An error which becomes honourable, is
simply an error that possesses one seductive charm
the more: do you suppose, dear theologians, that
we shall give you the chance of acting the martyrs
for your lies ?
simply an error that possesses one seductive charm
the more: do you suppose, dear theologians, that
we shall give you the chance of acting the martyrs
for your lies ?
Nietzsche - v16 - Twilight of the Idols
.
But, behold,
* A parody on a line in Schiller's "Jungfrau von Orleans ”
(Act 3, Sc. vi. ): “Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst
vergebens" (With stupidity even the gods themselves.
struggle in vain). -- TR.
## p. 198 (#218) ############################################
198
THE ANTICHRIST
even man begins to be bored. God's compassion for
the only form of misery which is peculiar to all
paradises, exceeds all bounds: so forthwith he
creates yet other animals. God's first mistake: man
did not think animals entertaining,—he dominated
them, he did not even wish to be an “animal. "
Consequently God created woman. And boredom
did indeed cease from that moment,—but many
other things ceased as well! Woman was God's
second mistake. —“Woman in her innermost nature
is a serpent, Heva"-every priest knows this : “all
evil came into this world through woman. ”—every
priest knows this too. Consequently science also
comes from woman. Only through woman did
man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge. —What
had happened? Panic had seized the old God.
Man himself had been his greatest mistake, he had
created a rival for himself, science makes vou equal
to God,—it is all up with priests and gods when man
becomes scientific! —Moral: science is the most pro-
hibited thing of all,—it alone, is forbidden. Science
is the first, the germ of all sins, the original sin.
This alone is morality. —“Thou shalt not know":-
the rest follows as a matter of course. God's panic
did not deprive him of his intelligence. How can
one guard against science? For ages this was his
principal problem. Reply: man must be kicked
out of paradise! Happiness, leisure leads to think-
ing,—all thoughts are bad thoughts. . . . Man must
not think. And the “priest-per-se” proceeds to
invent distress, death, the vital danger of pregnancy,
every kind of misery, decrepitude, and affliction,
and above all disease, –all these are but weapons
)
## p. 199 (#219) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
199
employed in the struggle with science! Trouble
prevents man from thinking. . And notwith-
standing all these precautions ! Oh, horror! the
work of science towers aloft, it storms heaven itself,
it rings the death-knell of the gods,—what's to be
done ? _The old God invents war; he separates the
nations, and contrives to make men destroy each
other mutually (—the priests have always been in
need of war . . . ). War, among other things, is a
great disturber of science ! -- Incredible! Know-
ledge, the rejection of the sacerdotal yoke, nevertheless
increases. So the old God arrives at this final
decision : "Man has become scientific,—there is no
help for it, he must be drowned ! ”. . .
49
You have understood me. The beginning of the
Bible contains the whole psychology of the priest. -
The priest knows only one great danger, and that
is science,—the healthy concept of cause and effect.
But, on the whole,science flourishes only under happy
conditions,-a man must have time, he must also
have superfluous mental energy in order to "pursue
knowledge. " 'Consequently man must be made
unhappy,"—this has been the argument of the priest
of all ages. —You have already
divined what, in ac-
cordance with such a manner of arguing, must first
have come into the world :"sin. " The notion
of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of
the universe," was invented against science,-against
the deliverance of man from
the priest. . . . Man
must not cast his glance upon the outer world, he
must turn it inwards into himself; he must not as
## p. 200 (#220) ############################################
200
THE ANTICHRIST
a
a learner look cleverly and cautiously into things;
he must not see at all: he must suffer. . . . And
he must suffer, so that he may be in need of the
priest-every minute. --Away with doctors! What
is needed is a Saviour ! —The notion of guilt and
punishment, including the doctrine of “grace,” of
“salvation" and of “forgiveness ”—all lies through
and through without a shred of psychological reality
-were invented in order to destroy man's sense of
causality, they are an attack on the concept of cause
and effect ! -And not an attack with the fist, with
the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But one
actuated by the most cowardly, most crafty, and
most ignoble instincts! A priests attack! A para-
site's attack! A vampyrism of pale subterranean
leeches ! -. . . When the natural consequences of an
act are no longer “natural,” but are thought to be
conjured up by phantom concepts of superstition, by
“God," by“spirits,” and by “souls,” as merely moral
consequences, in the form of rewards, punishments,
hints, and educational means,—then the whole basis
of knowledge is destroyed, then the greatest crime
against man has been perpetrated. —Sin, I repeat, this
form of self-pollution par excellence on the part of
man, was invented in order to make science, culture
and every elevation and noble trait in man quite
impossible; by means of the invention of sin the
priest is able to rule.
50
-I cannot here dispense with a psychology of
“faith” and of the “faithful,” which will naturally
be to the advantage of the "faithful. ” If to-day there
## p. 201 (#221) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
201
)
are still many who do not know how very indecent. .
it is to be a “believer"-or to what extent such a
state is the sign of decadence, and of the broken will
to Life,--they will know it no later than to-morrow.
My voice can make even those hear who are hard
of hearing. If perchance my ears have not deceived
me, it seems that among Christians there is such a
thing as a kind of criterion of truth, which is called
"the proof of power. ” “Faith saveth ; therefore it is
true. ” — It might be objected here that it is precisely
salvation which is not proved but only promised :
salvation is bound up with the condition “faith,
one shall be saved, because one has faith. But
how prove that that which the priest promises
to the faithful really will take place, to wit: the
Beyond” which defies all demonstration ? - The
assumed "proof of power” is at bottom once again
only a belief in the fact that the effect which faith
promises will not fail to take place. In a formula :
"I believe that faith saveth ;---'consequently it is true.
But with this we are at the end of our tether. This
“consequently” would be the absurdum itself as a
criterion of truth. —Let us be indulgent enough to
assume, however, that salvation is proved by faith
(-not only desired, and not merely promised by the
somewhat suspicious lips of a priest): could salvation
-or, in technical terminology, happiness-ever be a
proof of truth? So little is it so that, when pleasur-
able sensations make their influence felt in replying
to the question "what is true,” they furnish almost
the contradiction of truth, or at any rate they
make it in the highest degree suspicious. The proof
.
through “happiness," is a proof of happiness—and
## p. 202 (#222) ############################################
202
THE ANTICHRIST
nothing else ; why in the world should we take it
for granted that true judgments cause more pleasure
than false ones, and that in accordance with a pre-
established harmony, they necessarily bring pleasant
feelings in their wake ? — The experience of all strict
and profound minds teaches the reverse. Every inch
of truth has been conquered only after a struggle,
almost everything to which our heart, our love and
our trust in life cleaves, has had to be sacrificed
for it. Greatness of soul is necessary for this : the
service of truth is the hardest of all services. What
then is meant by honesty in things intellectual ?
It means that a man is severe towards his own heart,
that he scorns “ beautiful feelings," and that he
makes a matter of conscience out of every Yea and
Nay! ---Faith saveth : consequently it lies. . . .
51
The fact that faith may in certain circumstances
save, the fact that salvation as the result of an idée
fire does not constitute a true idea, the fact that
faith moves no mountains, but may very readily
raise them where previously they did not exist-
all these things are made sufficiently clear by a
mere casual stroll through a lunatic asylum. Of
course no priest would find this sufficient : for he
instinctively denies that illness is illness or that
lunatic asylums are lunatic asylums. Christianity
is in need of illness, just as Ancient Greece was in
need of a superabundance of health. The actual
ulterior motive of the whole of the Church's system
of salvation is to make people ill. And is not the
Church itself the Catholic madhouse as an ultimate
;
## p. 203 (#223) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
203
ideal ? —The earth as a whole converted into a
madhouse? —The kind of religious man which the
Church aims at producing is a typical decadent. ,
The moment of time at which a religious crisis
attains the ascendancy over a people, is always
characterised by nerve-epidemics; the “inner
world” of the religious man is ridiculously like
the “inner world” of over-irritable and exhausted
people; the “highest” states which Christianity
holds up to mankind as the value of values, are
epileptic in character,—the Church has pronounced
only madmen or great swindlers in majorem dei
honorem holy. Once I ventured to characterise
the whole of the Christian training of penance and
salvation (which nowadays is best studied in Eng-
land) as a folie circulaire methodically generated
upon a soil which, of course, is already prepared
for it,—that is to say, which is thoroughly morbid.
Not every one who likes can be a Christian: no
man is
converted to Christianity,-he must be
sick enough for it. . We others who possess
enough courage both for health and for contempt,
how rightly we may despise a religion which taught
men to misunderstand the body! which would not
rid itself of the superstitions of the soul! which
made a virtue of taking inadequate nourishment !
which in health combats a sort of enemy, devil,
temptation! which persuaded itself that it was
possible to bear a perfect soul about in a cadaverous
body, and which, to this end, had to make up
for
itself a new concept of “perfection," a pale, sickly,
idiotically gushing ideal,-so-called “holiness,”-
holiness, which in itself is simply a symptom of
.
## p. 204 (#224) ############################################
204
THE ANTICHRIST
a
an impoverished, enervated and incurably deterio-
rated body! . . . The movement of Christianity,
as a European movement, was from first to last, a
general accumulation of the ruck and scum of all
sorts and kinds (and these, by means of Christi-
anity, aspire to power). It does not express the
downfall of a race, it is rather a conglomerate
assembly of all the decadent elements from every-
where which seek each other and crowd together.
It was not, as some believe, the corruption of
antiquity, of noble antiquity, which made Christi-
anity possible: the learned idiocy which nowadays
tries to support such a notion cannot be too severely
contradicted. At the time when the morbid and
corrupted Chandala classes became Christianised in
the whole of the imperium, the very contrary type,
nobility, was extant in its finest and maturest
forms. The greatest number became master; the
democracy of Christian instincts triumphed.
Christianity was not “national,” it was not deter-
mined by race,-it appealed to all the disinherited
forms of life, it had its allies everywhere. Christi-
anity is built upon the rancour of the sick : its
instinct is directed against the sound, against
health. Everything well-constituted, proud, high-
spirited, and beautiful is offensive to its ears and
eyes. Again I remind you of St Paul's priceless
words: “And God hath chosen the weak things
of the world, the foolish things of the world; and
base things of the world, and things which are
despised": this was the formula, in hoc signo decad-
ence triumphed. -God on the Cross-does no one
yet understand the terrible ulterior motive of this
.
-
.
## p. 205 (#225) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
205
.
.
symbol ? —Everything that suffers, everything that
hangs on the cross, is divine. All of us hang
on the cross, consequently we are divine. . . . We
alone are divine. . . . Christianity was a victory;
a nobler type of character perished through it,-
Christianity has been humanity's greatest misfor-
tune hitherto. --
52
Christianity also stands opposed to everything
happily constituted in the mind,—it can make use
only of morbid reason as Christian reason; it takes
the side of everything idiotic, it utters a curse upon
"intellect,” upon the superbia of the healthy intellect.
Since illness belongs to the essence of Christianity,
the typically Christian state, “faith,” must also be
a form of illness, and all straight, honest and scien-
tific roads to knowledge must be repudiated by the
Church as forbidden. Doubt in itself is already
a sin. . . . The total lack of psychological cleanli-
ness in the priest, which reveals itself in his look, is
a result of decadence. Hysterical women, as also
children with scrofulous constitutions, should be
observed as a proof of how invariably instinctive
falsity, the love of lying for the sake of lying, and
the inability either to look or to walk straight, are the
expression of decadence. “Faith" simply means the
refusal to know what is true. The pious person, the
priest of both sexes, is false because he is ill :
his instinct demands that truth should not assert its
right anywhere. “That which makes ill is good :
that which proceeds from abundance, from super-
abundance and from power, is evil”: that is the
view of the faithful. The constraint to lie—that is
## p. 206 (#226) ############################################
206
THE ANTICHRIST
»
the sign by which I recognise every predetermined
theologian. —Another characteristic of the theo-
logian is his lack of capacity for philology. What
I mean here by the word philology is, in a general
sense to be understood as the art of reading well, of
being able to take account of facts without falsify-
ing them by interpretation, without losing either
caution, patience or subtlety owing to one's desire
to understand. Philology as ephexis * in interpre-
tation, whether one be dealing with books, news-
paper reports, human destinies or meteorological
records,—not to speak of the “salvation of the
soul. " The manner in which a theologian,
whether in Berlin or in Rome, interprets a verse
from the "Scriptures,” or an experience, or the
triumph of his nation's army for instance, under the
superior guiding light of David's Psalms, is always
so exceedingly daring, that it is enough to make a
philologist's hair stand on end. And what is he to
do, when pietists and other cows from Swabia
explain their miserable every-day lives in their
smoky hovels by means of the “Finger of God,” a
miracle of “grace,” of “Providence,” of experiences
of “salvation”! The most modest effort or the
intellect, not to speak of decent feeling, ought at
least to lead these interpreters to convince them-
selves of the absolute childishness and unworthiness
of any such abuse of the dexterity of God's fingers.
However small an amount of loving piety we might
(6
* édecis = Lat. Retentio, Inhibitio (Stephanus, Thesaurus
Græcæ Linguæ); therefore : reserve, caution. The Greek
Sceptics were also called Ephectics owing to their caution in
judging and in concluding from facts. —TR.
## p. 207 (#227) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
207
a
possess, a god who cured us in time of a cold in the
nose, or who arranged for us to enter a carriage
just at the moment when a cloud burst over our
heads, would be such an absurd God, that he would
have to be abolished, even if he existed. * God as a
domestic servant, as a postman, as a general provider,
-in short, merely a word for the most foolish kind of
accidents. “ Divine Providence,” as it is believed
in to-day by almost every third man in “cultured
Germany," would be an argument against God, in
fact it would be the strongest argument against God
that could be imagined. And in any case it is an
argument against the Germans.
53
- The notion that martyrs prove anything at all
in favour of a thing, is so exceedingly doubtful, that
I would fain deny that there has ever yet existed a
martyr who had anything to do with truth. In the
very manner in which a martyr flings his little parcel
of truth at the head of the world, such a low degree
of intellectual honesty and such obtuseness in regard
to the question “truth” makes itself felt, that one
never requires to refute a martyr. Truth is not a
thing which one might have and another be without:
* The following passage from Multatuli will throw light on
this passage :
“Father :- Behold, my son, how wisely Providence has
arranged everything! This bird lays its eggs in its nest and
the young will be hatched just about the time when there
will be worms and flies with which to feed them. Then they
will sing a song of praise in honour of the Creator who over-
whelms his creatures with blessings. '-
“Son :-'Will the worms join in the song, Dad ? '”, -Tæ,
## p. 208 (#228) ############################################
208
THE ANTICHRIST
only peasants or peasant-apostles, after the style of
Luther, can think like this about truth. You may
be quite sure, that the greater a man's degree of
conscientiousness may be in matters intellectual, ,
the more modest he will show himself on this point.
To know about five things, and with a subtle wave
of the hand to refuse to know others. “Truth'
as it is understood by every prophet, every sectarian,
every free thinker, every socialist and every church-
man, is an absolute proof of the fact that these people
haven't even begun that discipline of the mind and
that process of self-mastery, which is necessary for
the discovery of any small, even exceedingly small
truth. —Incidentally, the deaths of martyrs have been
a great misfortune in the history of the world: they
led people astray. The conclusion which all
idiots, women and common people come to, that
there must be something in a cause for which some-
one lays down his life (or which, as in the case of
primitive Christianity, provokes an epidemic of sacri-
fices),—this conclusion put a tremendous check upon
all investigation, upon the spirit of investigation and
of caution. Martyrs have harmed the cause of truth.
Even to this day it only requires the crude fact
of persecution, in order to create an honourable
name for any obscure sect who does not matter in
the least. What? is a cause actually changed in
any way by the fact that some one has laid down his
life for it?
An error which becomes honourable, is
simply an error that possesses one seductive charm
the more: do you suppose, dear theologians, that
we shall give you the chance of acting the martyrs
for your lies ? -A thing is refuted by being laid
## p. 209 (#229) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
209
a
respectfully on ice, and theologians are refuted in
the same way. This was precisely the world-historic
foolishness of all persecutors; they lent the thing
they combated a semblance of honour by conferring
the fascination of martyrdom upon it. . . . Women
still lie prostrate before an error to-day, because
they have been told that some one died on the cross
for it. - Is the cross then an argument ? —But con-
cerning all these things, one person alone has said
what mankind has been in need of for thousands of
years,—Zarathustra.
“Letters of blood did they write on the way they
went, and their folly taught that truth is proved by
blood.
“But blood is the very worst testimony of truth;
blood poisoneth even the purest teaching, and
turneth it into delusion and into blood feuds.
“And when a man goeth through fire for his
teaching—what does that prove? Verily, it is more
when out of one's own burning springeth one's own
teaching. "
54
Do not allow yourselves to be deceivęd:
great
minds are "sceptical. " Zarathustra is a sceptic.
Strength and the freedom which proceeds from the
-power and excessive power of the mind, manifests
itself through scepticism. Men of conviction are
of no account whatever in regard to any principles
of value or of non-value. . Convictions are prisons.
They never see far enough, they do not look down
from a sufficient height: but in order to have any
*
*"Thus Spake Zarathustra. " The Priests. --TR.
»
14
## p. 210 (#230) ############################################
210
THE ANTICHRIST
say in questions of value and non-value, a man must
see five hundred convictions beneath him,-behind
him. . . A spirit who desires great things, and
who also desires the means thereto, is necessarily
a sceptic. Freedom from every kind of conviction
belongs to strength, to the ability to open one's eyes
freely. . . . The great passion of a sceptic, the basis
and
power of his being, which is more enlightened
and more despotic than he is himself, enlists all his
intellect into its service; it makes him unscrupulous;
it even gives him the courage to employ unholy
means; in certain circumstances it even allows
him convictions. Conviction as a means : much is
achieved merely by means of a conviction. Great
passion makes use of and consumes convictions, it
does not submit to them it knows that it is a
sovereign power. Conversely; the need of faith, of
anything either absolutely affirmative or negative,
Carlylism (if I may be allowed this expression), is
the need of weakness. The man of beliefs, the “be-
liever" of every sort and condition, is necessarily a
dependent man ;—he is one who cannot regard him-
self as an aim, who cannot postulate aims from the
promptings of his own heart. The “ believer" does
not belong to himself, he can be only a means, he
must be used up, he is in need of someone who uses
him up. His instinct accords the highest honour to
a morality of self-abnegation : everything in him,
his prudence, his experience, his vanity, persuade
him to adopt this morality. Every sort of belief is
in itself an expression of self-denial, of self-estrange-
ment. . . . Ifone considers how necessary a regulat-
ing code of conduct is to the majority of people, a
.
## p. 211 (#231) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
211
code of conduct which constrains them and fixes
them from outside ; and how control, or in a higher
sense, slavery, is the only and ultimate condition
under which the weak-willed man, and especially
woman, flourish; one also understands conviction,
faith. ” The man of conviction finds in the latter
his backbone. To be blind to many things, to be
impartial about nothing, to belong always to a par-
ticular side, to hold a strict and necessary point of
view in all matters of values—these are the only <
conditions under which such a man can survive at
all. But all this is the reverse of, the antagonist
of, the truthful man,-of truth. . . . The believer is
not at liberty to have a conscience for the question
“true" and “untrue": to be upright on this point
would mean his immediate downfall. The patho-
logical limitations of his standpoint convert the con-
vinced man into the fanatic—Savonarola, Luther
Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon,—these are the
reverse type of the strong spirit that has become free.
But the grandiose poses of these morbid spirits, of
these epileptics of ideas, exercise an influence over
the masses,-fanatics are picturesque, man
mankind pre-
fers to look at poses than to listen to reason.
55
One step further in the psychology of conviction
of “faith. ” It is already some time since I first
thought of considering whether convictions were not
perhaps more dangerous enemies of truth than lies
(“Human All-too-Human,” Part I, Aphs. 54 and
483). Now I would fain put the decisive question :
## p. 212 (#232) ############################################
212
THE ANTICHRIST
is there any difference at all between a lie and a
conviction ? -All the world believes that there is,
but what in Heaven's name does not all the world
believe! Every conviction has its history, its pre-
liminary stages, its period of groping and of mis-
takes : it becomes a conviction only after it has not
been one for a long time, only after it has scarcely
been one for a long time. What? might not false-
hood be the embryonic form of conviction ? -At
times all that is required is a change of personality :
very often what was a lie in the father becomes a
conviction in the son. —I call a lie, to refuse to
see something that one sees, to refuse to see it
exactly as one sees it: whether a lie is perpetrated
before witnesses or not is beside the point. —The
most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's
self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional. Now
this refusal to see what one sees, this refusal to see
a thing exactly as one sees it, is almost the first
condition for all those who belong to a party in
any sense whatsoever : the man who belongs to a
party perforce becomes a liar. German historians,
for instance, are convinced that Rome stood for
despotism, whereas the Teutons introduced the
spirit of freedom into the world : what difference
is there between this conviction and a lie? After
a
this is it to be wondered at, that all parties,
including German historians, instinctively adopt
the grandiloquent phraseology of morality,—that
morality almost owes its survival to the fact that
the man who belongs to a party, no matter what it
may be, is in need of morality every moment ? -
“This is our conviction : we confess it to the whole
## p. 213 (#233) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
213
-
.
.
world, we live and die for it, let us respect every-
thing that has a conviction ! ”—I have actually
heard antisemites speak in this way. On the
contrary, my dear sirs! An antisemite does not
become the least bit more respectable because he
lies on principle. . . . Priests, who in such matters
are more subtle, and who perfectly understand the
objection to which the idea of a conviction lies
open—that is to say of a falsehood which is per-
petrated on principle because it serves a purpose,
borrowed from the Jews the prudent measure of
setting the concept “God,” “Will of God,” “Revela-
tion of God," at this place. Kant, too, with his
categorical imperative, was on the same road : this
was his practical reason. —There are some questions
in which it is not given to man to decide between
true and false; all the principal questions, all the
principal problems of value, stand beyond human
reason. . . . To comprehend the limits of reason-
this alone is genuine philosophy. For what purpose
did God give man revelation ? Would God have
done anything superfluous ? Man cannot of his
own accord know what is good and what is evil,
that is why God taught man his will. . . . Moral :
the priest does not lie, such questions as “truth” or
"falseness” have nothing to do with the things
concerning which the priest speaks; such things
do not allow of lying. For, in order to lie, it
would be necessary to know what is true in this
respect. But that is precisely what man cannot
know : hence the priest is only the mouthpiece of
God. —This sort of sacerdotal syllogism is by no
means exclusively Judaic or Christian ; the right
## p. 214 (#234) ############################################
214
THE ANTICHRIST
1
>
to lie and the prudent measure of “revelation"
belongs to the priestly type, whether of decadent
periods or of Pagan times (Pagans are all those
who say yea to life, and to whom “God” is
the word for the great yea to all things). The
“law," the “will of God," the “holy book," and
inspiration. All these things are merely words for
the conditions under which the priest attains to
power, and with which he maintains his power,-
these concepts are to be found at the base of all
sacerdotal organisations, of all priestly or philo-
sophical and ecclesiastical governments. The “holy
lie," which is common to Confucius, to the law-
book of Manu, to Muhamed, and to the Christian
church, is not even absent in Plato. “Truth is
here"; this phrase means, wherever it is uttered :
the priest lies. . .
56
After all, the question is, to what end are false-
hoods perpetrated? The fact that, in Christianity,
"holy” ends are entirely absent, constitutes my
objection to the means it employs. Its ends are only
bad ends: the poisoning, the calumniation and the
denial of life, the contempt of the body, the degra-
dation and self-pollution of man by virtue of the
concept sin,-consequently its means are bad as
well. —My feelings are quite the reverse when I read
the law-book of Manu, an incomparably superior and
more intellectualwork,which it would be a sin against
the spirit even to mention in the same breath with
the Bible. You will guess immediately why: it has
a genuine philosophy behind it, in it, not merely an
evil-smelling Jewish distillation of Rabbinism and
)
a
## p. 215 (#235) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
215
superstition,-it gives something to chew even to the
most fastidious psychologist. And, not to forget
the most important point of all, it is fundamentally
different from every kind of Bible: by means of it
the noble classes, the philosophers and the warriors
guard and guide the masses; it is replete with noble
values, it is filled with a feeling of perfection, with a
saying of yea to life, and a triumphant sense of well-
being in regard to itself and to life,—the sun shines
upon the whole book. — All those things which
Christianity smothers with its bottomless vulgarity:
procreation, woman, marriage, are here treated with
earnestness, with reverence, with love and confidence.
How can one possibly place in the hands of children
and women, a book that contains those vile words:
“to avoid fornication, let every man have his own
wife, and let every woman have her own husband
. . . it is better to marry than to burn. ”* And is
it decent to be a Christian so long as the very origint
of man is Christianised,—that is to say, befouled, by
the idea of the immaculata conceptio ? . . . I know of
no book in which so many delicate and kindly things
are said to woman, as in the Law-Book of Manu;
these old grey-beards and saints have a manner of
being gallant to women which, perhaps, cannot be
surpassed. “The mouth of a woman,” says Manu
on one occasion, “the breast of a maiden, the
prayer
of a child, and the smoke of the sacrifice, are always
pure. " Elsewhere he says: “there is nothing purer
than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow,
air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden. " And
finally-perhaps this is also a holy lie :-“all the
1 Corinthians vịi. 2, 9. -TR,
O
## p. 216 (#236) ############################################
216
THE ANTICHRIST
openings of the body above the navel are pure, all
those below the navel are impure. Only in a maiden is
the whole body pure. ”
57
The unholiness of Christian means is caught in
flagranti, if only the end aspired to by Christianity
be compared with that of the Law-Book of Manu;
if only these two utterly opposed aims be put under
a strong light. The critic of Christianity simply can-
not avoid making Christianity contemptible. —A Law-
Book like that of Manu comes into being like every
good law-book : it epitomises the experience, the
precautionary measures, and the experimental mor-
ality of long ages, it settles things definitely, it no
longer creates. The prerequisite for a codification
of this kind, is the recognition of the fact that the
means which procure authority for a truth to which
it has cost both time and great pains to attain, are
fundamentally different from those with which that
same truth would be proved. A law-book never
relates the utility, the reasons, the preliminary casu-
istry, of a law: for it would be precisely in this way
that it would forfeit its imperative tone, the “thou
shalt,” the first condition of its being obeyed. The
problem lies exactly in this. —At a certain stage in
the development of a people, the most far-seeing
class within it (that is to say, the class that sees
farthest backwards and forwards), declares the ex-
perience of how its fellow-creatures ought to live-
i. e. , can live—to be finally settled. Its object is, to
reap as rich and as complete a harvest as possible,
in return for the ages of experiment and terrible ex-
perience it has traversed. Consequently, that which
## p. 217 (#237) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
217
.
has to be avoided, above all, is any further experi-
mentation, the continuation of the state when values
are still fluid, the testing, choosing, and criticising
of values in infinitum. Against all this a double
wall is built up: in the first place, Revelation, which
is the assumption that the rationale of every law is
not human in its origin, that it was not sought and
found after ages of error, but that it is divine in its
origin, completely and utterly without a history, a
gift, a miracle, a mere communication. . . . And
secondly, tradition, which is the assumption that the
law has obtained since the most primeval times, that
it is impious and a crime against one's ancestors to
attempt to doubt it. The authority of law is estab-
lished on the principles: God gave it, the ancestors
lived it. —The superior reason of such a procedure
lies in the intention to draw consciousness off step
by step from that mode of life which has been re-
cognised as correct (i. e. , proved after enormous and
carefully examined experience), so that perfect auto-
matism of the instincts may be attained,—this being
the only possible basis of all mastery of every kind
of perfection in the Art of Life. To draw up a law-
book like Manu's, is tantamount to granting a people
mastership for the future, perfection for the future,
the right to aspire to the highest Art of Life. To
that end it must be made unconscious: this is the
object of every holy lie. —The order of castes, the
highest, the dominating law, is only the sanction
of a natural order, of a natural legislation of the
first rank, over which no arbitrary innovation, no
“modern idea" has any power. Every healthy
society falls into three distinct types, which recipro-
## p. 218 (#238) ############################################
218
THE ANTICHRIST
cally condition one another and which gravitate
differently in the physiological sense; and each of
these has its own hygiene, its own sphere of work,
its own special feeling of perfection, and its own
mastership. It. is Nature, not Manu, that separates
from the rest, those individuals preponderating in
intellectual power, those excelling in muscular
strength and temperament, and the third class which
is distinguished neither in one way nor the other,
the mediocre,—the latter as the greatest number,
the former as the élite. The superior caste—I call
them the fewest,—has, as the perfect caste, the privi-
leges of the fewest : it devolves upon them to repre-
sent happiness, beauty and goodness on earth. Only
the most intellectual men have the right to beauty,
to the beautiful : only in them is goodness not weak-
Pulchrum est paucorum hominum : goodness
is a privilege. On the other hand there is nothing
which they should be more strictly forbidden than
repulsive manners or a pessimistic look, a look that
makes everything seem ugly,—or even indignation
at the general aspect of things. Indignation is
the privilege of the Chandala, and so is pessimism.
“ The world is perfect”—that is what the instinct of
the most intellectual says, the yea-saying instinct;
"imperfection, every kind of inferiority to us, dis-
tance, the pathos of distance, even the Chandala
belongs to this perfection. “ The most intellectual
men, as the strongest find their happiness where
others meet with their ruin: in the labyrinth, in
hardness towards themselves and others, in en-
deavour; their delight is self-mastery: with them
asceticism becomes a second nature, a need, an in-
ness.
## p. 219 (#239) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
219
stinct. They regard a difficult task as their privi-
lege; to play with burdens which crush their fellows
is to them a recreation. . . . Knowledge, a form of
asceticism. —They are the most honourable kind of
men: but that does not prevent them from being
the most cheerful and most gracious. They rule,
not because they will, but because they are; they
are not at liberty to take a second place. —The
second in rank are the guardians of the law, the
custodians of order and of security, the noble war-
riors, the king, above all, as the highest formula of
the warrior, the judge, and keeper of the law. The
second in rank are the executive of the most in-
tellectual, the nearest to them in duty, relieving them
of all that is coarse in the work of ruling,—their
retinue, their right hand, their best disciples. In
all this, I repeat, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing
artificial,” that which is otherwise is artificial,—by
that which is otherwise, nature is put to shame.
The order of castes, and the order of rank merely
formulates the supreme law of life itself; the differ-
entiation of the three types is necessary for the
maintenance of society, and for enabling higher and
highest types to be reared,—the inequality of rights
is the only condition of there being rights at all. —A
right is a privilege. And in his way, each has his
privilege. Let us not underestimate the privileges
of the mediocre. Life always gets harder towards the
summit,—the cold increases, responsibility increases.
A high civilisation is a pyramid: it can stand only
upon a broad base, its first prerequisite is a strongly
and soundly consolidated mediocrity. Handicraft,
commerce, agriculture, science, the greater part of
-
## p. 220 (#240) ############################################
220
THE ANTICHRIST
art,—in a word, the whole range of professional and
business callings, is compatible only with mediocre
ability and ambition ; such pursuits would be out
of place among exceptions, the instinct pertaining
thereto would oppose not only aristocracy but an-
archy as well. The fact that one is publicly useful,
a wheel, a function, presupposes a certain natural
destiny: it is not society, but the only kind of happiness
of which the great majority are capable, that makes
them intelligent machines. For the mediocre it is a
joy to be mediocre; in them mastery in one thing,
a speciality, is a natural instinct. It would be abso-
lutely unworthy of a profound thinker to see any
objection in mediocrity per se. For in itself it is the
first essential condition under which exceptions are
possible ; a high culture is determined by it. When
the exceptional man treats the mediocre with more
tender care than he does himself or his equals, this
is not mere courtesy of heart on his part—but
simply his duty. Whom do I hate most among
the rabble of the present day? The socialistic
rabble, the Chandala apostles, who undermine the
working man's instinct, his happiness and his feeling
of contentedness with his insignificant existence,-
who make him envious, and who teach him revenge.
The wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies
in the claim to equal rights. What is bad? But I
have already replied to this: Everything that pro-
ceeds from weakness, envy and revenge. —The anar-
chist and the Christian are offspring of the same
womb.
58
In point of fact, it matters greatly to what end
## p. 221 (#241) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY.
221
one lies : whether one preserves or destroys by means
of falsehood. It is quite justifiable to bracket the
Christian and the Anarchist together : their object,
their instinct, is concerned only with destruction.
The proof of this proposition can be read quite
plainly from history : history spells it with appal-
ling distinctness. Whereas we have just seen a
religious legislation, whose object was to render the
highest possible means of making life flourish,
and of making a grand organisation of society,
eternal,—Christianity found its mission in putting
an end to such an organisation, precisely because
life flourishes through it. In the one case, the net
profit to the credit of reason, acquired through long
ages of experiment and of insecurity, is applied use-
fully to the most remote ends, and the harvest,
which is as large, as rich and as complete as pos-
sible, is reaped and garnered: in the other case, on
the contrary, the harvest is blighted in a single night.
* A parody on a line in Schiller's "Jungfrau von Orleans ”
(Act 3, Sc. vi. ): “Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst
vergebens" (With stupidity even the gods themselves.
struggle in vain). -- TR.
## p. 198 (#218) ############################################
198
THE ANTICHRIST
even man begins to be bored. God's compassion for
the only form of misery which is peculiar to all
paradises, exceeds all bounds: so forthwith he
creates yet other animals. God's first mistake: man
did not think animals entertaining,—he dominated
them, he did not even wish to be an “animal. "
Consequently God created woman. And boredom
did indeed cease from that moment,—but many
other things ceased as well! Woman was God's
second mistake. —“Woman in her innermost nature
is a serpent, Heva"-every priest knows this : “all
evil came into this world through woman. ”—every
priest knows this too. Consequently science also
comes from woman. Only through woman did
man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge. —What
had happened? Panic had seized the old God.
Man himself had been his greatest mistake, he had
created a rival for himself, science makes vou equal
to God,—it is all up with priests and gods when man
becomes scientific! —Moral: science is the most pro-
hibited thing of all,—it alone, is forbidden. Science
is the first, the germ of all sins, the original sin.
This alone is morality. —“Thou shalt not know":-
the rest follows as a matter of course. God's panic
did not deprive him of his intelligence. How can
one guard against science? For ages this was his
principal problem. Reply: man must be kicked
out of paradise! Happiness, leisure leads to think-
ing,—all thoughts are bad thoughts. . . . Man must
not think. And the “priest-per-se” proceeds to
invent distress, death, the vital danger of pregnancy,
every kind of misery, decrepitude, and affliction,
and above all disease, –all these are but weapons
)
## p. 199 (#219) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
199
employed in the struggle with science! Trouble
prevents man from thinking. . And notwith-
standing all these precautions ! Oh, horror! the
work of science towers aloft, it storms heaven itself,
it rings the death-knell of the gods,—what's to be
done ? _The old God invents war; he separates the
nations, and contrives to make men destroy each
other mutually (—the priests have always been in
need of war . . . ). War, among other things, is a
great disturber of science ! -- Incredible! Know-
ledge, the rejection of the sacerdotal yoke, nevertheless
increases. So the old God arrives at this final
decision : "Man has become scientific,—there is no
help for it, he must be drowned ! ”. . .
49
You have understood me. The beginning of the
Bible contains the whole psychology of the priest. -
The priest knows only one great danger, and that
is science,—the healthy concept of cause and effect.
But, on the whole,science flourishes only under happy
conditions,-a man must have time, he must also
have superfluous mental energy in order to "pursue
knowledge. " 'Consequently man must be made
unhappy,"—this has been the argument of the priest
of all ages. —You have already
divined what, in ac-
cordance with such a manner of arguing, must first
have come into the world :"sin. " The notion
of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of
the universe," was invented against science,-against
the deliverance of man from
the priest. . . . Man
must not cast his glance upon the outer world, he
must turn it inwards into himself; he must not as
## p. 200 (#220) ############################################
200
THE ANTICHRIST
a
a learner look cleverly and cautiously into things;
he must not see at all: he must suffer. . . . And
he must suffer, so that he may be in need of the
priest-every minute. --Away with doctors! What
is needed is a Saviour ! —The notion of guilt and
punishment, including the doctrine of “grace,” of
“salvation" and of “forgiveness ”—all lies through
and through without a shred of psychological reality
-were invented in order to destroy man's sense of
causality, they are an attack on the concept of cause
and effect ! -And not an attack with the fist, with
the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But one
actuated by the most cowardly, most crafty, and
most ignoble instincts! A priests attack! A para-
site's attack! A vampyrism of pale subterranean
leeches ! -. . . When the natural consequences of an
act are no longer “natural,” but are thought to be
conjured up by phantom concepts of superstition, by
“God," by“spirits,” and by “souls,” as merely moral
consequences, in the form of rewards, punishments,
hints, and educational means,—then the whole basis
of knowledge is destroyed, then the greatest crime
against man has been perpetrated. —Sin, I repeat, this
form of self-pollution par excellence on the part of
man, was invented in order to make science, culture
and every elevation and noble trait in man quite
impossible; by means of the invention of sin the
priest is able to rule.
50
-I cannot here dispense with a psychology of
“faith” and of the “faithful,” which will naturally
be to the advantage of the "faithful. ” If to-day there
## p. 201 (#221) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
201
)
are still many who do not know how very indecent. .
it is to be a “believer"-or to what extent such a
state is the sign of decadence, and of the broken will
to Life,--they will know it no later than to-morrow.
My voice can make even those hear who are hard
of hearing. If perchance my ears have not deceived
me, it seems that among Christians there is such a
thing as a kind of criterion of truth, which is called
"the proof of power. ” “Faith saveth ; therefore it is
true. ” — It might be objected here that it is precisely
salvation which is not proved but only promised :
salvation is bound up with the condition “faith,
one shall be saved, because one has faith. But
how prove that that which the priest promises
to the faithful really will take place, to wit: the
Beyond” which defies all demonstration ? - The
assumed "proof of power” is at bottom once again
only a belief in the fact that the effect which faith
promises will not fail to take place. In a formula :
"I believe that faith saveth ;---'consequently it is true.
But with this we are at the end of our tether. This
“consequently” would be the absurdum itself as a
criterion of truth. —Let us be indulgent enough to
assume, however, that salvation is proved by faith
(-not only desired, and not merely promised by the
somewhat suspicious lips of a priest): could salvation
-or, in technical terminology, happiness-ever be a
proof of truth? So little is it so that, when pleasur-
able sensations make their influence felt in replying
to the question "what is true,” they furnish almost
the contradiction of truth, or at any rate they
make it in the highest degree suspicious. The proof
.
through “happiness," is a proof of happiness—and
## p. 202 (#222) ############################################
202
THE ANTICHRIST
nothing else ; why in the world should we take it
for granted that true judgments cause more pleasure
than false ones, and that in accordance with a pre-
established harmony, they necessarily bring pleasant
feelings in their wake ? — The experience of all strict
and profound minds teaches the reverse. Every inch
of truth has been conquered only after a struggle,
almost everything to which our heart, our love and
our trust in life cleaves, has had to be sacrificed
for it. Greatness of soul is necessary for this : the
service of truth is the hardest of all services. What
then is meant by honesty in things intellectual ?
It means that a man is severe towards his own heart,
that he scorns “ beautiful feelings," and that he
makes a matter of conscience out of every Yea and
Nay! ---Faith saveth : consequently it lies. . . .
51
The fact that faith may in certain circumstances
save, the fact that salvation as the result of an idée
fire does not constitute a true idea, the fact that
faith moves no mountains, but may very readily
raise them where previously they did not exist-
all these things are made sufficiently clear by a
mere casual stroll through a lunatic asylum. Of
course no priest would find this sufficient : for he
instinctively denies that illness is illness or that
lunatic asylums are lunatic asylums. Christianity
is in need of illness, just as Ancient Greece was in
need of a superabundance of health. The actual
ulterior motive of the whole of the Church's system
of salvation is to make people ill. And is not the
Church itself the Catholic madhouse as an ultimate
;
## p. 203 (#223) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
203
ideal ? —The earth as a whole converted into a
madhouse? —The kind of religious man which the
Church aims at producing is a typical decadent. ,
The moment of time at which a religious crisis
attains the ascendancy over a people, is always
characterised by nerve-epidemics; the “inner
world” of the religious man is ridiculously like
the “inner world” of over-irritable and exhausted
people; the “highest” states which Christianity
holds up to mankind as the value of values, are
epileptic in character,—the Church has pronounced
only madmen or great swindlers in majorem dei
honorem holy. Once I ventured to characterise
the whole of the Christian training of penance and
salvation (which nowadays is best studied in Eng-
land) as a folie circulaire methodically generated
upon a soil which, of course, is already prepared
for it,—that is to say, which is thoroughly morbid.
Not every one who likes can be a Christian: no
man is
converted to Christianity,-he must be
sick enough for it. . We others who possess
enough courage both for health and for contempt,
how rightly we may despise a religion which taught
men to misunderstand the body! which would not
rid itself of the superstitions of the soul! which
made a virtue of taking inadequate nourishment !
which in health combats a sort of enemy, devil,
temptation! which persuaded itself that it was
possible to bear a perfect soul about in a cadaverous
body, and which, to this end, had to make up
for
itself a new concept of “perfection," a pale, sickly,
idiotically gushing ideal,-so-called “holiness,”-
holiness, which in itself is simply a symptom of
.
## p. 204 (#224) ############################################
204
THE ANTICHRIST
a
an impoverished, enervated and incurably deterio-
rated body! . . . The movement of Christianity,
as a European movement, was from first to last, a
general accumulation of the ruck and scum of all
sorts and kinds (and these, by means of Christi-
anity, aspire to power). It does not express the
downfall of a race, it is rather a conglomerate
assembly of all the decadent elements from every-
where which seek each other and crowd together.
It was not, as some believe, the corruption of
antiquity, of noble antiquity, which made Christi-
anity possible: the learned idiocy which nowadays
tries to support such a notion cannot be too severely
contradicted. At the time when the morbid and
corrupted Chandala classes became Christianised in
the whole of the imperium, the very contrary type,
nobility, was extant in its finest and maturest
forms. The greatest number became master; the
democracy of Christian instincts triumphed.
Christianity was not “national,” it was not deter-
mined by race,-it appealed to all the disinherited
forms of life, it had its allies everywhere. Christi-
anity is built upon the rancour of the sick : its
instinct is directed against the sound, against
health. Everything well-constituted, proud, high-
spirited, and beautiful is offensive to its ears and
eyes. Again I remind you of St Paul's priceless
words: “And God hath chosen the weak things
of the world, the foolish things of the world; and
base things of the world, and things which are
despised": this was the formula, in hoc signo decad-
ence triumphed. -God on the Cross-does no one
yet understand the terrible ulterior motive of this
.
-
.
## p. 205 (#225) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
205
.
.
symbol ? —Everything that suffers, everything that
hangs on the cross, is divine. All of us hang
on the cross, consequently we are divine. . . . We
alone are divine. . . . Christianity was a victory;
a nobler type of character perished through it,-
Christianity has been humanity's greatest misfor-
tune hitherto. --
52
Christianity also stands opposed to everything
happily constituted in the mind,—it can make use
only of morbid reason as Christian reason; it takes
the side of everything idiotic, it utters a curse upon
"intellect,” upon the superbia of the healthy intellect.
Since illness belongs to the essence of Christianity,
the typically Christian state, “faith,” must also be
a form of illness, and all straight, honest and scien-
tific roads to knowledge must be repudiated by the
Church as forbidden. Doubt in itself is already
a sin. . . . The total lack of psychological cleanli-
ness in the priest, which reveals itself in his look, is
a result of decadence. Hysterical women, as also
children with scrofulous constitutions, should be
observed as a proof of how invariably instinctive
falsity, the love of lying for the sake of lying, and
the inability either to look or to walk straight, are the
expression of decadence. “Faith" simply means the
refusal to know what is true. The pious person, the
priest of both sexes, is false because he is ill :
his instinct demands that truth should not assert its
right anywhere. “That which makes ill is good :
that which proceeds from abundance, from super-
abundance and from power, is evil”: that is the
view of the faithful. The constraint to lie—that is
## p. 206 (#226) ############################################
206
THE ANTICHRIST
»
the sign by which I recognise every predetermined
theologian. —Another characteristic of the theo-
logian is his lack of capacity for philology. What
I mean here by the word philology is, in a general
sense to be understood as the art of reading well, of
being able to take account of facts without falsify-
ing them by interpretation, without losing either
caution, patience or subtlety owing to one's desire
to understand. Philology as ephexis * in interpre-
tation, whether one be dealing with books, news-
paper reports, human destinies or meteorological
records,—not to speak of the “salvation of the
soul. " The manner in which a theologian,
whether in Berlin or in Rome, interprets a verse
from the "Scriptures,” or an experience, or the
triumph of his nation's army for instance, under the
superior guiding light of David's Psalms, is always
so exceedingly daring, that it is enough to make a
philologist's hair stand on end. And what is he to
do, when pietists and other cows from Swabia
explain their miserable every-day lives in their
smoky hovels by means of the “Finger of God,” a
miracle of “grace,” of “Providence,” of experiences
of “salvation”! The most modest effort or the
intellect, not to speak of decent feeling, ought at
least to lead these interpreters to convince them-
selves of the absolute childishness and unworthiness
of any such abuse of the dexterity of God's fingers.
However small an amount of loving piety we might
(6
* édecis = Lat. Retentio, Inhibitio (Stephanus, Thesaurus
Græcæ Linguæ); therefore : reserve, caution. The Greek
Sceptics were also called Ephectics owing to their caution in
judging and in concluding from facts. —TR.
## p. 207 (#227) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
207
a
possess, a god who cured us in time of a cold in the
nose, or who arranged for us to enter a carriage
just at the moment when a cloud burst over our
heads, would be such an absurd God, that he would
have to be abolished, even if he existed. * God as a
domestic servant, as a postman, as a general provider,
-in short, merely a word for the most foolish kind of
accidents. “ Divine Providence,” as it is believed
in to-day by almost every third man in “cultured
Germany," would be an argument against God, in
fact it would be the strongest argument against God
that could be imagined. And in any case it is an
argument against the Germans.
53
- The notion that martyrs prove anything at all
in favour of a thing, is so exceedingly doubtful, that
I would fain deny that there has ever yet existed a
martyr who had anything to do with truth. In the
very manner in which a martyr flings his little parcel
of truth at the head of the world, such a low degree
of intellectual honesty and such obtuseness in regard
to the question “truth” makes itself felt, that one
never requires to refute a martyr. Truth is not a
thing which one might have and another be without:
* The following passage from Multatuli will throw light on
this passage :
“Father :- Behold, my son, how wisely Providence has
arranged everything! This bird lays its eggs in its nest and
the young will be hatched just about the time when there
will be worms and flies with which to feed them. Then they
will sing a song of praise in honour of the Creator who over-
whelms his creatures with blessings. '-
“Son :-'Will the worms join in the song, Dad ? '”, -Tæ,
## p. 208 (#228) ############################################
208
THE ANTICHRIST
only peasants or peasant-apostles, after the style of
Luther, can think like this about truth. You may
be quite sure, that the greater a man's degree of
conscientiousness may be in matters intellectual, ,
the more modest he will show himself on this point.
To know about five things, and with a subtle wave
of the hand to refuse to know others. “Truth'
as it is understood by every prophet, every sectarian,
every free thinker, every socialist and every church-
man, is an absolute proof of the fact that these people
haven't even begun that discipline of the mind and
that process of self-mastery, which is necessary for
the discovery of any small, even exceedingly small
truth. —Incidentally, the deaths of martyrs have been
a great misfortune in the history of the world: they
led people astray. The conclusion which all
idiots, women and common people come to, that
there must be something in a cause for which some-
one lays down his life (or which, as in the case of
primitive Christianity, provokes an epidemic of sacri-
fices),—this conclusion put a tremendous check upon
all investigation, upon the spirit of investigation and
of caution. Martyrs have harmed the cause of truth.
Even to this day it only requires the crude fact
of persecution, in order to create an honourable
name for any obscure sect who does not matter in
the least. What? is a cause actually changed in
any way by the fact that some one has laid down his
life for it?
An error which becomes honourable, is
simply an error that possesses one seductive charm
the more: do you suppose, dear theologians, that
we shall give you the chance of acting the martyrs
for your lies ? -A thing is refuted by being laid
## p. 209 (#229) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
209
a
respectfully on ice, and theologians are refuted in
the same way. This was precisely the world-historic
foolishness of all persecutors; they lent the thing
they combated a semblance of honour by conferring
the fascination of martyrdom upon it. . . . Women
still lie prostrate before an error to-day, because
they have been told that some one died on the cross
for it. - Is the cross then an argument ? —But con-
cerning all these things, one person alone has said
what mankind has been in need of for thousands of
years,—Zarathustra.
“Letters of blood did they write on the way they
went, and their folly taught that truth is proved by
blood.
“But blood is the very worst testimony of truth;
blood poisoneth even the purest teaching, and
turneth it into delusion and into blood feuds.
“And when a man goeth through fire for his
teaching—what does that prove? Verily, it is more
when out of one's own burning springeth one's own
teaching. "
54
Do not allow yourselves to be deceivęd:
great
minds are "sceptical. " Zarathustra is a sceptic.
Strength and the freedom which proceeds from the
-power and excessive power of the mind, manifests
itself through scepticism. Men of conviction are
of no account whatever in regard to any principles
of value or of non-value. . Convictions are prisons.
They never see far enough, they do not look down
from a sufficient height: but in order to have any
*
*"Thus Spake Zarathustra. " The Priests. --TR.
»
14
## p. 210 (#230) ############################################
210
THE ANTICHRIST
say in questions of value and non-value, a man must
see five hundred convictions beneath him,-behind
him. . . A spirit who desires great things, and
who also desires the means thereto, is necessarily
a sceptic. Freedom from every kind of conviction
belongs to strength, to the ability to open one's eyes
freely. . . . The great passion of a sceptic, the basis
and
power of his being, which is more enlightened
and more despotic than he is himself, enlists all his
intellect into its service; it makes him unscrupulous;
it even gives him the courage to employ unholy
means; in certain circumstances it even allows
him convictions. Conviction as a means : much is
achieved merely by means of a conviction. Great
passion makes use of and consumes convictions, it
does not submit to them it knows that it is a
sovereign power. Conversely; the need of faith, of
anything either absolutely affirmative or negative,
Carlylism (if I may be allowed this expression), is
the need of weakness. The man of beliefs, the “be-
liever" of every sort and condition, is necessarily a
dependent man ;—he is one who cannot regard him-
self as an aim, who cannot postulate aims from the
promptings of his own heart. The “ believer" does
not belong to himself, he can be only a means, he
must be used up, he is in need of someone who uses
him up. His instinct accords the highest honour to
a morality of self-abnegation : everything in him,
his prudence, his experience, his vanity, persuade
him to adopt this morality. Every sort of belief is
in itself an expression of self-denial, of self-estrange-
ment. . . . Ifone considers how necessary a regulat-
ing code of conduct is to the majority of people, a
.
## p. 211 (#231) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
211
code of conduct which constrains them and fixes
them from outside ; and how control, or in a higher
sense, slavery, is the only and ultimate condition
under which the weak-willed man, and especially
woman, flourish; one also understands conviction,
faith. ” The man of conviction finds in the latter
his backbone. To be blind to many things, to be
impartial about nothing, to belong always to a par-
ticular side, to hold a strict and necessary point of
view in all matters of values—these are the only <
conditions under which such a man can survive at
all. But all this is the reverse of, the antagonist
of, the truthful man,-of truth. . . . The believer is
not at liberty to have a conscience for the question
“true" and “untrue": to be upright on this point
would mean his immediate downfall. The patho-
logical limitations of his standpoint convert the con-
vinced man into the fanatic—Savonarola, Luther
Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon,—these are the
reverse type of the strong spirit that has become free.
But the grandiose poses of these morbid spirits, of
these epileptics of ideas, exercise an influence over
the masses,-fanatics are picturesque, man
mankind pre-
fers to look at poses than to listen to reason.
55
One step further in the psychology of conviction
of “faith. ” It is already some time since I first
thought of considering whether convictions were not
perhaps more dangerous enemies of truth than lies
(“Human All-too-Human,” Part I, Aphs. 54 and
483). Now I would fain put the decisive question :
## p. 212 (#232) ############################################
212
THE ANTICHRIST
is there any difference at all between a lie and a
conviction ? -All the world believes that there is,
but what in Heaven's name does not all the world
believe! Every conviction has its history, its pre-
liminary stages, its period of groping and of mis-
takes : it becomes a conviction only after it has not
been one for a long time, only after it has scarcely
been one for a long time. What? might not false-
hood be the embryonic form of conviction ? -At
times all that is required is a change of personality :
very often what was a lie in the father becomes a
conviction in the son. —I call a lie, to refuse to
see something that one sees, to refuse to see it
exactly as one sees it: whether a lie is perpetrated
before witnesses or not is beside the point. —The
most common sort of lie is the one uttered to one's
self; to lie to others is relatively exceptional. Now
this refusal to see what one sees, this refusal to see
a thing exactly as one sees it, is almost the first
condition for all those who belong to a party in
any sense whatsoever : the man who belongs to a
party perforce becomes a liar. German historians,
for instance, are convinced that Rome stood for
despotism, whereas the Teutons introduced the
spirit of freedom into the world : what difference
is there between this conviction and a lie? After
a
this is it to be wondered at, that all parties,
including German historians, instinctively adopt
the grandiloquent phraseology of morality,—that
morality almost owes its survival to the fact that
the man who belongs to a party, no matter what it
may be, is in need of morality every moment ? -
“This is our conviction : we confess it to the whole
## p. 213 (#233) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
213
-
.
.
world, we live and die for it, let us respect every-
thing that has a conviction ! ”—I have actually
heard antisemites speak in this way. On the
contrary, my dear sirs! An antisemite does not
become the least bit more respectable because he
lies on principle. . . . Priests, who in such matters
are more subtle, and who perfectly understand the
objection to which the idea of a conviction lies
open—that is to say of a falsehood which is per-
petrated on principle because it serves a purpose,
borrowed from the Jews the prudent measure of
setting the concept “God,” “Will of God,” “Revela-
tion of God," at this place. Kant, too, with his
categorical imperative, was on the same road : this
was his practical reason. —There are some questions
in which it is not given to man to decide between
true and false; all the principal questions, all the
principal problems of value, stand beyond human
reason. . . . To comprehend the limits of reason-
this alone is genuine philosophy. For what purpose
did God give man revelation ? Would God have
done anything superfluous ? Man cannot of his
own accord know what is good and what is evil,
that is why God taught man his will. . . . Moral :
the priest does not lie, such questions as “truth” or
"falseness” have nothing to do with the things
concerning which the priest speaks; such things
do not allow of lying. For, in order to lie, it
would be necessary to know what is true in this
respect. But that is precisely what man cannot
know : hence the priest is only the mouthpiece of
God. —This sort of sacerdotal syllogism is by no
means exclusively Judaic or Christian ; the right
## p. 214 (#234) ############################################
214
THE ANTICHRIST
1
>
to lie and the prudent measure of “revelation"
belongs to the priestly type, whether of decadent
periods or of Pagan times (Pagans are all those
who say yea to life, and to whom “God” is
the word for the great yea to all things). The
“law," the “will of God," the “holy book," and
inspiration. All these things are merely words for
the conditions under which the priest attains to
power, and with which he maintains his power,-
these concepts are to be found at the base of all
sacerdotal organisations, of all priestly or philo-
sophical and ecclesiastical governments. The “holy
lie," which is common to Confucius, to the law-
book of Manu, to Muhamed, and to the Christian
church, is not even absent in Plato. “Truth is
here"; this phrase means, wherever it is uttered :
the priest lies. . .
56
After all, the question is, to what end are false-
hoods perpetrated? The fact that, in Christianity,
"holy” ends are entirely absent, constitutes my
objection to the means it employs. Its ends are only
bad ends: the poisoning, the calumniation and the
denial of life, the contempt of the body, the degra-
dation and self-pollution of man by virtue of the
concept sin,-consequently its means are bad as
well. —My feelings are quite the reverse when I read
the law-book of Manu, an incomparably superior and
more intellectualwork,which it would be a sin against
the spirit even to mention in the same breath with
the Bible. You will guess immediately why: it has
a genuine philosophy behind it, in it, not merely an
evil-smelling Jewish distillation of Rabbinism and
)
a
## p. 215 (#235) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
215
superstition,-it gives something to chew even to the
most fastidious psychologist. And, not to forget
the most important point of all, it is fundamentally
different from every kind of Bible: by means of it
the noble classes, the philosophers and the warriors
guard and guide the masses; it is replete with noble
values, it is filled with a feeling of perfection, with a
saying of yea to life, and a triumphant sense of well-
being in regard to itself and to life,—the sun shines
upon the whole book. — All those things which
Christianity smothers with its bottomless vulgarity:
procreation, woman, marriage, are here treated with
earnestness, with reverence, with love and confidence.
How can one possibly place in the hands of children
and women, a book that contains those vile words:
“to avoid fornication, let every man have his own
wife, and let every woman have her own husband
. . . it is better to marry than to burn. ”* And is
it decent to be a Christian so long as the very origint
of man is Christianised,—that is to say, befouled, by
the idea of the immaculata conceptio ? . . . I know of
no book in which so many delicate and kindly things
are said to woman, as in the Law-Book of Manu;
these old grey-beards and saints have a manner of
being gallant to women which, perhaps, cannot be
surpassed. “The mouth of a woman,” says Manu
on one occasion, “the breast of a maiden, the
prayer
of a child, and the smoke of the sacrifice, are always
pure. " Elsewhere he says: “there is nothing purer
than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow,
air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden. " And
finally-perhaps this is also a holy lie :-“all the
1 Corinthians vịi. 2, 9. -TR,
O
## p. 216 (#236) ############################################
216
THE ANTICHRIST
openings of the body above the navel are pure, all
those below the navel are impure. Only in a maiden is
the whole body pure. ”
57
The unholiness of Christian means is caught in
flagranti, if only the end aspired to by Christianity
be compared with that of the Law-Book of Manu;
if only these two utterly opposed aims be put under
a strong light. The critic of Christianity simply can-
not avoid making Christianity contemptible. —A Law-
Book like that of Manu comes into being like every
good law-book : it epitomises the experience, the
precautionary measures, and the experimental mor-
ality of long ages, it settles things definitely, it no
longer creates. The prerequisite for a codification
of this kind, is the recognition of the fact that the
means which procure authority for a truth to which
it has cost both time and great pains to attain, are
fundamentally different from those with which that
same truth would be proved. A law-book never
relates the utility, the reasons, the preliminary casu-
istry, of a law: for it would be precisely in this way
that it would forfeit its imperative tone, the “thou
shalt,” the first condition of its being obeyed. The
problem lies exactly in this. —At a certain stage in
the development of a people, the most far-seeing
class within it (that is to say, the class that sees
farthest backwards and forwards), declares the ex-
perience of how its fellow-creatures ought to live-
i. e. , can live—to be finally settled. Its object is, to
reap as rich and as complete a harvest as possible,
in return for the ages of experiment and terrible ex-
perience it has traversed. Consequently, that which
## p. 217 (#237) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
217
.
has to be avoided, above all, is any further experi-
mentation, the continuation of the state when values
are still fluid, the testing, choosing, and criticising
of values in infinitum. Against all this a double
wall is built up: in the first place, Revelation, which
is the assumption that the rationale of every law is
not human in its origin, that it was not sought and
found after ages of error, but that it is divine in its
origin, completely and utterly without a history, a
gift, a miracle, a mere communication. . . . And
secondly, tradition, which is the assumption that the
law has obtained since the most primeval times, that
it is impious and a crime against one's ancestors to
attempt to doubt it. The authority of law is estab-
lished on the principles: God gave it, the ancestors
lived it. —The superior reason of such a procedure
lies in the intention to draw consciousness off step
by step from that mode of life which has been re-
cognised as correct (i. e. , proved after enormous and
carefully examined experience), so that perfect auto-
matism of the instincts may be attained,—this being
the only possible basis of all mastery of every kind
of perfection in the Art of Life. To draw up a law-
book like Manu's, is tantamount to granting a people
mastership for the future, perfection for the future,
the right to aspire to the highest Art of Life. To
that end it must be made unconscious: this is the
object of every holy lie. —The order of castes, the
highest, the dominating law, is only the sanction
of a natural order, of a natural legislation of the
first rank, over which no arbitrary innovation, no
“modern idea" has any power. Every healthy
society falls into three distinct types, which recipro-
## p. 218 (#238) ############################################
218
THE ANTICHRIST
cally condition one another and which gravitate
differently in the physiological sense; and each of
these has its own hygiene, its own sphere of work,
its own special feeling of perfection, and its own
mastership. It. is Nature, not Manu, that separates
from the rest, those individuals preponderating in
intellectual power, those excelling in muscular
strength and temperament, and the third class which
is distinguished neither in one way nor the other,
the mediocre,—the latter as the greatest number,
the former as the élite. The superior caste—I call
them the fewest,—has, as the perfect caste, the privi-
leges of the fewest : it devolves upon them to repre-
sent happiness, beauty and goodness on earth. Only
the most intellectual men have the right to beauty,
to the beautiful : only in them is goodness not weak-
Pulchrum est paucorum hominum : goodness
is a privilege. On the other hand there is nothing
which they should be more strictly forbidden than
repulsive manners or a pessimistic look, a look that
makes everything seem ugly,—or even indignation
at the general aspect of things. Indignation is
the privilege of the Chandala, and so is pessimism.
“ The world is perfect”—that is what the instinct of
the most intellectual says, the yea-saying instinct;
"imperfection, every kind of inferiority to us, dis-
tance, the pathos of distance, even the Chandala
belongs to this perfection. “ The most intellectual
men, as the strongest find their happiness where
others meet with their ruin: in the labyrinth, in
hardness towards themselves and others, in en-
deavour; their delight is self-mastery: with them
asceticism becomes a second nature, a need, an in-
ness.
## p. 219 (#239) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
219
stinct. They regard a difficult task as their privi-
lege; to play with burdens which crush their fellows
is to them a recreation. . . . Knowledge, a form of
asceticism. —They are the most honourable kind of
men: but that does not prevent them from being
the most cheerful and most gracious. They rule,
not because they will, but because they are; they
are not at liberty to take a second place. —The
second in rank are the guardians of the law, the
custodians of order and of security, the noble war-
riors, the king, above all, as the highest formula of
the warrior, the judge, and keeper of the law. The
second in rank are the executive of the most in-
tellectual, the nearest to them in duty, relieving them
of all that is coarse in the work of ruling,—their
retinue, their right hand, their best disciples. In
all this, I repeat, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing
artificial,” that which is otherwise is artificial,—by
that which is otherwise, nature is put to shame.
The order of castes, and the order of rank merely
formulates the supreme law of life itself; the differ-
entiation of the three types is necessary for the
maintenance of society, and for enabling higher and
highest types to be reared,—the inequality of rights
is the only condition of there being rights at all. —A
right is a privilege. And in his way, each has his
privilege. Let us not underestimate the privileges
of the mediocre. Life always gets harder towards the
summit,—the cold increases, responsibility increases.
A high civilisation is a pyramid: it can stand only
upon a broad base, its first prerequisite is a strongly
and soundly consolidated mediocrity. Handicraft,
commerce, agriculture, science, the greater part of
-
## p. 220 (#240) ############################################
220
THE ANTICHRIST
art,—in a word, the whole range of professional and
business callings, is compatible only with mediocre
ability and ambition ; such pursuits would be out
of place among exceptions, the instinct pertaining
thereto would oppose not only aristocracy but an-
archy as well. The fact that one is publicly useful,
a wheel, a function, presupposes a certain natural
destiny: it is not society, but the only kind of happiness
of which the great majority are capable, that makes
them intelligent machines. For the mediocre it is a
joy to be mediocre; in them mastery in one thing,
a speciality, is a natural instinct. It would be abso-
lutely unworthy of a profound thinker to see any
objection in mediocrity per se. For in itself it is the
first essential condition under which exceptions are
possible ; a high culture is determined by it. When
the exceptional man treats the mediocre with more
tender care than he does himself or his equals, this
is not mere courtesy of heart on his part—but
simply his duty. Whom do I hate most among
the rabble of the present day? The socialistic
rabble, the Chandala apostles, who undermine the
working man's instinct, his happiness and his feeling
of contentedness with his insignificant existence,-
who make him envious, and who teach him revenge.
The wrong never lies in unequal rights; it lies
in the claim to equal rights. What is bad? But I
have already replied to this: Everything that pro-
ceeds from weakness, envy and revenge. —The anar-
chist and the Christian are offspring of the same
womb.
58
In point of fact, it matters greatly to what end
## p. 221 (#241) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY.
221
one lies : whether one preserves or destroys by means
of falsehood. It is quite justifiable to bracket the
Christian and the Anarchist together : their object,
their instinct, is concerned only with destruction.
The proof of this proposition can be read quite
plainly from history : history spells it with appal-
ling distinctness. Whereas we have just seen a
religious legislation, whose object was to render the
highest possible means of making life flourish,
and of making a grand organisation of society,
eternal,—Christianity found its mission in putting
an end to such an organisation, precisely because
life flourishes through it. In the one case, the net
profit to the credit of reason, acquired through long
ages of experiment and of insecurity, is applied use-
fully to the most remote ends, and the harvest,
which is as large, as rich and as complete as pos-
sible, is reaped and garnered: in the other case, on
the contrary, the harvest is blighted in a single night.
