The Will to Power. Friedrich Nietzsche

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СКАЧАТЬ in its ruling classes; the people who upheld primitive Christianity are best dis tinguished by this exJiausted condition of their instincts. On the one hand, they are sick of every thing; on the other, they are content with each other, with themselves and for themselves.

      181. Christianity regarded as emancipated Judaism (just as a nobility which is both racial and in digenous ultimately emancipates itself from these conditions, and goes in search of kindred elements. . . .). (1) As a Church (community) on the territory of the State, as an unpolitical institution. (2) As life, breeding, practice, art of living. (3) As a religion of sin (sin committed against God, being the only recognized kind, and the only cause of all suffering), with a universal cure for it. There is no sin save against God; what is done against men, man shall not sit in judgment upon, nor call to account, except in the name of God. At the same time, all commandments (love): everything is associated with God, and all acts are performed according to God s will. Beneath this arrangement there lies exceptional intelligence (a very narrow life, such as that led by the 152 Esquimaux, can only be endured by most peaceful and indulgent people: the Judaeo-Christian dogma turns against sin in favour of the " sinner ").

      182. The Jewish priesthood understood how to present everything it claimed to be right as a divine precept, as an act of obedience to God, and also to introduce all those things which conduced to preserve Israel and were the conditions of its existence (for instance: the large number of " works ": circumcision and the cult of sacrifices, as the very pivot of the national conscience), not as Nature, but as God. This process continued; within the very heart of Judaism, where the need of these " works " was not felt (that is to say, as a means of keeping a race distinct), a priestly sort of man was pictured, whose bearing towards the aristocracy was like that of " noble nature "; a sacerdotalism of the soul, which now, in order to throw its opposite into strong relief, attaches value, not to the " dutiful acts " themselves, but to the sentiment. . . . At bottom, the problem was once again, how to make a certain kind of soul prevail: it was also a popular insurrection in the midst of a priestly people a pietistic movement coming from below (sinners, publicans, women, and children). Jesus of Nazareth was the symbol of their sect. And again, in order to believe in themselves, they were in need of a theological transfiguration: they require nothing less than " the Son of God " in 153 order to create a belief for themselves. And just as the priesthood had falsified the whole history of Israel, another attempt was made, here, to alter and falsify the whole history of mankind in such a way as to make Christianity seem like the most important event it contained. This movement could have originated only upon the soil of Judaism, the main feature of which was the confounding of guilt with sorrow and the reduction of all sin to sin against God. Of all this, Christianity is the second degree of power.

      183. The symbolism of Christianity is based upon that of Judaism, which had already transfigured all reality (history, Nature) into a holy and artificial unreality which refused to recognise real history, and which showed no more interest in a natural course of things.

      184. The Jews made the attempt to prevail, after two of their castes the warrior and the agri cultural castes, had disappeared from their midst. In this sense they are the " castrated people": they have their priests and then their Chandala. . . . How easily a disturbance occurs among them an insurrection of their Chandala. This was the origin of Christianity. Owing to the fact that they had no knowledge of warriors except as their masters, they introduced 154 enmity towards the nobles, the men of honor, pride, and power, and the ruling classes, into their religion: they are pessimists from indignation. . . . Thus they created a very important and novel position: the priests in the van of the Chandala against the noble classes. . . . Christianity was the logical conclusion of this movement: even in the Jewish priesthood, it still scented the existence of the caste, of the privileged and noble minority it therefore did away with priests. Christ is the unit of the Chandala who removes the priest . . . the Chandala who redeems himself. . . . That is why the French Revolution is the lineal descendant and the continuator of Christianity it is characterised by an instinct of hate towards castes, nobles, and the last privileges.

      185. The " Christian Ideal " put on the stage with Jewish astuteness these are the fundamental psychological forces of its " nature ": Revolt against the ruling spiritual powers; The attempt to make those virtues which facili tate the happiness of the lowly, a standard of all values in fact, to call God that which is no more than the self-preservative instinct of that class of man possessed of least vitality; Obedience and absolute abstention from war and resistance, justified by this ideal; 155 The love of one another as a result of the love of God. The trick: The denial of all natural mobilia, and their transference to the spiritual world beyond . . . the exploitation of virtue and its veneration for wholly interested motives, gradual denial of virtue in everything that is not Christian.

      186. The profound contempt with which the Christian was treated by the noble people of antiquity, is of the same order as the present instinctive aversion to Jews: it is the hatred which free and self- respecting classes feel towards those who wish to creep in secretly, and who combine an awkward bearing with foolish self-sufficiency. The New Testament is the gospel of a com pletely ignoble species of man; its pretensions to highest values yea, to all values, is, as a matter of fact, revolting even nowadays.

      187. How little the subject matters! It is the spirit which gives the thing life! What a quantity of stuffy and sick-room air there is in all that chatter about " redemption," " love," " blessedness," " faith," " truth," " eternal life "! Let any one look into a really pagan book and compare the two; for in stance, in Petronius, nothing at all is done, said, desired, and valued, which, according to a bigoted Christian estimate, is not sin, or even deadly sin. And yet how happy one feels with the purer air, the 156 superior intellectuality, the quicker pace, and the free overflowing strength which is certain of the future! In the whole of the New Testament there is not one bouffonnerie: but that fact alone would suffice to refute any book. . . .

      188. The prof ound lack of dignity with which all life, which is not Christian, is condemned: it does not suffice them to think meanly of their actual oppon ents, they cannot do with less than a general slander of everything that is not themselves. . . . An abject and crafty soul is in the most perfect harmony with the arrogance of piety, as witness the early Christians. The future: they see that they are heavily paid for it. . . . Theirs is the muddiest kind of spirit that exists. The whole of Christ s life is so arranged as to confirm the prophecies of the Scriptures: He behaves in suchwise in order that they may be right. . . .

      189. The deceptive interpretation of the words, the doings, and the condition of dying people; the natural fear of death, for instance, is systematically confounded with the supposed fear of what is to happen " after death." . . .

      190. The Christians have done exactly what the Jews did before them. They introduced what they 157 conceived to be an innovation and a thing necessary to self-preservation into their Master s teaching, and wove His life into it. They likewise credited Him with all the wisdom of a maker of proverbs in short, they represented their every day life and activity as an act of obedience, and thus sanctified their propaganda. What it all depends upon, may be gathered from Paul: it is not much. What remains is the development of a type of saint, out of the values which these people regarded as saintly. The whole of the "doctrine of miracles," in-j eluding the resurrection, is the result of self- glorification on the part of the community, which ascribed to its Master those qualities it ascribed to itself, but in a higher degree (or, better still, it derived its strength from Him. . . .).

      191. The Christians have never led the life which Jesus commanded them to lead, and the impudent fable of the " justification by faith," and its unique and transcendental significance, is only the result of the Church s lack of courage and will in acknow ledging those "works" which Jesus commanded. The Buddhist behaves differently from the non- Buddhist; but the Christian behaves as all the rest of the world does, and possesses a Christianity of ceremonies and states of the soul. The profound and contemptible falsehood of Christianity in Europe makes us deserve the con tempt of the Arabs, Hindoos, and Chinese. . , . 158 Let any one listen to the words of the first German statesman, concerning that which has preoccupied Europe for the last forty СКАЧАТЬ