 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
bad for writers of tragedy; for the material for
tragedy is growing scarcer because the domain of
pitiless, inexorable fate is growing ever narrower,
—but worse still for the priests, for they have
hitherto lived on the narcotisation of human
woes.
109.
Sorrow is Knowledge. —How greatly we
should like to exchange the false assertions of the
priests, that there is a god who desires good from
us, a guardian and witness of every action, every
moment, every thought, who loves us and seeks
our welfare in all misfortune,—how greatly we
\ would like to exchange these ideas for/aruths
which would be just as healing, pacifying and
beneficial as those errors! But there are no such
truths; at most philosophy can oppose to them
metaphysical appearances (at bottom also un-
truths). The tragedy consists in the fact that
we cannot believe those dogmas of religion and
metaphysics, if we have strict methods of truth
in heart and brain: on the other hand, mankind
has, through development, become so delicate,
irritable and suffering, that it has need of
/ the highest means of healing and consolation;
whence also the danger arises that man would
bleed to death from recognised truth, or, more
correctly, from discovered error. Byron has
expressed this in the immortal lines:—
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.
## p. 113 (#167) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 113
For such troubles there is no better help than to
recall the stately levity of Horace, at least for the
worst hours and eclipses of the soul, and to say
with him:
. . . quid aeternis minorem
consiliis animum fatigas?
cur non sub alta vel platano vel hac
pinu jacentes. *
But assuredly frivolity or melancholy of every
degree is better than a romantic retrospection
and desertion of the flag, an approach to
Christianity in any form; for according to the
present condition of knowledge it is absolutely
impossible to approach it without hopelessly
soiling our intellectual conscience and giving our-
selves away to ourselves and others. Those
pains may be unpleasant enough, but we cannot
become leaders and educators of mankind with-
out pain; and woe to him who would wish
to attempt this and no longer have that clear
conscience!
110.
The Truth in Religion. —In the period
of rationalism justice was not done to the
importance of religion, of that there is no doubt,
but equally there is no doubt that in the reaction
that followed this rationalism justice was far
overstepped; for religions were treated lovingly,
*Why harass with eternal designs a mind too weak to
compass them? Why do we not, as we lie beneath a lofty
plane-tree or this pine [drink while we may]? HOR. , Odes
II. ii. 11-14. —J. M. K.
VOL. I. H
## p. 114 (#168) ############################################
114 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
even amorously, and, for instance, a deeper, even
the very deepest, understanding of the world was
ascribed to them; which science has only to strip
of its dogmatic garment in order to possess the
"truth" in unmythical form. Religions should,
therefore,—this was the opinion of all opposers of
rationalism,—sensu allegorico, with all considera-
tion for the understanding of the masses, give
utterance to that ancient wisdom which is wisdom
itself, inasmuch as all true science of later times
has always led up to it instead of away from it,
so that between the oldest wisdom of mankind
and all later harmonies similarity of discernment
and a progress of knowledge—in case one should
wish to speak of such a thing—rests not upon the
nature but upon the way of communicating it.
This whole conception of religion and science is
thoroughly erroneous, and none would still dare
to profess it if Schopenhauer's eloquence had not
taken it under its protection; this resonant
eloquence which, however, only reached its hearers
a generation later. As surely as from Schopen-
hauer's religious-moral interpretations of men and
the world much may be gained for the under-
standing of the Christian and other religions, so
surely also is he mistaken about the value of
religion for knowledge. Therein he himself was
only a too docile pupil of the scientific teachers of
his time, who all worshipped romanticism and
had forsworn the spirit of enlightenment; had he
been born in our present age he could not pos-
sibly have talked about the sensus allegoricus of
religion; he would much rather have given
## p. 115 (#169) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 115
honour to truth, as he used to do, with the words,
"no religion, direct or indirect, either as dogma or as
allegory, has ever contained a truth! ' For each
has been born of fear and necessity, through the
byways of reason did it slip into existence; once,
perhaps, when imperilled by science, some philo-
sophic doctrine has lied itself into its system in
order that it may be found there later, but this
is a theological trick of the time when a religion
already doubts itself. These tricks of theology
(which certainly were practised in the early days
of Christianity, as the religion of a scholarly
period steeped in philosophy) have led to that
superstition of the sensus allegoricus, but yet more
the habits of the philosophers (especially the half-
natures, the poetical philosophers and the philo-
sophising artists), to treat all the sensations which
they discovered in themselves as the fundamental
nature of man in general, and hence to allow their
own religious feelings an important influence in
the building up of their systems. As philosophers
frequently philosophised under the custom of
religious habits, or at least under the anciently
inherited power of that " metaphysical need," they
developed doctrinal opinions which really bore a
great resemblance to the Jewish or Christian or
Indian religious views,—a resemblance, namely,
such as children usually bear to their mothers,
only that in this case the fathers were not clear
about that motherhood, as happens sometimes,—
but in their innocence romanced about a family
likeness between all religion and science. In
reality, between religions and real science there
## p. 116 (#170) ############################################
I IG HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
exists neither relationship nor friendship, nor even
enmity; they live on different planets. Every
philosophy which shows a religious comet's tail
shining in the darkness of its last prospects makes
all the science it contains suspicious; all this
is presumably also religion, even though in the
guise of science. Moreover, if all nations were to
agree about certain religious matters, for instance
the existence of a God (which, it may be remarked,
is not the case with regard to this point), this
would only be an argument against those affirmed
matters, for instance the existence of a God; the
consensus gentium and hominum in general can
only take place in case of a huge folly. On the
other hand, there is no consensus omnium sapientium,
with regard to any single thing, with that exception
mentioned in Goethe's lines:
“Alle die Weisesten aller der Zeiten
Lächeln und winken und stimmen mit ein :
Théricht, auf Bess'rung der Thoren zu harren
Kinder der Klugheit, o habet die Narren
Eben zum Narren auch, wie sich's gehört l” *
Spoken without verse and rhyme and applied to
our case, the consensus sapientium consists in
this: that the consensus gentium counts as a folly.
* “All greatest sages of all latest ages
Will chuckle and slily agree,
'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate
Has learnt to be knowing and free :
So children of wisdom, make use of the fools
And use them whenever you can as your tools. ”—J. M. K
|
|
*
## p. 116 (#171) ############################################
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º
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.
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\ we v \, , , N ºr a tat N tº lºot's Ull. " -- 1:
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* * * * * * ** at, si vºw tºut, wº find a tunda-
ww ºval ºwn tºwn, whº h ws nºw no loºse share,
nºt wº, º ºx tº tº as leavius tº a tºllstous lite
aw tº evºl ºvº º sº. tºw all at . . whº, a wº Nature
nºw ºr sºvº w whº la this times people
*** w wºulºus vu was unal law» , ºthº lºw rath
wn tº hºws a tº whº is a " must a seasºn, the
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\,\ whº hº • **** a -----, * *. * nºvº the
**** \ , . . . ------> , º, . º. º. º. º. ar, she rºut:
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*~~ º ***, *, * \ **** whº, º **.
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--------> * * * * * * : * ~ ***** * * * * * *a*
*-> **, ******* *** * *** ****** **** ** 1 ** *
** *** ***** **** *** **** \\? \º a sºar ~hº
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* - ------ ***** ---, -i > **- * º wº. -- ~. . . . ºn's
*** *, * * * *----> * > * >s->> *-*** *-*. *
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*. * * * * ** *. . * * * > -ºvº. Nºw * -** * * **** **** **
* * * * * * *** * •. * - -- º ** * * *~~~ * ** -> *:
* - - - - - -- ~~ • * ~ * * - ~ *. > → ---------- -->
** * * *** - - *~ -> * > * ~ * . . . -> <--~ *-**
- * ~ * -- ---> -º- - - --> *- :-- - - - --> -
* **. *- - • *- --~~ * * * * *~ ** - ~~ - :*. *-*- **
## p. 116 (#172) ############################################
Il6 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
exists neither relationship nor friendship, nor ev»
enmity; they live on different planets. Evej
philosophy which shows a religious comet's ti
shining in the darkness of its last prospects makj fl
all the science it contains suspicious; all th
is presumably also religion, even though in th .
guise of science. Moreover, if all nations were t( . '
agree about certain religious matters, for instana
the existence of a God (which, it may be remarked!
is not the case with regard to this point), thij
would only be an argument against those affirmed
matters, for instance the existence of a God; the
consensus gentium and hominum in general can
only take place in case of a huge folly. On the
other hand, there is no consensus omnium sapientium,
with regard to any single thing, with that exception
mentioned in Goethe's lines:
"Alle die Weisesten aller der Zeiten
Lacheln und vvinken und stimmen mit ein:
Thoricht, auf Bess'rung der Thoren zu harren!
Kinder der Klugheit, o habet die Narren
Eben zum Narren auch, wie sich's gehort! " *
Spoken without verse and rhyme and applied to
our case, the consensus sapientium consists in
this: that the consensus gentium counts as a folly.
* "All greatest sages of all latest ages
Will chuckle and slily agree,
'Tis folly to wait till a fool's empty pate
Has learnt to be knowing and free:
So children of wisdom, make use of the fools
And use them whenever you can as your tools. "—J. M. K
## p. 117 (#173) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 117
I I I.
The Origin of the Religious Cult. —If
we go back to the times in which the religious life
flourished to the greatest extent, we find a funda-
mental conviction, which we now no longer share,
'and whereby the doors leading to a religious life
are closed to us once for all,—it concerns Nature
and intercourse with her. In those times people
knew nothing of natural laws; neither for earth
nor for heaven is there a "must"; a season, the
sunshine, the rain may come or may not come.
In short, every idea of natural causality is lacking.
When one rows, it is not the rowing that moves
the boat, but rowing is only a magical ceremony
by which one compels a dcemon to move the
boat. All maladies, even death itself, are the result
of magical influences. Illness and death never
happen naturally; the whole conception of
"natural sequence" is lacking,—it dawned first
amongst the older Greeks, that is, in a very late
phase of humanity, in the conception of Moira,
enthroned above the gods. When a man shoots
with a bow, there is still always present an
irrational hand and strength; if the wells suddenly
dry up, men think first of subterranean dcemons
and their tricks; it must be the arrow of a god
beneath whose invisible blow a man suddenly
sinks down. In India (says Lubbock) a carpenter
is accustomed to offer sacrifice to his hammer, his
hatchet, and the rest of his tools; in the same way
a Brahmin treats the pen with which he writes, a
soldier the weapons he requires in the field of
.
## p. 118 (#174) ############################################
Il8 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
battle, a mason his trowel, a labourer his plough.
In the imagination of religious people all nature
is a summary of the actions of conscious and
voluntary creatures, an enormous complex of
arbitrariness. No conclusion may be drawn with
regard to everything that is outside of us, that
anything will be so and so, must be so and so;
the approximately sure, reliable are we,—man is
the rule, nature is irregularity,—this theory con-
tains the fundamental conviction which obtains in
rude, religiously productive primitive civilisations.
We latter-day men feel just the contrary,—the
richer man now feels himself inwardly, the more
polyphonous is the music and the noise of his
soul the more powerfully the symmetry of nature
works upon him; we all recognise with Goethe
the great means in nature for the appeasing of
the modern soul; we listen to the pendulum swing
of this greatest of clocks with a longing for rest,
for home and tranquillity, as if we could absorb
this symmetry into ourselves and could only
thereby arrive at the enjoyment of ourselves.
Formerly it was otherwise; if we consider the
rude, early condition of nations, or contemplate
present-day savages at close quarters, we find
them most strongly influenced by law and by
tradition: the individual is almost automatically
bound to them, and moves with the uniformity of
a pendulum. To him Nature—uncomprehended,
terrible, mysterious Nature—must appear as the
sphere of liberty, of voluntariness, of the higher
power, even as a superhuman degree of existence,
as God. In those times and conditions, however,
## p. 119 (#175) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 119
very individual felt that his existence, his happi-
f:ss, and that of the family and the State, and
e success of all undertakings, depended on those
ontaneities of nature; certain natural events
ust appear at the right time, others be absent at
e right time. How can one have any influence
n these terrible unknown things, how can one
►ind the sphere of liberty? Thus he asks himself,
hus he inquires anxiously;—is there, then, no
neans of making those powers as regular through
radition and law as you are yourself? The aim
f those who believe in magic and miracles is to
'mpose a law on nature,—and, briefly, the religious
ult is a result of this aim. The problem which
hose people have set themselves is closely related
0 this: how can the weaker race dictate laws to
the stronger, rule it, and guide its actions (in
relation to the weaker)? One would first
remember the most harmless sort of compulsion,
that compulsion which one exercises when one
has gained any one's affection. By imploring and
praying, by submission, by the obligation of regular
taxes and gifts, by flattering glorifications, it is
also possible to exercise an influence upon the
powers of nature, inasmuch as one gains the
affections; love binds and becomes bound. Then
one can make compacts by which one is mutually
bound to a certain behaviour, where one gives
pledges and exchanges vows. But far more
* important is a species of more forcible compulsion,
(by magic and witchcraft. As with the sorcerer's
help man is able to injure a more powerful enemy
'and keep him in fear, as the love-charm works at
I
J
## p. 119 (#176) ############################################
Il8 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
battle, a mason his trowel, a labourer his plough.
In the imagination of religious people all nature
is a summary of the actions of conscious and
voluntary creatures, an enormous complex of
arbitrariness. No conclusion may be drawn with
regard to everything that is outside of us, that
anything will be so and so, must be so and so;
the approximately sure, reliable are we,—man is
the rule, nature is irregularity,—this theory con-
tains the fundamental conviction which obtains in
rude, religiously productive primitive civilisations.
We latter-day men feel just the contrary,—the
richer man now feels himself inwardly, the more
polyphonous is the music and the noise of his
soul the more powerfully the symmetry of nature
works upon him; we all recognise with Goethe
the great means in nature for the appeasing of
the modern soul; we listen to the pendulum swing
of this greatest of clocks with a longing for rest,
for home and tranquillity, as if we could absorb
this symmetry into ourselves and could only
thereby arrive at the enjoyment of ourselves.
Formerly it was otherwise; if we consider the
rude, early condition of nations, or contemplate
present-day savages at close quarters, we find
them most strongly influenced by law and by
tradition: the individual is almost automatically
bound to them, and moves with the uniformity of
a pendulum. To him Nature—uncomprehended,
terrible, mysterious Nature—must appear as the
sphere of liberty, of voluntariness, of the higher
power, even as a superhuman degree of existence,
as God. In those times and conditions, however,
1
## p. 119 (#177) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 119
every individual felt that his existence, his happi-
ness, and that of the family and the State, and
the success of all undertakings, depended on those
spontaneities of nature; certain natural events
must appear at the right time, others be absent at
the right time. How can one have any influence
on these terrible unknown things, how can one
bind the sphere of liberty? Thus he asks himself,
thus he inquires anxiously;—is there, then, no
means of making those powers as regular through
tradition and law as you are yourself? The aim
of those who believe in magic and miracles is to
impose a law on nature,—and, briefly, the religious
cult is a result of this aim. The problem which
those people have set themselves is closely related
to this: how can the weaker race dictate laws to
the stronger, rule it, and guide its actions (in
relation to the weaker)? One would first
remember the most harmless sort of compulsion,
that compulsion which one exercises when one
has gained any one's affection. By imploring and
praying, by submission, by the obligation of regular
taxes and gifts, by flattering glorifications, it is
also possible to exercise an influence upon the
powers of nature, inasmuch as one gains the
affections; love binds and becomes bound. Then
one can make compacts by which one is mutually
bound to a certain behaviour, where one gives
pledges and exchanges vows. But far more
important is a species of more forcible compulsion,
by magic and witchcraft. As with the sorcerer's
help man is able to injure a more powerful enemy
and keep him in fear, as the love-charm works at
## p. 120 (#178) ############################################
120 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
a distance, so the weaker man believes he can
influence the mightier spirits of nature. The
principal thing in all witchcraft is that we must
get into our possession something that belongs to
some one, hair, nails, food from their table, even
their portrait, their name. With such apparatus
we can then practise sorcery; for the fundamental
rule is, to everything spiritual there belongs some-
thing corporeal; with the help of this we are able
to bind the spirit, to injure it, and destroy it; the
corporeal furnishes the handles with which we can
grasp the spiritual. As man controls man, so he
controls some natural spirit or other; for this has
also its corporeal part by which it may be grasped.
The tree and, compared with it, the seed from
which it sprang,—this enigmatical contrast seems
to prove that the same spirit embodied itself in
both forms, now small, now large. A stone that
begins to roll suddenly is the body in which a
spirit operates; if there is an enormous rock
lying on a lonely heath it seems impossible to
conceive human strength sufficient to have brought
it there, consequently the stone must have moved
there by itself, that is, it must be possessed by a
spirit. Everything that has a body is susceptible
to witchcraft, therefore also the natural spirits.
If a god is bound to his image we can
use the most direct compulsion against him
(through refusal of sacrificial food, scourging,
binding in fetters, and so on). In order to
obtain by force the missing favour of their god
the lower classes in China wind cords round the
image of the one who has left them in the lurch,
^
## p. 121 (#179) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 121
pull it down and drag it through the streets in
the dust and the dirt: "You dog of a spirit,"
they say, " we gave you a magnificent temple to
live in, we gilded you prettily, we fed you well,
we offered you sacrifice, and yet you are so
ungrateful. " Similar forcible measures against
pictures of the Saints and Virgin when they
refused to do their duty in pestilence or drought,
have been witnessed even during the present
century in Catholic countries. Through all these
magic relations to nature, countless ceremonies
have been called into life; and at last, when the
confusion has grown too great, an endeavour has
been made to order and systematise them, in
order that the favourable course of the whole
progress of nature, i. e. of the great succession of
the seasons, may seem to be guaranteed by a
corresponding course of a system of procedure.
The essence of the religious cult is to determine
and confine nature to human advantage, to impress
it with a legality, therefore, which it did not
originally possess; while at the present time we
wish to recognise the legality of nature in order
to adapt ourselves to it. In short, then, the
religious cult is based upon the representations
of sorcery between man and man,—and the
sorcerer is older than the priest. But it is like-
wise based upon other and nobler representations;
it premises the sympathetic relation of man to
man, the presence of goodwill, gratitude, the
hearing of pleaders, of treaties between enemies,
the granting of pledges, and the claim to the
protection of property. In very low stages of
## p. 121 (#180) ############################################
120 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
a distance, so the weaker man believes he can
influence the mightier spirits of nature. The
principal thing in all witchcraft is that we must
get into our possession something that belongs to
some one, hair, nails, food from their table, even
their portrait, their name. With such apparatus
we can then practise sorcery; for the fundamental
rule is, to everything spiritual there belongs some-
thing corporeal; with the help of this we are able
to bind the spirit, to injure it, and destroy it; the
corporeal furnishes the handles with which we can
grasp the spiritual. As man controls man, so he
controls some natural spirit or other; for this has
also its corporeal part by which it may be grasped.
The tree and, compared with it, the seed from
which it sprang,—this enigmatical contrast seems
to prove that the same spirit embodied itself in
both forms, now small, now large. A stone that
begins to roll suddenly is the body in which a
spirit operates; if there is an enormous rock
lying on a lonely heath it seems impossible to
conceive human strength sufficient to have brought
it there, consequently the stone must have moved
there by itself, that is, it must be possessed by a
spirit. Everything that has a body is susceptible
to witchcraft, therefore also the natural spirits.
If a god is bound to his image we can
use the most direct compulsion against him
(through refusal of sacrificial food, scourging,
binding in fetters, and so on). In order to
obtain by force the missing favour of their god
the lower classes in China wind cords round the
image of the one who has left them in the lurch,
## p. 121 (#181) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 121
pull it down and drag it through the streets in
the dust and the dirt: "You dog of a spirit,"
they say, "we gave you a magnificent temple to
live in, we gilded you prettily, we fed you well,
we offered you sacrifice, and yet you are so
ungrateful. " Similar forcible measures against
pictures of the Saints and Virgin when they
refused to do their duty in pestilence or drought,
have been witnessed even during the present
century in Catholic countries. Through all these
magic relations to nature, countless ceremonies
have been called into life; and at last, when the
confusion has grown too great, an endeavour has
been made to order and systematise them, in
order that the favourable course of the whole
progress of nature, i. e. of the great succession of
the seasons, may seem to be guaranteed by a
corresponding course of a system of procedure.
The essence of the religious cult is to determine
and confine nature to human advantage, to impress
it with a legality, therefore, which it did not
originally possess; while at the present time we
wish to recognise the legality of nature in order
to adapt ourselves to it. In short, then, the
religious cult is based upon the representations
of sorcery between man and man,—and the
sorcerer is older than the priest. But it is like-
wise based upon other and nobler representations;
it premises the sympathetic relation of man to
man, the presence of goodwill, gratitude, the
hearing of pleaders, of treaties between enemies,
the granting of pledges, and the claim to the
protection of property. In very low stages of
## p. 122 (#182) ############################################
122 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
civilisation man does not stand in the relation of
a helpless slave to nature, he is not necessarily its
involuntary bondsman. In the Greek grade of
religion, particularly in relation to the Olympian
gods, there may even be imagined a common life
between two castes, a nobler and more powerful
one, and one less noble; but in their origin both
belong to each other somehow, and are of one
kind; they need not be ashamed of each other.
That is the nobility of the Greek religion.
112.
At the Sight of certain Antique
Sacrificial Implements. —The fact of how
many feelings are lost to us may be seen, for
instance, in the mingling of the droll, even of the
obscene, with the religious feeling. The sensation
of the possibility of this mixture vanishes, we only
comprehend historically that it existed in the feasts
of Demeter and Dionysus, in the Christian Easter-
plays and Mysteries. But we also know that
which is noble in alliance with burlesque and such
like, the touching mingled with the laughable,
which perhaps a later age will not be able to
understand.
"3-
Christianity as Antiquity. —When on a
Sunday morning we hear the old bells ring out,
we ask ourselves, "Is it possible! This is done
on account of a Jew crucified two thousand years
ago who said he was the Son of God. The proof
ot such an assertion is wanting. " Certainly in our
## p. 123 (#183) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 123
times the Christian religion is an antiquity that
dates from very early ages, and the fact that its
assertions are still believed, when otherwise all
claims are subjected to such strict examination,
is perhaps the oldest part of this heritage. A
God who creates a son from a mortal woman; a
sage who requires that man should no longer
work, no longer judge, but should pay attention to
the signs of the approaching end of the world;
a justice that accepts an innocent being as a
substitute in sacrifice; one who commands his
disciples to drink his blood ; prayers for miraculous
intervention; sins committed against a God and
atoned for through a God; the fear of a future
to which death is the portal; the form of the
cross in an age which no longer knows the
signification and the shame of the cross,* how
terrible all this appears to us, as if risen from the
grave of the ancient past! Is it credible that
such things are still believed?
114.
What is un-Greek in Christianity. —The
Greeks did not regard the Homeric gods as raised
above them like masters, nor themselves as being
under them like servants, as the Jews did. They
only saw, as in a mirror, the most perfect examples
of their own caste; an ideal, therefore, and not an
opposite of their own nature. There is a feeling
* It may be remembered that the cross was the gallows
of the ancient world. —J. M. K.
## p. 124 (#184) ############################################
124 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
of relationship, a mutual interest arises, a kind of
symmachy. Man thinks highly of himself when
he gives himself such gods, and places himself in
a relation like that of the lower nobility towards
the higher; while the Italian nations hold a
genuine peasant-faith, with perpetual fear of evil
and mischievous powers and tormenting spirits.
Wherever the Olympian gods retreated into the
background, Greek life was more sombre and
more anxious. Christianity, on the contrary,
oppressed man and crushed him utterly, sinking
him as if in deep mire; then into the feeling of
absolute depravity it suddenly threw the light of
divine mercy, so that the surprised man, dazzled
by forgiveness, gave a cry of joy and for a moment
believed that he bore all heaven within himself.
All psychological feelings of Christianity work
upon this unhealthy excess of sentiment, and
upon the deep corruption of head and heart it
necessitates; it desires to destroy, break, stupefy,
confuse,—only one thing it does not desire, namely
moderation, and therefore it is in the deepest sense
barbaric, Asiatic, ignoble and un-Greek.
II5.
To be Religious with Advantage. —There
are sober and industrious people on whom religion
is embroidered like a hem of higher humanity;
these do well to remain religious, it beautifies
them. All people who do not understand some
kind of trade in weapons—tongue and pen included
as weapons—become servile; for such the Christian
"
## p. 125 (#185) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 125
religion is very useful, for then servility assumes
the appearance of Christian virtues and is surpris-
ingly beautified. People to whom their daily life
appears too empty and monotonous easily grow
religious; this is comprehensible and excusable,
only they have no right to demand religious
sentiments from those whose daily life is not
empty and monotonous. *
116.
The Commonplace Christian. —If Christi-
anity were right, with its theories of an avenging
God, of general sinfulness, of redemption, and the
danger of eternal damnation, it would be a sign of
weak intellect and lack of character not to become
a priest, apostle or hermit, and to work only with
fear and trembling for one's own salvation; it
would be senseless thus to neglect eternal benefits
for temporary comfort. Taking it for granted
that there is belief, the commonplace Christian is
a miserable figure, a man that really cannot add
two and two together, and who, moreover, just
because of his mental incapacity for responsibility,
did not deserve to be so severely punished as
Christianity has decreed.
117.
Of the Wisdom of Christianity. —It is a
clever stroke on the part of Christianity to teach
* This may give us one of the reasons for the religiosity
still happily prevailing in England and the United States.
—J. M. K.
## p. 125 (#186) ############################################
## p. 125 (#187) ############################################
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so to mix it with stepidity that the weight of the
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123-
CHURCH DISESTABLISHMENT. -There is not
enough religion in the world even to destroy
religions.
## p. 125 (#188) ############################################
I 28 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
I 24.
THE SINLESSNESS OF MAN. —If it is under-
stood how “sin came into the world,” namely
through errors of reason by which men held each
other, even the single individual held himself, to
be much blacker and much worse than was
actually the case, the whole sensation will be
much lightened, and man and the world will
appear in a blaze of innocence which it will do
one good to contemplate. In the midst of nature
man is always the child per se. This child some-
times has a heavy and terrifying dream, but when
it opens its eyes it always finds itself back again
in Paradise.
I 25.
THE IRRELIGIOUSNESS OF ARTISTS. –Homer
is so much at home amongst his gods, and is so
familiar with them as a poet, that he must have
been deeply irreligious; that which the popular
faith gave him—a meagre, rude, partly terrible
superstition—he treated as freely as the sculptor
does his clay, with the same unconcern, therefore,
which AEschylus and Aristophanes possessed, and
by which in later times the great artists of the
Renaissance distinguished themselves, as also did
Shakespeare and Goethe.
I 26.
THE ART AND POWER OF FALSE INTER-
PRETATIONS. —All the visions, terrors, torpors,
## p. 125 (#189) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. I 29
and ecstasies of saints are well-known forms of
disease, which are only, by reason of deep-rooted
religious and psychological errors, differently
explained by him, namely not as diseases. Thus,
perhaps, the Daimonion of Socrates was only an
affection of the ear, which he, in accordance with
his ruling moral mode of thought, expounded
differently from what would be the case now.
It is the same thing with the madness and
ravings of the prophets and soothsayers; it is
always the degree of knowledge, fantasy, effort,
morality in the head and heart of the interpreters
which has made so much of it. For the greatest
achievements of the people who are called geniuses
and saints it is necessary that they should secure
interpreters by force, who misunderstand them for
the good of mankind.
I 27.
THE VENERATION OF INSANITY. -Because
it was remarked that excitement frequently made
the mind clearer and produced happy inspirations,
it was believed that the happiest inspirations and
suggestions were called forth by the greatest
excitement; and so the insane were revered as
wise and oracular. This is based on a false
conclusion.
I 28.
THE PROMISES OF SCIENCE. -The aim of
modern science is: as little pain as possible, as
long a life as possible, a kind of eternal blessed-
vol. I I
## p. 126 (#190) ############################################
126 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN. _
the utter unworthiness, sinfulness, and despicable-
ness of mankind so loudly that the disdain of
their fellow-men is no longer possible. "He may
sin as much as he likes, he is not essentially
different from me,—it is I who am unworthy and
despicable in every way," says the Christian to
himself. But even this feeling has lost its sharpest
sting, because the Christian no longer believes in
his individual despicableness; he is bad as men
are generally, and comforts himself a little with
the axiom, " We are all of one kind. "
118.
Change of Front. —As soon as a religion
triumphs *it has for its enemies all those who
would have been its first disciples.
119.
The Fate of Christianity. —Christianity
arose for the purpose of lightening the heart;
but now it must first make the heart heavy in
order afterwards to lighten it. Consequently it
will perish. l\ , \
The Proof of Pleasure. —The agreeable
opinion is accepted as true,—this is the proof of
the pleasure (or, as the Church says, the proof of
the strength), of which all religions are so proud
when they ought to be ashamed of it. If Faith
did not make blessed it would not be believed
in; of how little value must it be, then!
## p. 127 (#191) ############################################
THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 127
121.
A Dangerous Game. —Whoever now allows
scope to his religious feelings must also let them
increase, he cannot do otherwise. His nature
then gradually changes; it favours whatever is
connected with and near to the religious element,
the whole extent of judgment and feeling becomes
clouded, overcast with religious shadows. Sensa-
tion cannot stand still; one must therefore take
care.
122.
The Blind Disciples. —So long as one
knows well the strength and weakness of one's
doctrine, one's art, one's religion, its power is
still small. The disciple and apostle who has
no eyes for the weaknesses of the doctrine, the
religion, and so forth, dazzled by the aspect of
the master and by his reverence for him, has on
that account usually more power than the master
himself. Without blind disciples the influence of
a man and his work has never yet become great.
To help a doctrine to victory often means only
so to mix it with stupidity that the weight of the
latter carries off also the victory for the former.
123.
Church Disestablishment. —There is not
enough religion in the world even to destroy
religions.
## p. 128 (#192) ############################################
128 HUMAN, ALL-TOO-HUMAN.
124.
The Sinlessness of Man. —If it is under-
stood how "sin came into the world," namely
through errors of reason by which men held each
other, even the single individual held himself, to
be much blacker and much worse than was
actually the case, the whole sensation will be
much lightened, and man and the world will
appear in a blaze of innocence which it will do
one good to contemplate. In the midst of nature
man is always the child per se. This child some-
times has a heavy and terrifying dream, but when
it opens its eyes it always finds itself back again
in Paradise.
125.
The Irreligiousness of Artists. —Homer
is so much at home amongst his gods, and is so
familiar with them as a poet, that he must have
been deeply irreligious; that which the popular
faith gave him—a meagre, rude, partly terrible
superstition—he treated as freely as the sculptor
does his clay, with the same unconcern, therefore,
which ^Eschylus and Aristophanes possessed, and
by which in later times the great artists of the
Renaissance distinguished themselves, as also did
Shakespeare and Goethe.
