How
can saintly legends be called “tradition” at all!
can saintly legends be called “tradition” at all!
Nietzsche - v16 - Twilight of the Idols
God degenerated into the contradic-
tion of life, instead of being its transfiguration and
eternal Yea! With God war is declared on life,
nature, and the will to life! God is the formula for
every calumny of this world and for every lie con-
cerning a beyond In God, nonentity is deified,
and the will to nonentity is declared holy!
life
God=contradation,
of
19
The fact that the strong races of Northern Europe
did not repudiate the Christian God, certainly does
not do any credit to their religious power, not to
speak of their taste. They ought to have been able
successfully to cope with such a morbid and decrepit
offshoot of decadence. And a curse lies on their
heads; because they were unable to cope with him :
they made illness, decrepitude and contradiction a
part of all their instincts,--since then they have not
## p. 147 (#167) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
147
created any other God! Two thousand years have
passed and not a single new God! But still there
exists, and as if by right,-like an ultimum and
maximum of god-creating power,—the creator spiri-
tus in man, this miserable God of Christian mono-
tono-theism! This hybrid creature of decay, non-
entity, concept and contradiction, in which all the
instincts of decadence, all the cowardices and lan-
guors of the soul find their sanction !
--
20
Busshorn
-
With my condemnation of Christianity I should
not like to have done an injustice to a religion which
is related to it and the number of whose followers
is even greater; I refer to Buddhism. As nihilistic
religions, they are akin, — they are religions of
decadence, while each is separated from the other
in the most extraordinary fashion. For being able
to compare them at all, the critic of Christianity is
profoundly grateful to Indian scholars. -Buddhism
is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity
-it is part of its constitutional heritage to be able
to face problems objectively and coolly, it is the out-
come of centuries of lasting philosophical activity.
The concept “God” was already exploded when it
appeared. Buddhism is the only really positive
religion to be found in history, even in its epis-
temology (which is strict phenomenalism)—it no
longer speaks of the “ struggle with sin," but fully
recognising the true nature of reality it speaks of
the “struggle with pain. ” It already has—and this
distinguishes it fundamentally from Christianity,–
the self-deception of moral concepts beneath it,--to
## p. 148 (#168) ############################################
148
THE ANTICHRIST
use my own phraseology, it stands Beyond Good and
Evil. The two physiological facts upon which it
rests and upon which it bestows its attention are:
in the first place excessive irritability of feeling,
which manifests itself as a refined susceptibility to
pain, and also as super-spiritualisation, an all-too-
lengthy sojourn amid concepts and logical pro-
cedures, under the influence of which the personal
instinct has suffered in favour of the “impersonal. "
(-Both of these states will be known to a few of
my readers, the objective ones, who, like myself, will
know them from experience. ) Thanks to these
)
physiological conditions, a state of depression set
in, which Buddha sought to combat by means of
hygiene. Against it, he prescribes life in the open, a
life of travel; moderation and careful choice in food;
caution in regard to all intoxicating liquor, as also in
regard to all the passions which tend to create bile
and to heat the blood; and he deprecates care either
on one's own or on other people's account. He recom-
ménds ideas that bring one either peace or good
cheer,-he invents means whereby the habit of con-
trary ideas may be lost. He understands goodness
.
-being good—as promoting health. Prayer is out
of the question, as is also asceticism ; there is neither
a Categorical Imperative nor any discipline whatso-
ever, even within the walls of a monastery (-it is
always possible to leave it if one wants to). All
these things would have been only a means of
accentuating the excessive irritability already re-
ferred to. Precisely on this account he does not
exhort his followers to wage war upon those who
do not share their views; nothing is more abhorred
## p. 149 (#169) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
149
1
in his doctrine than the feeling of revenge, of aver-
sion, and of resentment (“not through hostility
doth hostility end”: the touching refrain of the
whole of Buddhism . . . ). And in this he was
right; for it is precisely these passions which are
thoroughly unhealthy in view of the principal
dietetic object. The mental fatigue which he finds
already existent and which expresses itself in exces-
sive “objectivity” (i. e. , the enfeeblement of the
individual's interest-loss of ballast and of “ego-
ism”), he combats by leading the spiritual interests
as well imperatively back to the individual. In
Buddha's doctrine egoism is a duty: the thing
which is above all necessary, i. e. , “how canst thou
be rid of suffering ” regulates and defines the whole
of the spiritual diet (let anyone but think of that
Athenian who also declared war upon pure “scien-
tificality,” Socrates, who made a morality out of
personal egoism even in the realm of problems).
21
The pre-requisites for Buddhism are a very
mild climate, great gentleness and liberality in
the customs of a people and no militarism. The
movement must also originate among the higher
and even learned classes. Cheerfulness, peace and
absence of desire, are the highest of inspirations,
and they are realised. Buddhism is not a religion
in which perfection is merely aspired to: perfection
is the normal case. In Christianity all the instincts
of the subjugated and oppressed come to the fore:
it is the lowest classes who seek their salvation in
this religion. Here the pastime, the manner of
lower
classes
## p. 150 (#170) ############################################
150
THE ANTICHRIST
X body
killing time is to practise the casuistry of sin, self-
criticism, and conscience inquisition. Here the
ecstasy in the presence of a powerful being, called
“ god,” is constantly maintained by means of
prayer ;
while the highest thing is regarded as un-
attainable, as a gift, as an act of “grace. ” Here
plain dealing is also entirely lacking : concealment
and the darkened room are Christian. Here the
body is despised, hygiene is repudiated as sensual;
the church repudiates even cleanliness (the first
Christian measure after the banishment of the
Moors was the closing of the public baths, of which
Cordova alone possessed 270). A certain spirit of
cruelty towards one's self and others is also Christian:
hatred of all those who do not share one's views;
the will to persecute. Sombre and exciting ideas
are in the foreground; the most coveted states and
those which are endowed with the finest names, are
really epileptic in their nature; diet is selected in
such a way as to favour morbid symptoms and
to over-excite the nerves. Christian, too, is the
.
mortal hatred of the earth's rulers,—the “noble,”-
and at the same time a sort of concealed and secret
competition with them (the subjugated leave the
“body” to their master-all they want is the
soul”). Christian is the hatred of the intellect, of
pride, of courage, freedom, intellectual libertinage ;
Christian is the hatred of the senses, of the joys of
the senses, of joy in general.
VERY
Persecutio
imp.
wton
of the online
X
22
When Christianity departed from its native soil,
which consisted of the lowest classes, the submerged
## p. 151 (#171) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
151
masses of the ancient world, and set forth in quest
of power among barbaric nations, it no longer met
with exhausted men but inwardly savage and self-
lacerating men the strong but bungled men.
Here, dissatisfaction with one's self, suffering
through one's self,is not as in the case of Bud-
dhism, excessive irritability and susceptibility to
pain, but rather, conversely, it is an inordinate
desire for inflicting pain, for a discharge of the inner
tension in hostile deeds and ideas. Christianity
was in need of barbaric ideas and values, in order
to be able to master barbarians: such are for in-
stance, the sacrifice of the first-born, the drinking
of blood at communion, the contempt of the intel-
lect and of culture; torture in all its forms, sensual
and non-sensual; the great pomp of the cult.
Buddhism is a religion for senile men, for races
which have become kind, gentle, and over-spiritual,
and which feel pain too easily (-Europe is not
nearly ripe for it yet—); it calls them back to
peace and cheerfulness, to a regimen for the intel-
lect, to a certain hardening of the body. Christianity
aims at mastering beasts oj prey; its expedie is
to make them ill,—to render feeble is the Christian
recipe for taming, for “civilisation. " Buddhism is
a religion for the close and exhaustion of civilisa-
tion; Christianity does not even find civilisation at
hand when it appears, in certain circumstances it
lays the foundation of civilisation.
a
키
23
Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times colder,
more truthful, more objective. It no longer requires
## p. 152 (#172) ############################################
152
THE ANTICHRIST
>
to justify pain and its susceptibility to suffering by
the interpretation of sin,-it simply says what it
thinks, “ I suffer. ” To the barbarian, on the other
hand, suffering in itself is not a respectable thing :
in order to acknowledge to himself that he suffers,
what he requires, in the first place, is an explanation
(his instinct directs him more readily to deny his
suffering, or to endure it in silence). In his case,
the word "devil” was a blessing: man had an
almighty and terrible enemy,—he had no reason to
be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an
enemy. -
At bottom there are in Christianity one or two
subtleties which belong to the Orient. In the first
place it knows that it is a matter of indifference
whether a thing be true or not; but that it is of the
highest importance that it should be believed to be
true. (Truth and the belief that something is true:
two totally separate worlds of interest, almost
opposite worlds, the road to the one and the road to
the other lie absolutely apart. J To be initiated into
this fact almost constitutes one a sage in the Orient :
the Brahmins understood it thus, so did Plato, and
so does every disciple of esoteric wisdom. If for
.
example it give anyone pleasure to believe himself
delivered from sin, it is not a necessary prerequisite
thereto that he should be sinful, but only that he
should feel sinful. / If, however, faith is above all
necessary. then reason, knowledge, and scientific
research must be brought into evil repute : the road
to truth becomes the forbidden road. -Strong hope
is a much greater stimulant of life than any single
realised joy could be. Sufferers must be sustained
*
Troth
Vs.
Belief
*
FATH
HOPE
## p. 153 (#173) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
153
LOVE
by a hone which no actuality can contradict,—and
which cannot ever be realised: the hope of another
world. (Precisely on account of this power that
hope has of making the unhappy linger on, the
Greeks regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most
mischievous evil : it remained behind in Pandora's
box. ) In order that love may be possible, God must
be a person.
In order that the lowest instincts may
also make their voices heard God must be young.
For the ardour of the women a beautiful saint, and
for the ardour of the men a Virgin Mary has to be
pressed into the foreground. All this on condition
that Christianity wishes to rule over a certain soil,
on which Aphrodisiac or Adonis cults had already
determined the notion of a cult. To insist upon
chastity only intensifies the vehemence and pro-
fundity of the religious instinct - it makes the cult
warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful. —Love is
the state in which man sees things most widely
different from what they are. The force of illusion
reaches its zenith here, as likewise the sweetening
and transfiguring power. When a man is in love
be endures more than at other times; he submits
to everything. The thing was to discover a religion
in which it was dossible to love by this means the
worstdin life is bvercome—it is no longer even seen.
So much for three Christian virtues Faith, Hope,
and Charity : I call them the three Christian precau-
tionary measures. —Buddhism is too full of aged
wisdom, too positivistic to be shrewd in this way.
-
-
Love
i
24
Here I only touch upon the problem of the origin
## p. 154 (#174) ############################################
154
THE ANTICHRIST
origin
*
-
(2)
a
* of Christianity. The first principle of its solution
reads: Christianity can be understood only in re-
lation to the soil out of which it grew,—it is not a,
counter-movement against the Jewish instinct, it is
the rational outcome of the latter, one step further.
in its appalling logic. In the formula of the Saviour:
for Salvation is of the Jews. ”—The second prin-
ciple is: the psychological type of the Galilean is
still recognisable, but it was only in a state of utter
degeneration (which is at once a distortion and an
overloading with foreign features) that he was able
to serve the purpose for which he has been used,-
namely, as the type of a Redeemer of mankind.
The Jews are the most remarkable people in the
history of the world, because when they were con-
fronted with the question of Being or non-Being,
with simply uncanny deliberateness, they preferred
Being at any price: this price was the fundamental
falsification of all Nature, all the naturalness and all
the reality, of the inner quite as much as of the outer
world. They hedged themselves in behind all those
conditions under which hitherto a people has been
able to live, has been allowed to live; of themselves
they created an idea which was the reverse of natural
conditions,—each in turn, they twisted first religion,
then the cult, then morality, history and psychology,
about in a manner so perfectly hopeless that they
were made to contradict their natural value. We
meet with the same phenomena again, and exag-
gerated to an incalculable degree, although only as a
* copy:—the Christian Church as compared with the
“chosen people," lacks all claim to originality. Pre-
cisely on this account the Jews are the most fatal
at
Being
any price
## p. 155 (#175) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
155
]
x
very
imp
6
a-
people in the history of the world: their ultimate
influence has falsified mankind to such an extent,
that even to this day the Christian can be anti-
Semitic in spirit, without comprehending that he
himself is the final consequence of Judaism.
It was in my “Genealogy of Morals” that I first
gave a psychological exposition of the idea of the
antithesis noble- and resentment-morality, the latter
having arisen out of an attitude of negation to the
former : but this is Judæo-Christian morality heart
and soul. In order to be able to say Nay to every,
thing that represents the ascending movement of
life, prosperity, power, beauty, and self-affirmation
on earth, the instinct of resentment, become genius,
had to invent another world, from the standpoint
of which that Yea-saying to life appeared as the
most evil and most abominable thing. From the
psychological standpoint the Jewish people are pos-
sessed of the toughest vitality. Transplanted amid
impossible conditions, with profound self-preserva-
tive intelligence, it voluntarily took the side of all
the instincts of decadence,—not as though domi-
nated by them, but because it detected a power in
them by means of which it could assert itself against
“the world. ” The Jews are the opposite of all de-
cadents : they have been forced to represent them
to the point of illusion, and with a non plus ultra of
histrionic genius, they have known how to set them-
selves at the head of all decadent movements (St
Paul and Christianity for instance), in order to create
something from them which is stronger than every
party saying Yea to life. For the category of men
which aspires to power in Judaism and Christianity,
ing
life
Jewisha
toughest
Vitality
*
Jews
opposite
of all
decordent
## p. 156 (#176) ############################################
156
THE ANTICHRIST
-that is to say, for the sacerdotal class, decadence
is but a means: this category of men has a vital
interest in making men sick, and in turning the
notions “good” and “bad,”“ true” and “false,"upside
down in a manner which is not only dangerous to
life, but also slanders it.
25
The history of Israel is invaluable as the typical
history of every denaturalisation of natural values :
let me point to five facts which relate thereto. Ori-
ginally, and above all in the period of the kings,
even Israel's attitude to all things was the right one
that is to say, the natural one. Its Jehovah was
the expression of its consciousness of power, of its
joy over itself, of its hope for itself: victory and
salvation were expected from him, through him it
was confident that Nature would give what a people
requires-above all rain. Jehovah is the God of
Israel, and consequently the God of justice : this is
the reasoning of every people which is in the position
of
power, and which has a good conscience in that
position. In the solemn cult both sides of this self-
affirmation of a people find expression : it is grateful
for the great strokes of fate by means of which it
became uppermost; it is grateful for the regularity
in the succession of the seasons and for all good
fortune in the rearing of cattle and in the tilling of
the soil. —This state of affairs remained the ideal for
some considerable time, even after it had been swept
away in a deplorable manner by anarchy from within
and the Assyrians from without. But the people
still retained, as their highest desideratum, that vision
Jehovahy
## p. 157 (#177) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
157
?
.
.
of a king who was a good soldier and a severe judge;
and he who retained it most of all was that typical
prophet (that is to say, critic and satirist of the
age), Isaiah. —But all hopes remained unrealised.
The old God was no longer able to do what he had *
done formerly. He ought to have been dropped.
What happened? The idea of him was changed, -] interpretation
the idea of him was denaturalised : this was the price
they paid for retaining him. - Jehovah, the God of
'Justice,"—is no longer one with Israel, no longer
the expression of a people's sense of dignity: he is
only a god on certain conditions. The idea of
him becomes a weapon in the hands of priestly
agitators who henceforth interpret all happiness as
a reward, all unhappiness as a punishment for dis-
obedience to God, for “sin”: that most fraudulent
method of interpretation which arrives at a so-called
“moral order of the Universe,” by means of which
the concept "cause" and "effect” is turned upside
down. Once natural causation has been swept out
of the world by reward and punishment, a causation
hostile to nature becomes necessary; whereupon all the
forms of unnaturalness follow. A God who demands,
-in the place of a God who helps, who advises, who
is at bottom only a name for every happy inspiration
of courage and of self-reliance. . . . Morality is no
longer the expression of the conditions of life and
growth, no longer the most fundamental instinct of
life, but it has become abstract, it has become the
opposite of life, -Morality as the fundamental per-
version of the imagination, as the "evil eye” for all
things. What is Jewish morality, what is Christian
morality ? Chance robbed or its innocence; unhappi-
a
Morality
becoming
opposite
life
-
## p. 158 (#178) ############################################
158
THE ANTICHRIST
ness polluted with the idea of "sin"; well-being
interpreted as a danger, as a “temptation”; physio-
logicalindisposition poisoned by means of the canker-
worm of conscience. . . .
26
oipon of
Bible
The concept of God falsified; the concept of
;
morality falsified: but the Jewish priesthood did
not stop at this. No use could be made of the
whole history of Israel, therefore it must go! These
priests accomplished that miracle of falsification, of
* which the greater part of the Bible is the document:
with unparalleled contempt and in the teeth of all
tradition and historical facts, they interpreted their
own people's past in a religious manner,—that is to
say, they converted it into a ridiculous mechanical
process of salvation, on the principle that all sin
against Jehovah led to punishment, and that all pious
worship of Jehovah led to reward. Wewould feel this
shameful act of historical falsification far more poig-
nantly if the ecclesiastical interpretation of history
through millenniums had not blunted almost all our
sense for the demands of uprightness in historicis.
And the church is seconded by the philosophers:
the lie of “a moral order of the universe" per-
meates the whole development even of more modern
philosophy. What does a “moral order of the uni-
verse" mean? That once and for all there is such
a thing as a will of God which determines what man
has to do and what he has to leave undone; that the
value of a 'people or of an individual is measured
according to how much or how little the one or the
other obeys the will of God; that in the destinies
»
philosopher
## p. 159 (#179) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
159
of a people or of an individual, the will of God
shows itself dominant, that is to say it punishes or
rewards according to the degree of obedience. In
the place of this miserable falsehood, reality says: a
parasitical type of man, who can flourish only
at the cost of all the healthy elements of life, the
priest abuses the name of God: he calls that state
of affairs in which the priest determines the value of
things "the Kingdom of God”; he calls the means
whereby such a state of affairs is attained or main-
tained, “the Will of God”; with cold blooded
cynicism he measures peoples, ages and individuals
according to whether they favour or oppose the
ascendancy of the priesthood. Watch him at work:
in the hands of the Jewish priesthood the Augustan
Age in the history of Israel became an age of
decline; the exile, the protracted misfortune trans-
formed itself into eternal punishment for the
Augustan Age—that age in which the priest did
not yet exist. Out of the mighty and thoroughly
free-born figures of the history of Israel, they made,
according to their requirements, either wretched
bigots and hypocrites, or “godless ones”: they
simplified the psychology of every great event to
the idiotic formula "obedient or disobedient to
God. ”—A step further : the “Will of God," that is
to say the self-preservative measures of the priest-
hood, must be known-to this end a "revelation”
is necessary. In plain English: a stupendous literat
ary fraud becomes necessary, “holy scriptures" are
discovered, and they are published abroad with all
hieratic pomp, with days of penance and lamenta-
tions over the long state of “sin. ” The “Will of
>
imp
dscovery
of
scaphire
## p. 160 (#180) ############################################
160
THE ANTICHRIST
God” has long stood firm : the whole of the trouble
lies in the fact that the “Holy Scriptures” have
been discarded. . . . Moses was already the “ Will
of God” revealed.
What had happened ?
With severity and pedantry, the priest had formu-
lated once and for all—even to the largest and
smallest contributions that were to be paid to him
(-not forgetting the daintiest portions of meat;
for the priest is a consumer of beef-steaks)—what
he wanted,“ what the Will of God was. ” . . . Hence-
forward everything became so arranged that the
priests were indispensable everywhere. At all the
naturał events of life, at birth, at marriage, at the
sick-bed, at death,—not to speak of the sacrifice
(“ the meal")—the holy parasite appears in order
to denaturalise, or in his language, to "sarctify,"
* everything. - . For this should be understood :
every natural custom, every natural institution (the
State, the administration of justice, marriage, the
care of the sick and the poor), every demand in-
spired by the instinct of life, in short everything
that has a value in itself, is rendered absolutely
worthless and even dangerous through the parasitism
of the priest (or of the “moral order of the uni-
verse"): a sanction after the fact is required, -a
power which imparts value is necessary, which in so
doing says, Nay to nature, and which by this means
alone creates a valuation.
The priest depre-
ciates and desecrates nature: it is only at this price
that he exists at all. —Disobedience to God, that
is to say, to the priest, to the “law," now receives
the name of “sin”, the means of “reconciling one's
self with God” are of course of a nature which Sit
.
.
a
as
existence
of Priest
nesution
Nature
of
disol
to
pre
## p. 161 (#181) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
161
render subordination to the priesthood all the more
fundamental : the priest alone is able to "save. ”. . .
From the psychological standpoint, in every society
organised upon a hieratic basis, "sins” are indis-
pensable: they are the actual weapons of power,
the priest lives upon sins, it is necessary for him
that people should “sin. ” Supreme axiom :
“God forgiveth him that repenteth"_in plain
English : him that submitteth himself to the priest. very
.
.
very good
27
Christianity grew out of an utterly false soil, in
which all nature, every natural value, every reality
had the deepest instincts of the ruling class against
it; it was a form of deadly hostility to reality which
*
has never been surpassed. The “holy people” which
had retained only priestly values and priestly names
for all things, and which, with a logical consistency
that is terrifying, had divorced itself from every-
thing still powerful on earth as if it were “unholy,"
“worldly," "sinful,”—this people created a final
formula for its instinct which was consistent to the
point of self-suppression ; as Christianity it denied
even the last form of reality, the “holy people,” the
“ chosen people,” Jewish reality itself. The case is
of supreme interest: the small insurrectionary move-
ment christened with the name of Jesus of Nazareth,
is the Jewish instinct over again, — in other words,
in other words, I wery
it is the sacerdotal instinct which can no longer
endure the priest as a fact; it is the discovery of a
kind of life even more fantastic than the one pre-
viously conceived, a vision of life which is even
more unreal than that which the organisation
positie
rebelhaus
expect of
hustsant
intrestury
on
Jens
II
## p. 162 (#182) ############################################
162
THE ANTICHRIST
76
Hobbesian
[in sense?
SOCIETY
* of a church stipulates. Christianity denies the
church.
*
I fail to see against whom was directed the insur-
rection of which rightly or wrongly Jesus is under-
stood to have been the promoter, if it were not
directed against the Jewish church, the word
church” being used here in precisely the same
sense in which it is used to-day It was an insurrec-
tion against the “good and the just,” against the
"prophets of Israel," against the hierarchy of society
—not against the latter's corruption, but against
caste, privilege, order, formality. It was the lack of
faith in “higher men," it was a “Nay”uttered against
everything that was tinctured with the blood of
priests and theologians. But the hierarchy which
was set in question if only temporarily by this
movement, formed the construction of piles upon
which, alone, the Jewish people was able to sub-
sist in the midst of the "waters”; it was that
people's last chance of survival wrested from the
world at enormous pains, the residuum of its political
autonomy: to attack this construction was tanta-
mount to attacking the most profound popular
instinct, the most tenacious national will to live
that has ever existed on earth. ] This saintly anar-
chist who called the lowest of the low, the outcasts
and “sinners,” the Chandala of Judaism, to revolt
against the established order of things (and in
hapher man
very
imp
* It will be seen from this that in spite of Nietzsche's ruth-
less criticism of the priests, he draws a sharp distinction
between Christianity and the Church, As the latter still
contained elements of order, it was more to his taste than the
denial of authority characteristic of real Christianity. -TR,
## p. 163 (#183) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
163
political
criminal
&
community
language which, if the gospels are to be trusted,
would get one sent to Siberia even to-day)—this
man was a political criminal in so far as political
criminals were possible in a community so absurdly
non-political. This brought him to the cross: the
proof of this is the inscription found thereon. He
died for his sins — and no matter how often the
contrary has been asserted there is absolutely
nothing to show that he died for the sins of others.
culique of
*
history
28
As to whether he was conscious of this contrast,
or whether he was merely regarded as such, is quite
another question. And here, alone, do I touch upon
the problem of the psychology of the Saviour. -I
confess there are few books which I have as much
difficulty in reading as the gospels. These diffi-
culties are quite different from those which allowed
the learned curiosity of the German mind to cele-
brate one of its most memorable triumphs. Many
years have now elapsed since I, like every young
scholar, with the sage conscientiousness of a refined
a
philologist, relished the work of the incomparable
Strauss. I was then twenty years of age; now I
am too serious for that sort of thing. What do
I care about the contradictions of “tradition"?
How
can saintly legends be called “tradition” at all!
The stories of saints constitute the most ambiguous
literature on earth: to apply the scientific method
to them, when there are no other documents to hand,
seems to me to be a fatal procedure from the start
-simply learned fooling.
Х
Scientific
method
*
Imo
## p. 164 (#184) ############################################
164
THE ANTICHRIST
TYPE
29
The point that concerns me is the psychological
type of the Saviour. This type might be contained
the gospels, in spite of the gospels, and however
much it may have been mutilated, or overladen with
foreign features : just as that of Francis of Assisi is
contained in his legends in spite of his legends. It
is not a question of the truth concerning what he has
done, what he has said, and how he actually died;
but whether his type may still be conceived in any
way, whether it has been handed down to us at all?
-The attempts which to my knowledge have been
made to read the history of a “soul” out of the
gospels, seem to me to point only to disreputable
levity in psychological matters. M. Renan, that
buffoon in psychologicis, has contributed the two
most monstrous ideas imaginable to the explana-
tion of the type of Jesus: the idea of the genius and
the idea of the hero (“ héros ”). But if there is any-
thing thoroughly unevangelical surely it is the idea
of the hero. It is precisely the reverse of all struggle,
of all consciousness of taking part in the fight, that
has become instinctive here: the inability to resist
X is here converted into a morality (“ resist not evil,"
the profoundest sentence in the whole of the gospels,
their key in a certain sense), the blessedness of peace,
of gentleness, of not being able to be an enemy. What
is the meaning of “glad tidings"? —True life, eternal
life has been found—it is not promised, it is actually
here, it is in you ; it is life in love, in love free from
all selection or exclusion, free from all distance.
Everybody is the child of God - Jesus does not by
benins
>Hero
X
imp
## p. 165 (#185) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
165
. ! funny!
a
historical
interpretation
spirit & Jesus
.
any means claim anything for himself alone,--as
the child of God everybody is equal to everybody
else (Fancy making Jesus a hiero? And what
a tremendous misunderstanding the word “
"genius”
is! Our whole idea of “spirit,” which is a civilised
idea, could have had no meaning whatever in the
world in which Jesus lived. In the strict terms of
the physiologist, a very different word ought to be
used here. . . . We know of a condition of morbid
irritability of the sense of touch, which recoils shud-
dering from every kind of contact, and from every
attempt at grasping a solid object. Any such physio-
logical habitus reduced to its ultimate logical conclu-
sion, becomes an instinctive hatred of all reality, a
flight into the "intangible,” into the “incomprehens-
ible”; a repugnance to all formulæ, to every notion
of time and space, to everything that is established
such as customs, institutions, the church ; a feeling
at one's ease in a world in which no sign of reality
is any longer visible, a merely “inner” world, a
"true" world, an “eternal” world. . . . “The King-
“"
dom of God is within you. ”.
very
interesting
9
.
R
30
The instinctive hatred of reality is the outcome of
an extreme susceptibility to pain and to irritation,
which can no longer endure to be "touched" at alt,
because every sensation strikes too deep.
The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, of all hos-
tility of all boundaries and distances in feeling, is the
outcome of an extreme susceptibility to pain and to
irritation, which regards all resistance, all compul-
sory resistance as insufferable anguish (that is to
*
## p. 166 (#186) ############################################
166
THE ANTICHRIST
a
say, as harmful, as deprecated by the self-preservative
instinct), and which knows blessedness (happiness)
only when it is no longer obliged to offer resistance
to anybody, either evil or detrimental,—love as the
only ultimate possibility of life.
These are the two physiological realities upon which
and out of which the doctrine of salvation has grown.
I call them a sublime further development of hedon-
ism, upon a thoroughly morbid soil. Epicureanism,
the pagan theory of salvation, even though it pos-
sessed a large proportion of Greek vitality and
nervous energy, remains the most closely related to
the above. Epicurus was a typical decadent: and
I was the first to recognise him as such. —The terror
of pain, even of infinitely slight pain—such a state
cannot possibly help culminating in a religion of
love. . . .
31
I have given my reply to the problem in advance.
The prerequisite thereto was the admission of the
fact that the type of the Saviour has reached us
only in a very distorted form. This distortion in
itself is extremely feasible: for many reasons a type
of that kind could not be pure, whole, and free from
additions. The environment in which this strange
figure moved, must have left its mark upon him, and
the history, the destiny of the first Christian com-
munities must have done so to a still greater degree.
Thanks to that destiny, the type must have been
enriched retrospectively with features which can be
interpreted only as serving the purposes of war and
of propaganda. That strange and morbid world into
which the gospels lead us—a world which seems to
## p. 167 (#187) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
167
le
imp.
-
.
have been drawn from a Russian novel, where the
scum and dross of society, diseases of the nerves
and "childish” imbecility seem to have given each
other rendezvous—must in any case have coarsened
the type: the first disciples, especially must have
translated an existence conceived entirely in sym-
bols and abstractions into their own crudities, in
order at least to be able to understand something
about it,-for_them the type existed only after it
had been cast in a more familiar mould. . . The
prophet, the Messiah, the future judge, the teacher
of morals, the thaumaturgist, John the Baptist-all
these were but so many opportunities of misunder-
standing the type. . . . Finally, let us not under-
rate the proprium of all great and especially sectarian
veneration : very often it effaces from the venerated
object, all the original and frequently painfully un-
familiar traits and idiosyncrasies—it does not even see
them. It is greatly to be deplored that no Dostoi-
ewsky lived in the neighbourhood of this most in-
teresting decadent -I mean someone who would
have known how to feel the poignant charm of such
a mixture of the sublime, the morbid, and the child-
like. Finally, the type, as an example of decadenci:,
may actually have been extraordinarily multifarious
and contradictory: this, as a possible alternative, is
not to be altogether ignored. Albeit, everything
seems to point away from it; for, precisely in this
case, tradition would necessarily have been particu-
larly true and objective: whereas we have reasons
for assuming the reverse.
Meanwhile a yawning
chasm of contradiction separates the mountain, lake,
and pastoral preacher, who strikes us as a Buddha
## p. 168 (#188) ############################################
168
THE ANTICHRIST
(80 C
on a soil only very slightly Hindu, from that com-
bative fanatic, the mortal enemy of theologians and
priests, whom Renan's malice has glorified as “le
grand maître en ironie. ” For my part, I do not
doubt but what the greater part of this venom (and
even of esprit) was inoculated into the type of the
Master only as the outcome of the agitated con-
dition of Christian propaganda. For we have ample
reasons for knowing the unscrupulousness of all
sectarians when they wish to contrive their own
apology out of the person of their master. When
the first Christian community required a discerning,
wrangling, quarrelsome, malicious and hair-splitting
theologian, to oppose other theologians, it created
its “God” according to its needs; just as it did not
hesitate to put upon his lips those utterly unevan-
gelical ideas of “his second coming,” the “last judg-
ment,”-ideas with which it could not then dispense,
-and every kind of expectation and promise which
happened to be current.
1st
Christian
somwnity
was no
1
foratia
32
I can only repeat that I am opposed to the
importation of the fanatic into the type of the
Saviour: the word " impérieux," which Renan uses,
in itself annuls the type. The "glad tidings” are
simply that there are no longer any contradictions,
that the Kingdom of Heaven is for the children;
the faith which Taises its voice here is not a faith
that has been won by a struggle,-it is to hand, it
was there from the beginning, it is a sort of spiritual
return to childishness. The case of delayed and
undeveloped puberty in the organism, as the result
## p. 169 (#189) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
169
Childishness
of Heowen
of degeneration is at least familiar to physiologists.
A faith of this sort does not show anger, it does not
blame, neither does it defend itself: it does not
bring “the sword,”—it has no inkling of how it will
one day establish feuds between man and man. It
does not demonstrate itself, either by miracles, or
by reward and promises, or yet “through the scrip-
tures”: it is in itself at every moment its own
miracle, its own reward, its own proof, its own
“Kingdom of God. ” This faith cannot be formu-
lated — it lives, it guards against formulæ. The
accident of environment, of speech, of preparatory
culture, certainly determines a particular series of
conceptions : early Christianity deals only in Judæo-
Semitic conceptions (—the eating and drinking at
the last supper form part of these,—this idea which
-
like everything Jewish has been abused so mali-
ciously by the church). But one should guard
against seeing anything more than a language of
signs, semeiotics, an opportunity for parables in all
this. The very fact that no word is to be taken
literally, is the only condition on which this Anti-
realist is able to speak at all. Among Indians he
would have made use of the ideas of Sankhyam,
among Chinese, those of Lao-tze - and would not
have been aware of any difference. With a little
terminological laxity. Jesus might be called a "free
spirit”—he cares not a jot for anything that is
established: the word killeth, everything fixed
killeth. The idea, experience, “life" as he alone
knows it, is, according to him, opposed to every
kind of word, formula, law, faith and dogma. He
speaks only of the innermost things : -"life" or
_“
interesting
Jesus as
FREE
SPIRIT
## p. 170 (#190) ############################################
170
THE ANTICHRIST
His wisdon"
apainst
is
*
“truth,” or “light,” is his expression for the inner-
most thing,-everything else, the whole of reality,
the whole of nature, language even, has only the
value of a sign, of a simile for him. — It is of para-
mount importance not to make any mistake at this
point, however great may be the temptation there-
to that lies in Christian I mean to say, ecclesias-
tical prejudice. Any such essential symbolism
štands beyond the pale of all religion, all notions of
cult, all history, all natural science, all experience of
the world, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology,
all books and all Art for his "wisdom” is pre-
=
cisely the complete ignorance * of the existence of
such things. He has not even heard speak of
culture, he does not require to oppose it,—he does
not deny it. . . The same holds good of the state,
politle of the whole of civil and social order, of work and
of warthenever had any reason to deny the world,
he had not the vaguest notion of the ecclesiastical
concept “the world. " Denying is precisely
what was quite impossible to him. -Dialectic is also
quite absent, as likewise the idea that any faith, any
“ truth
can be proved by argument (his proof
are inner "lights," inward feelings of happiness and
self-affirmation, a host of "proofs of power
Neither can such a doctrine contradict, it does not
even realise the fact that there are or can be other
doctrines, it is absolutely incapable of imagining a
contrary judgment. Wherever it encounters
such things, from a feeling of profound sympathy it
.
o denial
of world
*" reine Thorheit" in the German text, referring once
again to Parsifal,—TR,
## p. 171 (#191) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
171
bemoans such “blindness,”—for it sees the “light,”
-but it raises no objections.
33
-
The whole psychology of the “gospels” lacks*
the concept of guilt and punishment, as also that
of reward. Sin,” any sort of aloofness between
God and man, is done away with,—this is precisely
what constitutes the "glad tidings. Eternal bliss
is not promised, it is not bound
is not bound up with certain
conditions ; it is the only reality—the rest consists
only of signs wherewith to speak about it.
The results of such a state project themselves
into a new practice of life, the actual evangelical
practice. It is not a "faith” which distinguishes
the Christians: the Christian acts, he distinguishes
himself by means of a different mode of action.
He does not resist his enemy either by words or
in his heart. He draws no distinction between
foreigners and natives, between Jews and Gentiles
(“ the neighbour” really means the co-religionist, intresting
the Jew). He is angry with no one, he despises no
He neither shows himself at the tribunals nor
does he acknowledge any of their claims (“Swear
not at all”). He never under any circumstances
divorces his wife, even when her infidelity has been
proved. --All this is at bottom one principle, it is all
the outcome of one instinct.
The life of the Saviour was naught else than Practice
this practice,-neither was his death. He no longer
required any formulæ, any rites for his relations
with God—not even prayer. He has done with all
one.
## p. 172 (#192) ############################################
172
THE ANTICHRIST
feel «
(
road to
God
»
in chroot
the Jewish teaching of repentance and of atonement;
che alone knows the mode of life which makes one
divine,"
”d saved,” “evangelical,” and at all
times a child of God. " Not "repentance,” not
prayer and
forgiveness are the roads to God:
the evangelical mode of life alone leads to God, it is
“God. ”—That which the gospels abolished was the
Judaism of the concepts “sin,” “forgiveness of
sin,” “ faith,” “salvation through faith,”—the whole
doctrine of the Jewish church was denied by the
“glad tidings. "
The profound instinct of how one must live in
order to feel“ in Heaven," in order to feel “eternal,”
while in every other respect one feels by no means
“in Heaven”: this alone is the psychological reality
a
(R
[img]
of “ Salvation. ” FA new life and not a new faith.
]
*
ino
Ifa
as
fo
GREAT
SYMBOLT
»
34
If I understand anything at all about this great
symbolist, it is this that be regarded only inner.
facts as facts, as "truths,”-that he understood the
rest, everything natural, temporal, material and
historical, only as signs, as opportunities for parables.
The concept “the Son of Man," is not a concrete
personality belonging to history, anything individual
and isolated, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological
@[ symbol divorced from the concept of time. The
same is true, and in the highest degree, of the God
of this typical symbolist, of the “ Kingdom of God,”
of the “Kingdom of Heaven," and of the “Sonship
of God. ” Nothing is more un-Christlike than the
ecclesiastical crudity of a personal God, of a King-
1
an Christonlike
**
## p. 173 (#193) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
173
Heaven” beyond
9)
Signs
/
Father son
church
dom of God that is coming, of a “Kingdom of
; of a “Son of God” as the second
person of the Trinity. All this, if I may be for-
given the expression, is as fitting as a square peg in
a round hole-and oh! what a hole ! —the gospels :
a world-historic cynicism in the scorn of symbols. . . .
But what is meant by the signs “Father” and
Son,” is of course obvious—not to everybody, I
admit: with the word "Son,” entrance into the
feeling of the general transfiguration of all things
(beatitude) is expressed, with the word “Father,"
this feeling itself, the feeling of eternity and of per-
fection. —1 blush to have to remind you of what
the Church has done with this symbolism : has it
not set an Amphitryon story at the threshold of the
Christian “faith”? And a dogma of immaculate
conception into the bargain ? . . . But by so doing
it defiled conception. --
The “Kingdom of Heaven” is a state of the heart *
-not something which exists“ beyond this earth”
or comes to you “after death. ” The whole idea of
natural death is lacking in the gospels. Death is
not a bridge, not a means of access : it is absent
because it belongs to quite a different and merely
(apparent world the only use of which is to furnish
signs, similes. The “hour of death" is not a Chris-
tian idea—the “hour," time in general, physical life
and its crises do not exist for the messenger of “glad
tidings. ” . . . The “Kingdom of God” is not some-
thing that is expected ; it has no yesterday nor any
day after to-morrow, it is not going to come in a
"thousand years ”-it is an experience of a human
heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere.
//
K. of te
a state
of hee
R'
P
apparent
vores
**
## p. 174 (#194) ############################################
174
Jesus
THE ANTICHRIST
evaluation
imp. posituie
an
.
35
This messenger of glad tidings” died as he lived
and as he taught—not in order “to save mankind,"
but in order to show how one ought to live. It was
a mode of life that he bequeathed to mankind : his
behaviour before his judges, his attitude towards his
executioners, his accusers, and all kinds of calumny
and scorn,-his demeanour on the cross. He offers
no resistance; he does not defend his rights; he
takes no step to ward off the most extreme conse-
quences, he does more,—he provokes them. And
he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who
treat him ill. . . . Not to defend one's self, not to
show anger, not to hold anyone responsible. .
But to refrain from resisting even the evil one—to
Tove him.
everying
-Only we spirits that have become free, possess
the necessary condition for understanding something
which nineteen centuries have misunderstood,—that
honesty which has become an instinct and a passion
in us, and which wages war upon the "holy lie” with
“
even more vigour than upon every other lie. .
Mankind was unspeakably far from our beneficent
and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the
mind, which, alone, renders the solution of such
strange and subtle things possible: at all times, with
shameless egoism, all that people sought was their
own advantage in these matters, the Church was
built up out of contradiction to the gospel.
Whoever might seek for signs pointing to the
guiding fingers of an ironical deity behind the great
36
free
spints
.
*
## p. 175 (#195) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
175
comedy of existence, would find no small argument
in the huge note of interrogation that is called ]
Christianity. The fact that mankind is on its knees
before the reverse of that which formed the origin,
the meaning and the rights of the gospel; the fact
that, in the idea “Church," precisely that is pro-
nounced holy which the “messenger of glad tidings”
regarded as beneath him, as behind him - one might
seek in vain for a more egregious example of world-
historic irony:
hotory of
Chistianity
= harstory of
symbohon
P)
37
historical sense C
Our age is proud of its historical sense how
could it allow itself to be convinced of the nonsensi-
cal idea that at the beginning Christianity consisted
only of the clumsy fable of the thaumaturgist and of
the Saviour, and that all its spiritual and symbolic
side was only developed later ? On the contrary :
the history of Christianity-from the death on the
cross onwards—is the history of a gradual and ever
coarser misunderstanding of an original symbolism.
With every extension of Christianity over ever
larger and fuder masses, who were ever less able to
grasp its first principles, the need of vulgarising and
barbarising it increased proportionately—itabsorbed
the teachings and rites of all the subterranean cults
of the imperium Romanum, as well as the nonsense
of every kind of morbid reasoning. The fatal
feature of Christianity lies in the necessary fact that
its faith had to become as morbid, base and vulgar
as the needs to which it had to minister were morbid,
base and vulgar. Morbid barbarism at last braces
itself together for power in the form of the Church
ruder masses"
## p. 176 (#196) ############################################
176
THE ANTICHRIST
-the Church, this deadly hostility to all honesty
to all loftiness of the soul, to all discipline of the
mind, to all frank and kindly humanity. —Christian
and noble values : only we spirits who have become
free have re-established this contrast in values which
is the greatest that has ever existed on earth! -
/
contrast
established
by free
spmns
38 l modern man
m)
despise
mon-of-tota
- I cannot, at this point, stifle a sigh. There are
days when I am visited by a feeling blacker than
the blackest melancholy—the contempt of man. And
in order that I may leave you in no doubt as to
what I despise, whom I despise: I declare that it is
the man of to-day, the man with whom I am fatally
contemporaneous. The man of to-day, T am as-
phyxiated by his foul breath. . . . Towards the
past, like all knights of knowledge, I am profoundly
tolerant,—that is to say, I exercise a sort of generous
self-control : with gloomy caution I pass through
whole millennia of this mad-house world, and
whether it be called “Christianity,"
“
“ Christian
Faith,” or “Christian Church," I take care not to
hold mankind responsible for its mental disorders.
But my feeling suddenly changes, and vents itself
the moment I enter the modern age, our age. Our
. . . That which formerly was merely
morbid, is now positively indecent. It is indecent
nowadays to be a Christian. And it is here that my
loathing begins. I look about me: not a word of
what was formerly known as “truth” has remained
standing; we can no longer endure to hear a priest
even pronounce the word "truth. ” Even he who
age knows. .
Indecent
,
to te
a chanthme
## p. 177 (#197) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
177
lie! !
makes but the most modest claims upon truth, must
know at present, that a theologian, a priest, or a
pope, not only errs but actually lies, with every word | Pope lies
,
that he utters,—and that he is no longer able to
lie from “innocence,” from “ignorance. ” Even the
priest knows quite as well as everybody else does
that there is no longer any. “God," any “sinner” or
any “Saviour," and that “free will,” and “a moral free will
order of the universe are lies. Seriousness, the
profound self-conquest of the spirit no longer allows
anyone to be ignorant about this. . . . All the con-
cepts of the Church have been revealed in their true
colours—that is to say, as the most vicious frauds on
earth, calculated to depreciate nature and all natural
values. The priest himself has been recognised as
what he is—that is to say, as the most dangerous
kind of parasite, as the actual venomous spider of
existence. At present we know, our conscience
knows, the real value of the gruesome inventions
which the priests and the Church have made, and
what end they served. By means of them that state
of self-profanation on the part of man has been
attained, the sight of which makes one heave. The
concepts “Beyond,” “Last Judgment,” “Immortality
of the Soul,” the “soul” itself, are merely so many
instruments of torture, so many systems of cruelty,
on the strength of which the priest became and
remained master.
tion of life, instead of being its transfiguration and
eternal Yea! With God war is declared on life,
nature, and the will to life! God is the formula for
every calumny of this world and for every lie con-
cerning a beyond In God, nonentity is deified,
and the will to nonentity is declared holy!
life
God=contradation,
of
19
The fact that the strong races of Northern Europe
did not repudiate the Christian God, certainly does
not do any credit to their religious power, not to
speak of their taste. They ought to have been able
successfully to cope with such a morbid and decrepit
offshoot of decadence. And a curse lies on their
heads; because they were unable to cope with him :
they made illness, decrepitude and contradiction a
part of all their instincts,--since then they have not
## p. 147 (#167) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
147
created any other God! Two thousand years have
passed and not a single new God! But still there
exists, and as if by right,-like an ultimum and
maximum of god-creating power,—the creator spiri-
tus in man, this miserable God of Christian mono-
tono-theism! This hybrid creature of decay, non-
entity, concept and contradiction, in which all the
instincts of decadence, all the cowardices and lan-
guors of the soul find their sanction !
--
20
Busshorn
-
With my condemnation of Christianity I should
not like to have done an injustice to a religion which
is related to it and the number of whose followers
is even greater; I refer to Buddhism. As nihilistic
religions, they are akin, — they are religions of
decadence, while each is separated from the other
in the most extraordinary fashion. For being able
to compare them at all, the critic of Christianity is
profoundly grateful to Indian scholars. -Buddhism
is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity
-it is part of its constitutional heritage to be able
to face problems objectively and coolly, it is the out-
come of centuries of lasting philosophical activity.
The concept “God” was already exploded when it
appeared. Buddhism is the only really positive
religion to be found in history, even in its epis-
temology (which is strict phenomenalism)—it no
longer speaks of the “ struggle with sin," but fully
recognising the true nature of reality it speaks of
the “struggle with pain. ” It already has—and this
distinguishes it fundamentally from Christianity,–
the self-deception of moral concepts beneath it,--to
## p. 148 (#168) ############################################
148
THE ANTICHRIST
use my own phraseology, it stands Beyond Good and
Evil. The two physiological facts upon which it
rests and upon which it bestows its attention are:
in the first place excessive irritability of feeling,
which manifests itself as a refined susceptibility to
pain, and also as super-spiritualisation, an all-too-
lengthy sojourn amid concepts and logical pro-
cedures, under the influence of which the personal
instinct has suffered in favour of the “impersonal. "
(-Both of these states will be known to a few of
my readers, the objective ones, who, like myself, will
know them from experience. ) Thanks to these
)
physiological conditions, a state of depression set
in, which Buddha sought to combat by means of
hygiene. Against it, he prescribes life in the open, a
life of travel; moderation and careful choice in food;
caution in regard to all intoxicating liquor, as also in
regard to all the passions which tend to create bile
and to heat the blood; and he deprecates care either
on one's own or on other people's account. He recom-
ménds ideas that bring one either peace or good
cheer,-he invents means whereby the habit of con-
trary ideas may be lost. He understands goodness
.
-being good—as promoting health. Prayer is out
of the question, as is also asceticism ; there is neither
a Categorical Imperative nor any discipline whatso-
ever, even within the walls of a monastery (-it is
always possible to leave it if one wants to). All
these things would have been only a means of
accentuating the excessive irritability already re-
ferred to. Precisely on this account he does not
exhort his followers to wage war upon those who
do not share their views; nothing is more abhorred
## p. 149 (#169) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
149
1
in his doctrine than the feeling of revenge, of aver-
sion, and of resentment (“not through hostility
doth hostility end”: the touching refrain of the
whole of Buddhism . . . ). And in this he was
right; for it is precisely these passions which are
thoroughly unhealthy in view of the principal
dietetic object. The mental fatigue which he finds
already existent and which expresses itself in exces-
sive “objectivity” (i. e. , the enfeeblement of the
individual's interest-loss of ballast and of “ego-
ism”), he combats by leading the spiritual interests
as well imperatively back to the individual. In
Buddha's doctrine egoism is a duty: the thing
which is above all necessary, i. e. , “how canst thou
be rid of suffering ” regulates and defines the whole
of the spiritual diet (let anyone but think of that
Athenian who also declared war upon pure “scien-
tificality,” Socrates, who made a morality out of
personal egoism even in the realm of problems).
21
The pre-requisites for Buddhism are a very
mild climate, great gentleness and liberality in
the customs of a people and no militarism. The
movement must also originate among the higher
and even learned classes. Cheerfulness, peace and
absence of desire, are the highest of inspirations,
and they are realised. Buddhism is not a religion
in which perfection is merely aspired to: perfection
is the normal case. In Christianity all the instincts
of the subjugated and oppressed come to the fore:
it is the lowest classes who seek their salvation in
this religion. Here the pastime, the manner of
lower
classes
## p. 150 (#170) ############################################
150
THE ANTICHRIST
X body
killing time is to practise the casuistry of sin, self-
criticism, and conscience inquisition. Here the
ecstasy in the presence of a powerful being, called
“ god,” is constantly maintained by means of
prayer ;
while the highest thing is regarded as un-
attainable, as a gift, as an act of “grace. ” Here
plain dealing is also entirely lacking : concealment
and the darkened room are Christian. Here the
body is despised, hygiene is repudiated as sensual;
the church repudiates even cleanliness (the first
Christian measure after the banishment of the
Moors was the closing of the public baths, of which
Cordova alone possessed 270). A certain spirit of
cruelty towards one's self and others is also Christian:
hatred of all those who do not share one's views;
the will to persecute. Sombre and exciting ideas
are in the foreground; the most coveted states and
those which are endowed with the finest names, are
really epileptic in their nature; diet is selected in
such a way as to favour morbid symptoms and
to over-excite the nerves. Christian, too, is the
.
mortal hatred of the earth's rulers,—the “noble,”-
and at the same time a sort of concealed and secret
competition with them (the subjugated leave the
“body” to their master-all they want is the
soul”). Christian is the hatred of the intellect, of
pride, of courage, freedom, intellectual libertinage ;
Christian is the hatred of the senses, of the joys of
the senses, of joy in general.
VERY
Persecutio
imp.
wton
of the online
X
22
When Christianity departed from its native soil,
which consisted of the lowest classes, the submerged
## p. 151 (#171) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
151
masses of the ancient world, and set forth in quest
of power among barbaric nations, it no longer met
with exhausted men but inwardly savage and self-
lacerating men the strong but bungled men.
Here, dissatisfaction with one's self, suffering
through one's self,is not as in the case of Bud-
dhism, excessive irritability and susceptibility to
pain, but rather, conversely, it is an inordinate
desire for inflicting pain, for a discharge of the inner
tension in hostile deeds and ideas. Christianity
was in need of barbaric ideas and values, in order
to be able to master barbarians: such are for in-
stance, the sacrifice of the first-born, the drinking
of blood at communion, the contempt of the intel-
lect and of culture; torture in all its forms, sensual
and non-sensual; the great pomp of the cult.
Buddhism is a religion for senile men, for races
which have become kind, gentle, and over-spiritual,
and which feel pain too easily (-Europe is not
nearly ripe for it yet—); it calls them back to
peace and cheerfulness, to a regimen for the intel-
lect, to a certain hardening of the body. Christianity
aims at mastering beasts oj prey; its expedie is
to make them ill,—to render feeble is the Christian
recipe for taming, for “civilisation. " Buddhism is
a religion for the close and exhaustion of civilisa-
tion; Christianity does not even find civilisation at
hand when it appears, in certain circumstances it
lays the foundation of civilisation.
a
키
23
Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times colder,
more truthful, more objective. It no longer requires
## p. 152 (#172) ############################################
152
THE ANTICHRIST
>
to justify pain and its susceptibility to suffering by
the interpretation of sin,-it simply says what it
thinks, “ I suffer. ” To the barbarian, on the other
hand, suffering in itself is not a respectable thing :
in order to acknowledge to himself that he suffers,
what he requires, in the first place, is an explanation
(his instinct directs him more readily to deny his
suffering, or to endure it in silence). In his case,
the word "devil” was a blessing: man had an
almighty and terrible enemy,—he had no reason to
be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an
enemy. -
At bottom there are in Christianity one or two
subtleties which belong to the Orient. In the first
place it knows that it is a matter of indifference
whether a thing be true or not; but that it is of the
highest importance that it should be believed to be
true. (Truth and the belief that something is true:
two totally separate worlds of interest, almost
opposite worlds, the road to the one and the road to
the other lie absolutely apart. J To be initiated into
this fact almost constitutes one a sage in the Orient :
the Brahmins understood it thus, so did Plato, and
so does every disciple of esoteric wisdom. If for
.
example it give anyone pleasure to believe himself
delivered from sin, it is not a necessary prerequisite
thereto that he should be sinful, but only that he
should feel sinful. / If, however, faith is above all
necessary. then reason, knowledge, and scientific
research must be brought into evil repute : the road
to truth becomes the forbidden road. -Strong hope
is a much greater stimulant of life than any single
realised joy could be. Sufferers must be sustained
*
Troth
Vs.
Belief
*
FATH
HOPE
## p. 153 (#173) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
153
LOVE
by a hone which no actuality can contradict,—and
which cannot ever be realised: the hope of another
world. (Precisely on account of this power that
hope has of making the unhappy linger on, the
Greeks regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most
mischievous evil : it remained behind in Pandora's
box. ) In order that love may be possible, God must
be a person.
In order that the lowest instincts may
also make their voices heard God must be young.
For the ardour of the women a beautiful saint, and
for the ardour of the men a Virgin Mary has to be
pressed into the foreground. All this on condition
that Christianity wishes to rule over a certain soil,
on which Aphrodisiac or Adonis cults had already
determined the notion of a cult. To insist upon
chastity only intensifies the vehemence and pro-
fundity of the religious instinct - it makes the cult
warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful. —Love is
the state in which man sees things most widely
different from what they are. The force of illusion
reaches its zenith here, as likewise the sweetening
and transfiguring power. When a man is in love
be endures more than at other times; he submits
to everything. The thing was to discover a religion
in which it was dossible to love by this means the
worstdin life is bvercome—it is no longer even seen.
So much for three Christian virtues Faith, Hope,
and Charity : I call them the three Christian precau-
tionary measures. —Buddhism is too full of aged
wisdom, too positivistic to be shrewd in this way.
-
-
Love
i
24
Here I only touch upon the problem of the origin
## p. 154 (#174) ############################################
154
THE ANTICHRIST
origin
*
-
(2)
a
* of Christianity. The first principle of its solution
reads: Christianity can be understood only in re-
lation to the soil out of which it grew,—it is not a,
counter-movement against the Jewish instinct, it is
the rational outcome of the latter, one step further.
in its appalling logic. In the formula of the Saviour:
for Salvation is of the Jews. ”—The second prin-
ciple is: the psychological type of the Galilean is
still recognisable, but it was only in a state of utter
degeneration (which is at once a distortion and an
overloading with foreign features) that he was able
to serve the purpose for which he has been used,-
namely, as the type of a Redeemer of mankind.
The Jews are the most remarkable people in the
history of the world, because when they were con-
fronted with the question of Being or non-Being,
with simply uncanny deliberateness, they preferred
Being at any price: this price was the fundamental
falsification of all Nature, all the naturalness and all
the reality, of the inner quite as much as of the outer
world. They hedged themselves in behind all those
conditions under which hitherto a people has been
able to live, has been allowed to live; of themselves
they created an idea which was the reverse of natural
conditions,—each in turn, they twisted first religion,
then the cult, then morality, history and psychology,
about in a manner so perfectly hopeless that they
were made to contradict their natural value. We
meet with the same phenomena again, and exag-
gerated to an incalculable degree, although only as a
* copy:—the Christian Church as compared with the
“chosen people," lacks all claim to originality. Pre-
cisely on this account the Jews are the most fatal
at
Being
any price
## p. 155 (#175) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
155
]
x
very
imp
6
a-
people in the history of the world: their ultimate
influence has falsified mankind to such an extent,
that even to this day the Christian can be anti-
Semitic in spirit, without comprehending that he
himself is the final consequence of Judaism.
It was in my “Genealogy of Morals” that I first
gave a psychological exposition of the idea of the
antithesis noble- and resentment-morality, the latter
having arisen out of an attitude of negation to the
former : but this is Judæo-Christian morality heart
and soul. In order to be able to say Nay to every,
thing that represents the ascending movement of
life, prosperity, power, beauty, and self-affirmation
on earth, the instinct of resentment, become genius,
had to invent another world, from the standpoint
of which that Yea-saying to life appeared as the
most evil and most abominable thing. From the
psychological standpoint the Jewish people are pos-
sessed of the toughest vitality. Transplanted amid
impossible conditions, with profound self-preserva-
tive intelligence, it voluntarily took the side of all
the instincts of decadence,—not as though domi-
nated by them, but because it detected a power in
them by means of which it could assert itself against
“the world. ” The Jews are the opposite of all de-
cadents : they have been forced to represent them
to the point of illusion, and with a non plus ultra of
histrionic genius, they have known how to set them-
selves at the head of all decadent movements (St
Paul and Christianity for instance), in order to create
something from them which is stronger than every
party saying Yea to life. For the category of men
which aspires to power in Judaism and Christianity,
ing
life
Jewisha
toughest
Vitality
*
Jews
opposite
of all
decordent
## p. 156 (#176) ############################################
156
THE ANTICHRIST
-that is to say, for the sacerdotal class, decadence
is but a means: this category of men has a vital
interest in making men sick, and in turning the
notions “good” and “bad,”“ true” and “false,"upside
down in a manner which is not only dangerous to
life, but also slanders it.
25
The history of Israel is invaluable as the typical
history of every denaturalisation of natural values :
let me point to five facts which relate thereto. Ori-
ginally, and above all in the period of the kings,
even Israel's attitude to all things was the right one
that is to say, the natural one. Its Jehovah was
the expression of its consciousness of power, of its
joy over itself, of its hope for itself: victory and
salvation were expected from him, through him it
was confident that Nature would give what a people
requires-above all rain. Jehovah is the God of
Israel, and consequently the God of justice : this is
the reasoning of every people which is in the position
of
power, and which has a good conscience in that
position. In the solemn cult both sides of this self-
affirmation of a people find expression : it is grateful
for the great strokes of fate by means of which it
became uppermost; it is grateful for the regularity
in the succession of the seasons and for all good
fortune in the rearing of cattle and in the tilling of
the soil. —This state of affairs remained the ideal for
some considerable time, even after it had been swept
away in a deplorable manner by anarchy from within
and the Assyrians from without. But the people
still retained, as their highest desideratum, that vision
Jehovahy
## p. 157 (#177) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
157
?
.
.
of a king who was a good soldier and a severe judge;
and he who retained it most of all was that typical
prophet (that is to say, critic and satirist of the
age), Isaiah. —But all hopes remained unrealised.
The old God was no longer able to do what he had *
done formerly. He ought to have been dropped.
What happened? The idea of him was changed, -] interpretation
the idea of him was denaturalised : this was the price
they paid for retaining him. - Jehovah, the God of
'Justice,"—is no longer one with Israel, no longer
the expression of a people's sense of dignity: he is
only a god on certain conditions. The idea of
him becomes a weapon in the hands of priestly
agitators who henceforth interpret all happiness as
a reward, all unhappiness as a punishment for dis-
obedience to God, for “sin”: that most fraudulent
method of interpretation which arrives at a so-called
“moral order of the Universe,” by means of which
the concept "cause" and "effect” is turned upside
down. Once natural causation has been swept out
of the world by reward and punishment, a causation
hostile to nature becomes necessary; whereupon all the
forms of unnaturalness follow. A God who demands,
-in the place of a God who helps, who advises, who
is at bottom only a name for every happy inspiration
of courage and of self-reliance. . . . Morality is no
longer the expression of the conditions of life and
growth, no longer the most fundamental instinct of
life, but it has become abstract, it has become the
opposite of life, -Morality as the fundamental per-
version of the imagination, as the "evil eye” for all
things. What is Jewish morality, what is Christian
morality ? Chance robbed or its innocence; unhappi-
a
Morality
becoming
opposite
life
-
## p. 158 (#178) ############################################
158
THE ANTICHRIST
ness polluted with the idea of "sin"; well-being
interpreted as a danger, as a “temptation”; physio-
logicalindisposition poisoned by means of the canker-
worm of conscience. . . .
26
oipon of
Bible
The concept of God falsified; the concept of
;
morality falsified: but the Jewish priesthood did
not stop at this. No use could be made of the
whole history of Israel, therefore it must go! These
priests accomplished that miracle of falsification, of
* which the greater part of the Bible is the document:
with unparalleled contempt and in the teeth of all
tradition and historical facts, they interpreted their
own people's past in a religious manner,—that is to
say, they converted it into a ridiculous mechanical
process of salvation, on the principle that all sin
against Jehovah led to punishment, and that all pious
worship of Jehovah led to reward. Wewould feel this
shameful act of historical falsification far more poig-
nantly if the ecclesiastical interpretation of history
through millenniums had not blunted almost all our
sense for the demands of uprightness in historicis.
And the church is seconded by the philosophers:
the lie of “a moral order of the universe" per-
meates the whole development even of more modern
philosophy. What does a “moral order of the uni-
verse" mean? That once and for all there is such
a thing as a will of God which determines what man
has to do and what he has to leave undone; that the
value of a 'people or of an individual is measured
according to how much or how little the one or the
other obeys the will of God; that in the destinies
»
philosopher
## p. 159 (#179) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
159
of a people or of an individual, the will of God
shows itself dominant, that is to say it punishes or
rewards according to the degree of obedience. In
the place of this miserable falsehood, reality says: a
parasitical type of man, who can flourish only
at the cost of all the healthy elements of life, the
priest abuses the name of God: he calls that state
of affairs in which the priest determines the value of
things "the Kingdom of God”; he calls the means
whereby such a state of affairs is attained or main-
tained, “the Will of God”; with cold blooded
cynicism he measures peoples, ages and individuals
according to whether they favour or oppose the
ascendancy of the priesthood. Watch him at work:
in the hands of the Jewish priesthood the Augustan
Age in the history of Israel became an age of
decline; the exile, the protracted misfortune trans-
formed itself into eternal punishment for the
Augustan Age—that age in which the priest did
not yet exist. Out of the mighty and thoroughly
free-born figures of the history of Israel, they made,
according to their requirements, either wretched
bigots and hypocrites, or “godless ones”: they
simplified the psychology of every great event to
the idiotic formula "obedient or disobedient to
God. ”—A step further : the “Will of God," that is
to say the self-preservative measures of the priest-
hood, must be known-to this end a "revelation”
is necessary. In plain English: a stupendous literat
ary fraud becomes necessary, “holy scriptures" are
discovered, and they are published abroad with all
hieratic pomp, with days of penance and lamenta-
tions over the long state of “sin. ” The “Will of
>
imp
dscovery
of
scaphire
## p. 160 (#180) ############################################
160
THE ANTICHRIST
God” has long stood firm : the whole of the trouble
lies in the fact that the “Holy Scriptures” have
been discarded. . . . Moses was already the “ Will
of God” revealed.
What had happened ?
With severity and pedantry, the priest had formu-
lated once and for all—even to the largest and
smallest contributions that were to be paid to him
(-not forgetting the daintiest portions of meat;
for the priest is a consumer of beef-steaks)—what
he wanted,“ what the Will of God was. ” . . . Hence-
forward everything became so arranged that the
priests were indispensable everywhere. At all the
naturał events of life, at birth, at marriage, at the
sick-bed, at death,—not to speak of the sacrifice
(“ the meal")—the holy parasite appears in order
to denaturalise, or in his language, to "sarctify,"
* everything. - . For this should be understood :
every natural custom, every natural institution (the
State, the administration of justice, marriage, the
care of the sick and the poor), every demand in-
spired by the instinct of life, in short everything
that has a value in itself, is rendered absolutely
worthless and even dangerous through the parasitism
of the priest (or of the “moral order of the uni-
verse"): a sanction after the fact is required, -a
power which imparts value is necessary, which in so
doing says, Nay to nature, and which by this means
alone creates a valuation.
The priest depre-
ciates and desecrates nature: it is only at this price
that he exists at all. —Disobedience to God, that
is to say, to the priest, to the “law," now receives
the name of “sin”, the means of “reconciling one's
self with God” are of course of a nature which Sit
.
.
a
as
existence
of Priest
nesution
Nature
of
disol
to
pre
## p. 161 (#181) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
161
render subordination to the priesthood all the more
fundamental : the priest alone is able to "save. ”. . .
From the psychological standpoint, in every society
organised upon a hieratic basis, "sins” are indis-
pensable: they are the actual weapons of power,
the priest lives upon sins, it is necessary for him
that people should “sin. ” Supreme axiom :
“God forgiveth him that repenteth"_in plain
English : him that submitteth himself to the priest. very
.
.
very good
27
Christianity grew out of an utterly false soil, in
which all nature, every natural value, every reality
had the deepest instincts of the ruling class against
it; it was a form of deadly hostility to reality which
*
has never been surpassed. The “holy people” which
had retained only priestly values and priestly names
for all things, and which, with a logical consistency
that is terrifying, had divorced itself from every-
thing still powerful on earth as if it were “unholy,"
“worldly," "sinful,”—this people created a final
formula for its instinct which was consistent to the
point of self-suppression ; as Christianity it denied
even the last form of reality, the “holy people,” the
“ chosen people,” Jewish reality itself. The case is
of supreme interest: the small insurrectionary move-
ment christened with the name of Jesus of Nazareth,
is the Jewish instinct over again, — in other words,
in other words, I wery
it is the sacerdotal instinct which can no longer
endure the priest as a fact; it is the discovery of a
kind of life even more fantastic than the one pre-
viously conceived, a vision of life which is even
more unreal than that which the organisation
positie
rebelhaus
expect of
hustsant
intrestury
on
Jens
II
## p. 162 (#182) ############################################
162
THE ANTICHRIST
76
Hobbesian
[in sense?
SOCIETY
* of a church stipulates. Christianity denies the
church.
*
I fail to see against whom was directed the insur-
rection of which rightly or wrongly Jesus is under-
stood to have been the promoter, if it were not
directed against the Jewish church, the word
church” being used here in precisely the same
sense in which it is used to-day It was an insurrec-
tion against the “good and the just,” against the
"prophets of Israel," against the hierarchy of society
—not against the latter's corruption, but against
caste, privilege, order, formality. It was the lack of
faith in “higher men," it was a “Nay”uttered against
everything that was tinctured with the blood of
priests and theologians. But the hierarchy which
was set in question if only temporarily by this
movement, formed the construction of piles upon
which, alone, the Jewish people was able to sub-
sist in the midst of the "waters”; it was that
people's last chance of survival wrested from the
world at enormous pains, the residuum of its political
autonomy: to attack this construction was tanta-
mount to attacking the most profound popular
instinct, the most tenacious national will to live
that has ever existed on earth. ] This saintly anar-
chist who called the lowest of the low, the outcasts
and “sinners,” the Chandala of Judaism, to revolt
against the established order of things (and in
hapher man
very
imp
* It will be seen from this that in spite of Nietzsche's ruth-
less criticism of the priests, he draws a sharp distinction
between Christianity and the Church, As the latter still
contained elements of order, it was more to his taste than the
denial of authority characteristic of real Christianity. -TR,
## p. 163 (#183) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
163
political
criminal
&
community
language which, if the gospels are to be trusted,
would get one sent to Siberia even to-day)—this
man was a political criminal in so far as political
criminals were possible in a community so absurdly
non-political. This brought him to the cross: the
proof of this is the inscription found thereon. He
died for his sins — and no matter how often the
contrary has been asserted there is absolutely
nothing to show that he died for the sins of others.
culique of
*
history
28
As to whether he was conscious of this contrast,
or whether he was merely regarded as such, is quite
another question. And here, alone, do I touch upon
the problem of the psychology of the Saviour. -I
confess there are few books which I have as much
difficulty in reading as the gospels. These diffi-
culties are quite different from those which allowed
the learned curiosity of the German mind to cele-
brate one of its most memorable triumphs. Many
years have now elapsed since I, like every young
scholar, with the sage conscientiousness of a refined
a
philologist, relished the work of the incomparable
Strauss. I was then twenty years of age; now I
am too serious for that sort of thing. What do
I care about the contradictions of “tradition"?
How
can saintly legends be called “tradition” at all!
The stories of saints constitute the most ambiguous
literature on earth: to apply the scientific method
to them, when there are no other documents to hand,
seems to me to be a fatal procedure from the start
-simply learned fooling.
Х
Scientific
method
*
Imo
## p. 164 (#184) ############################################
164
THE ANTICHRIST
TYPE
29
The point that concerns me is the psychological
type of the Saviour. This type might be contained
the gospels, in spite of the gospels, and however
much it may have been mutilated, or overladen with
foreign features : just as that of Francis of Assisi is
contained in his legends in spite of his legends. It
is not a question of the truth concerning what he has
done, what he has said, and how he actually died;
but whether his type may still be conceived in any
way, whether it has been handed down to us at all?
-The attempts which to my knowledge have been
made to read the history of a “soul” out of the
gospels, seem to me to point only to disreputable
levity in psychological matters. M. Renan, that
buffoon in psychologicis, has contributed the two
most monstrous ideas imaginable to the explana-
tion of the type of Jesus: the idea of the genius and
the idea of the hero (“ héros ”). But if there is any-
thing thoroughly unevangelical surely it is the idea
of the hero. It is precisely the reverse of all struggle,
of all consciousness of taking part in the fight, that
has become instinctive here: the inability to resist
X is here converted into a morality (“ resist not evil,"
the profoundest sentence in the whole of the gospels,
their key in a certain sense), the blessedness of peace,
of gentleness, of not being able to be an enemy. What
is the meaning of “glad tidings"? —True life, eternal
life has been found—it is not promised, it is actually
here, it is in you ; it is life in love, in love free from
all selection or exclusion, free from all distance.
Everybody is the child of God - Jesus does not by
benins
>Hero
X
imp
## p. 165 (#185) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
165
. ! funny!
a
historical
interpretation
spirit & Jesus
.
any means claim anything for himself alone,--as
the child of God everybody is equal to everybody
else (Fancy making Jesus a hiero? And what
a tremendous misunderstanding the word “
"genius”
is! Our whole idea of “spirit,” which is a civilised
idea, could have had no meaning whatever in the
world in which Jesus lived. In the strict terms of
the physiologist, a very different word ought to be
used here. . . . We know of a condition of morbid
irritability of the sense of touch, which recoils shud-
dering from every kind of contact, and from every
attempt at grasping a solid object. Any such physio-
logical habitus reduced to its ultimate logical conclu-
sion, becomes an instinctive hatred of all reality, a
flight into the "intangible,” into the “incomprehens-
ible”; a repugnance to all formulæ, to every notion
of time and space, to everything that is established
such as customs, institutions, the church ; a feeling
at one's ease in a world in which no sign of reality
is any longer visible, a merely “inner” world, a
"true" world, an “eternal” world. . . . “The King-
“"
dom of God is within you. ”.
very
interesting
9
.
R
30
The instinctive hatred of reality is the outcome of
an extreme susceptibility to pain and to irritation,
which can no longer endure to be "touched" at alt,
because every sensation strikes too deep.
The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, of all hos-
tility of all boundaries and distances in feeling, is the
outcome of an extreme susceptibility to pain and to
irritation, which regards all resistance, all compul-
sory resistance as insufferable anguish (that is to
*
## p. 166 (#186) ############################################
166
THE ANTICHRIST
a
say, as harmful, as deprecated by the self-preservative
instinct), and which knows blessedness (happiness)
only when it is no longer obliged to offer resistance
to anybody, either evil or detrimental,—love as the
only ultimate possibility of life.
These are the two physiological realities upon which
and out of which the doctrine of salvation has grown.
I call them a sublime further development of hedon-
ism, upon a thoroughly morbid soil. Epicureanism,
the pagan theory of salvation, even though it pos-
sessed a large proportion of Greek vitality and
nervous energy, remains the most closely related to
the above. Epicurus was a typical decadent: and
I was the first to recognise him as such. —The terror
of pain, even of infinitely slight pain—such a state
cannot possibly help culminating in a religion of
love. . . .
31
I have given my reply to the problem in advance.
The prerequisite thereto was the admission of the
fact that the type of the Saviour has reached us
only in a very distorted form. This distortion in
itself is extremely feasible: for many reasons a type
of that kind could not be pure, whole, and free from
additions. The environment in which this strange
figure moved, must have left its mark upon him, and
the history, the destiny of the first Christian com-
munities must have done so to a still greater degree.
Thanks to that destiny, the type must have been
enriched retrospectively with features which can be
interpreted only as serving the purposes of war and
of propaganda. That strange and morbid world into
which the gospels lead us—a world which seems to
## p. 167 (#187) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
167
le
imp.
-
.
have been drawn from a Russian novel, where the
scum and dross of society, diseases of the nerves
and "childish” imbecility seem to have given each
other rendezvous—must in any case have coarsened
the type: the first disciples, especially must have
translated an existence conceived entirely in sym-
bols and abstractions into their own crudities, in
order at least to be able to understand something
about it,-for_them the type existed only after it
had been cast in a more familiar mould. . . The
prophet, the Messiah, the future judge, the teacher
of morals, the thaumaturgist, John the Baptist-all
these were but so many opportunities of misunder-
standing the type. . . . Finally, let us not under-
rate the proprium of all great and especially sectarian
veneration : very often it effaces from the venerated
object, all the original and frequently painfully un-
familiar traits and idiosyncrasies—it does not even see
them. It is greatly to be deplored that no Dostoi-
ewsky lived in the neighbourhood of this most in-
teresting decadent -I mean someone who would
have known how to feel the poignant charm of such
a mixture of the sublime, the morbid, and the child-
like. Finally, the type, as an example of decadenci:,
may actually have been extraordinarily multifarious
and contradictory: this, as a possible alternative, is
not to be altogether ignored. Albeit, everything
seems to point away from it; for, precisely in this
case, tradition would necessarily have been particu-
larly true and objective: whereas we have reasons
for assuming the reverse.
Meanwhile a yawning
chasm of contradiction separates the mountain, lake,
and pastoral preacher, who strikes us as a Buddha
## p. 168 (#188) ############################################
168
THE ANTICHRIST
(80 C
on a soil only very slightly Hindu, from that com-
bative fanatic, the mortal enemy of theologians and
priests, whom Renan's malice has glorified as “le
grand maître en ironie. ” For my part, I do not
doubt but what the greater part of this venom (and
even of esprit) was inoculated into the type of the
Master only as the outcome of the agitated con-
dition of Christian propaganda. For we have ample
reasons for knowing the unscrupulousness of all
sectarians when they wish to contrive their own
apology out of the person of their master. When
the first Christian community required a discerning,
wrangling, quarrelsome, malicious and hair-splitting
theologian, to oppose other theologians, it created
its “God” according to its needs; just as it did not
hesitate to put upon his lips those utterly unevan-
gelical ideas of “his second coming,” the “last judg-
ment,”-ideas with which it could not then dispense,
-and every kind of expectation and promise which
happened to be current.
1st
Christian
somwnity
was no
1
foratia
32
I can only repeat that I am opposed to the
importation of the fanatic into the type of the
Saviour: the word " impérieux," which Renan uses,
in itself annuls the type. The "glad tidings” are
simply that there are no longer any contradictions,
that the Kingdom of Heaven is for the children;
the faith which Taises its voice here is not a faith
that has been won by a struggle,-it is to hand, it
was there from the beginning, it is a sort of spiritual
return to childishness. The case of delayed and
undeveloped puberty in the organism, as the result
## p. 169 (#189) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
169
Childishness
of Heowen
of degeneration is at least familiar to physiologists.
A faith of this sort does not show anger, it does not
blame, neither does it defend itself: it does not
bring “the sword,”—it has no inkling of how it will
one day establish feuds between man and man. It
does not demonstrate itself, either by miracles, or
by reward and promises, or yet “through the scrip-
tures”: it is in itself at every moment its own
miracle, its own reward, its own proof, its own
“Kingdom of God. ” This faith cannot be formu-
lated — it lives, it guards against formulæ. The
accident of environment, of speech, of preparatory
culture, certainly determines a particular series of
conceptions : early Christianity deals only in Judæo-
Semitic conceptions (—the eating and drinking at
the last supper form part of these,—this idea which
-
like everything Jewish has been abused so mali-
ciously by the church). But one should guard
against seeing anything more than a language of
signs, semeiotics, an opportunity for parables in all
this. The very fact that no word is to be taken
literally, is the only condition on which this Anti-
realist is able to speak at all. Among Indians he
would have made use of the ideas of Sankhyam,
among Chinese, those of Lao-tze - and would not
have been aware of any difference. With a little
terminological laxity. Jesus might be called a "free
spirit”—he cares not a jot for anything that is
established: the word killeth, everything fixed
killeth. The idea, experience, “life" as he alone
knows it, is, according to him, opposed to every
kind of word, formula, law, faith and dogma. He
speaks only of the innermost things : -"life" or
_“
interesting
Jesus as
FREE
SPIRIT
## p. 170 (#190) ############################################
170
THE ANTICHRIST
His wisdon"
apainst
is
*
“truth,” or “light,” is his expression for the inner-
most thing,-everything else, the whole of reality,
the whole of nature, language even, has only the
value of a sign, of a simile for him. — It is of para-
mount importance not to make any mistake at this
point, however great may be the temptation there-
to that lies in Christian I mean to say, ecclesias-
tical prejudice. Any such essential symbolism
štands beyond the pale of all religion, all notions of
cult, all history, all natural science, all experience of
the world, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology,
all books and all Art for his "wisdom” is pre-
=
cisely the complete ignorance * of the existence of
such things. He has not even heard speak of
culture, he does not require to oppose it,—he does
not deny it. . . The same holds good of the state,
politle of the whole of civil and social order, of work and
of warthenever had any reason to deny the world,
he had not the vaguest notion of the ecclesiastical
concept “the world. " Denying is precisely
what was quite impossible to him. -Dialectic is also
quite absent, as likewise the idea that any faith, any
“ truth
can be proved by argument (his proof
are inner "lights," inward feelings of happiness and
self-affirmation, a host of "proofs of power
Neither can such a doctrine contradict, it does not
even realise the fact that there are or can be other
doctrines, it is absolutely incapable of imagining a
contrary judgment. Wherever it encounters
such things, from a feeling of profound sympathy it
.
o denial
of world
*" reine Thorheit" in the German text, referring once
again to Parsifal,—TR,
## p. 171 (#191) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
171
bemoans such “blindness,”—for it sees the “light,”
-but it raises no objections.
33
-
The whole psychology of the “gospels” lacks*
the concept of guilt and punishment, as also that
of reward. Sin,” any sort of aloofness between
God and man, is done away with,—this is precisely
what constitutes the "glad tidings. Eternal bliss
is not promised, it is not bound
is not bound up with certain
conditions ; it is the only reality—the rest consists
only of signs wherewith to speak about it.
The results of such a state project themselves
into a new practice of life, the actual evangelical
practice. It is not a "faith” which distinguishes
the Christians: the Christian acts, he distinguishes
himself by means of a different mode of action.
He does not resist his enemy either by words or
in his heart. He draws no distinction between
foreigners and natives, between Jews and Gentiles
(“ the neighbour” really means the co-religionist, intresting
the Jew). He is angry with no one, he despises no
He neither shows himself at the tribunals nor
does he acknowledge any of their claims (“Swear
not at all”). He never under any circumstances
divorces his wife, even when her infidelity has been
proved. --All this is at bottom one principle, it is all
the outcome of one instinct.
The life of the Saviour was naught else than Practice
this practice,-neither was his death. He no longer
required any formulæ, any rites for his relations
with God—not even prayer. He has done with all
one.
## p. 172 (#192) ############################################
172
THE ANTICHRIST
feel «
(
road to
God
»
in chroot
the Jewish teaching of repentance and of atonement;
che alone knows the mode of life which makes one
divine,"
”d saved,” “evangelical,” and at all
times a child of God. " Not "repentance,” not
prayer and
forgiveness are the roads to God:
the evangelical mode of life alone leads to God, it is
“God. ”—That which the gospels abolished was the
Judaism of the concepts “sin,” “forgiveness of
sin,” “ faith,” “salvation through faith,”—the whole
doctrine of the Jewish church was denied by the
“glad tidings. "
The profound instinct of how one must live in
order to feel“ in Heaven," in order to feel “eternal,”
while in every other respect one feels by no means
“in Heaven”: this alone is the psychological reality
a
(R
[img]
of “ Salvation. ” FA new life and not a new faith.
]
*
ino
Ifa
as
fo
GREAT
SYMBOLT
»
34
If I understand anything at all about this great
symbolist, it is this that be regarded only inner.
facts as facts, as "truths,”-that he understood the
rest, everything natural, temporal, material and
historical, only as signs, as opportunities for parables.
The concept “the Son of Man," is not a concrete
personality belonging to history, anything individual
and isolated, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological
@[ symbol divorced from the concept of time. The
same is true, and in the highest degree, of the God
of this typical symbolist, of the “ Kingdom of God,”
of the “Kingdom of Heaven," and of the “Sonship
of God. ” Nothing is more un-Christlike than the
ecclesiastical crudity of a personal God, of a King-
1
an Christonlike
**
## p. 173 (#193) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
173
Heaven” beyond
9)
Signs
/
Father son
church
dom of God that is coming, of a “Kingdom of
; of a “Son of God” as the second
person of the Trinity. All this, if I may be for-
given the expression, is as fitting as a square peg in
a round hole-and oh! what a hole ! —the gospels :
a world-historic cynicism in the scorn of symbols. . . .
But what is meant by the signs “Father” and
Son,” is of course obvious—not to everybody, I
admit: with the word "Son,” entrance into the
feeling of the general transfiguration of all things
(beatitude) is expressed, with the word “Father,"
this feeling itself, the feeling of eternity and of per-
fection. —1 blush to have to remind you of what
the Church has done with this symbolism : has it
not set an Amphitryon story at the threshold of the
Christian “faith”? And a dogma of immaculate
conception into the bargain ? . . . But by so doing
it defiled conception. --
The “Kingdom of Heaven” is a state of the heart *
-not something which exists“ beyond this earth”
or comes to you “after death. ” The whole idea of
natural death is lacking in the gospels. Death is
not a bridge, not a means of access : it is absent
because it belongs to quite a different and merely
(apparent world the only use of which is to furnish
signs, similes. The “hour of death" is not a Chris-
tian idea—the “hour," time in general, physical life
and its crises do not exist for the messenger of “glad
tidings. ” . . . The “Kingdom of God” is not some-
thing that is expected ; it has no yesterday nor any
day after to-morrow, it is not going to come in a
"thousand years ”-it is an experience of a human
heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere.
//
K. of te
a state
of hee
R'
P
apparent
vores
**
## p. 174 (#194) ############################################
174
Jesus
THE ANTICHRIST
evaluation
imp. posituie
an
.
35
This messenger of glad tidings” died as he lived
and as he taught—not in order “to save mankind,"
but in order to show how one ought to live. It was
a mode of life that he bequeathed to mankind : his
behaviour before his judges, his attitude towards his
executioners, his accusers, and all kinds of calumny
and scorn,-his demeanour on the cross. He offers
no resistance; he does not defend his rights; he
takes no step to ward off the most extreme conse-
quences, he does more,—he provokes them. And
he prays, suffers and loves with those, in those, who
treat him ill. . . . Not to defend one's self, not to
show anger, not to hold anyone responsible. .
But to refrain from resisting even the evil one—to
Tove him.
everying
-Only we spirits that have become free, possess
the necessary condition for understanding something
which nineteen centuries have misunderstood,—that
honesty which has become an instinct and a passion
in us, and which wages war upon the "holy lie” with
“
even more vigour than upon every other lie. .
Mankind was unspeakably far from our beneficent
and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the
mind, which, alone, renders the solution of such
strange and subtle things possible: at all times, with
shameless egoism, all that people sought was their
own advantage in these matters, the Church was
built up out of contradiction to the gospel.
Whoever might seek for signs pointing to the
guiding fingers of an ironical deity behind the great
36
free
spints
.
*
## p. 175 (#195) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
175
comedy of existence, would find no small argument
in the huge note of interrogation that is called ]
Christianity. The fact that mankind is on its knees
before the reverse of that which formed the origin,
the meaning and the rights of the gospel; the fact
that, in the idea “Church," precisely that is pro-
nounced holy which the “messenger of glad tidings”
regarded as beneath him, as behind him - one might
seek in vain for a more egregious example of world-
historic irony:
hotory of
Chistianity
= harstory of
symbohon
P)
37
historical sense C
Our age is proud of its historical sense how
could it allow itself to be convinced of the nonsensi-
cal idea that at the beginning Christianity consisted
only of the clumsy fable of the thaumaturgist and of
the Saviour, and that all its spiritual and symbolic
side was only developed later ? On the contrary :
the history of Christianity-from the death on the
cross onwards—is the history of a gradual and ever
coarser misunderstanding of an original symbolism.
With every extension of Christianity over ever
larger and fuder masses, who were ever less able to
grasp its first principles, the need of vulgarising and
barbarising it increased proportionately—itabsorbed
the teachings and rites of all the subterranean cults
of the imperium Romanum, as well as the nonsense
of every kind of morbid reasoning. The fatal
feature of Christianity lies in the necessary fact that
its faith had to become as morbid, base and vulgar
as the needs to which it had to minister were morbid,
base and vulgar. Morbid barbarism at last braces
itself together for power in the form of the Church
ruder masses"
## p. 176 (#196) ############################################
176
THE ANTICHRIST
-the Church, this deadly hostility to all honesty
to all loftiness of the soul, to all discipline of the
mind, to all frank and kindly humanity. —Christian
and noble values : only we spirits who have become
free have re-established this contrast in values which
is the greatest that has ever existed on earth! -
/
contrast
established
by free
spmns
38 l modern man
m)
despise
mon-of-tota
- I cannot, at this point, stifle a sigh. There are
days when I am visited by a feeling blacker than
the blackest melancholy—the contempt of man. And
in order that I may leave you in no doubt as to
what I despise, whom I despise: I declare that it is
the man of to-day, the man with whom I am fatally
contemporaneous. The man of to-day, T am as-
phyxiated by his foul breath. . . . Towards the
past, like all knights of knowledge, I am profoundly
tolerant,—that is to say, I exercise a sort of generous
self-control : with gloomy caution I pass through
whole millennia of this mad-house world, and
whether it be called “Christianity,"
“
“ Christian
Faith,” or “Christian Church," I take care not to
hold mankind responsible for its mental disorders.
But my feeling suddenly changes, and vents itself
the moment I enter the modern age, our age. Our
. . . That which formerly was merely
morbid, is now positively indecent. It is indecent
nowadays to be a Christian. And it is here that my
loathing begins. I look about me: not a word of
what was formerly known as “truth” has remained
standing; we can no longer endure to hear a priest
even pronounce the word "truth. ” Even he who
age knows. .
Indecent
,
to te
a chanthme
## p. 177 (#197) ############################################
A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY
177
lie! !
makes but the most modest claims upon truth, must
know at present, that a theologian, a priest, or a
pope, not only errs but actually lies, with every word | Pope lies
,
that he utters,—and that he is no longer able to
lie from “innocence,” from “ignorance. ” Even the
priest knows quite as well as everybody else does
that there is no longer any. “God," any “sinner” or
any “Saviour," and that “free will,” and “a moral free will
order of the universe are lies. Seriousness, the
profound self-conquest of the spirit no longer allows
anyone to be ignorant about this. . . . All the con-
cepts of the Church have been revealed in their true
colours—that is to say, as the most vicious frauds on
earth, calculated to depreciate nature and all natural
values. The priest himself has been recognised as
what he is—that is to say, as the most dangerous
kind of parasite, as the actual venomous spider of
existence. At present we know, our conscience
knows, the real value of the gruesome inventions
which the priests and the Church have made, and
what end they served. By means of them that state
of self-profanation on the part of man has been
attained, the sight of which makes one heave. The
concepts “Beyond,” “Last Judgment,” “Immortality
of the Soul,” the “soul” itself, are merely so many
instruments of torture, so many systems of cruelty,
on the strength of which the priest became and
remained master.
