The Will to Power. Friedrich Nietzsche

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      192. " Faith " or " works "? But that the " works," the habit of particular works may engender a certain set of values or thoughts, is just as natural as it would be unnatural for " works " to proceed from mere valuations. Man must practise, not how to strengthen feelings of value, but how to strengthen action: first of all, one must be able to do some thing. . . . Luther s Christian Dilettantism. Faith is an asses bridge. The background consists of a profound conviction on the part of Luther and his peers, that they are enabled to accomplish Christian " works," a personal fact, disguised under an extreme doubt as to whether all action is not sin and devil s work, so that the worth of life depends upon isolated and highly-strained conditions of inactivity (prayer, effusion, etc.). Ultimately, Luther would be right: the instincts which are expressed by the whole bearing of the reformers are the most brutal that exist. Only in turning absolutely away from themselves, and in becoming absorbed in the opposite of themselves, only by means of an illusion ("faith") was existence endurable to them.

      193. " What was to be done in order to believe? " an absurd question. That which is wrong with Christianity is, that it does none of the things that Christ commanded, It is a mean life, but seen through the eye of contempt.

      194. The entrance into the real life a man saves t his own life by living the life of the multitude.

      195. Christianity has become something fundament ally different from what its Founder wished it to be. It is the great anti-pagan movement of anti quity, formulated with the use of the life, teaching, and " words " of the Founder of Christianity, but interpreted quite arbitrarily, according to a scheme embodying profoundly different needs: translated into the language of all the subterranean religions then existing. It is the rise of Pessimism (whereas Jesus wished to bring the peace and the happiness of the lambs): and moreover the Pessimism of the weak, of the inferior, of the suffering, and of the oppressed. Its mortal enemies are (i) Power, whether in the form of character, intellect, or taste, and " worldliness "; (2) the "good cheer" of classical times, the noble levity and scepticism, hard pride, eccentric dissipation, and cold frugality of the sage, Greek refinement in manners, words, and form. Its mortal enemy is as much the Roman as the Greek. The attempt on the part of anti-paganism to establish itself on a philosophical basis, and to make its tenets possible: it shows a taste for the ambiguous figures of antique culture, and above all for Plato, who was, more than any other, an anti-Hellene and Semite in instinct. . . . It also shows a taste for Stoicism, which is essentially the work of Semites ("dignity" is regarded as severity law; virtue is held to be greatness, self responsibility, authority, greatest sovereignty over oneself this is Semitic. The Stoic is an Arabian sheik wrapped in Greek togas and notions.

      196. Christianity only resumes the fight which had already been begun against the classical ideal anc noble religion. As a matter of fact, the whole process of transformation is only an adaptation to the needs and to the level of intelligence of religious masses then existing: those masses whicl believed in Isis, Mithras, Dionysos, and great mother," and which demanded the follow ing things of a religion: (i) hopes of a beyond, (2) the bloody phantasmagoria of animal sacrmce (the mystery), (3) holy legend and the redeeming deed (4) asceticism, denial of the world, supe: stitious "purification," (5) a hierarchy as a part of the community. In short, Christianity everywhere fitted the already prevailing and increasing anti-pagan tendency those cults whicl Epicurus combated or more exactly, those l6l religions proper to the lower herd, women, slaves, and ignoble classes. The misunderstandings are therefore the following: (1) The immortality of the individual; (2) The assumed existence of another world; (3) The absurd notion of punishment and expiation in the heart of the interpretation of existence; (4) The profanation of the divine nature of man, instead of its accentuation, and the con struction of a very profound chasm, which can only be crossed by the help of a miracle or by means of the most thorough self-contempt; (5) The whole world of corrupted imagination and morbid passion, instead of a simple and loving life of action, instead of Buddhistic happiness attainable on earth; (6) An ecclesiastical order with a priesthood, theology, cults, and sacraments; in short, every thing that Jesus of Nazareth combated; (7) The miraculous in everything and every body, superstition too: while precisely the trait which distinguished Judaism and primitive Christianity was their repugnance to miracles and their relative rationalism.

      197. The psychological pre-requisites: Ignorance and lack of culture, the sort of ignorance which has un learned every kind of shame: let any one imagine those impudent saints in the heart of Athens;. L 1 62 The Jewish instinct of a chosen people: they appropriate all the virtues, without further ado, as their own, and regard the rest of the world as their opposite; this is a profound sign of spiritual depravity; The total lack of real aims and real duties, for which other virtues are required than those of the bigot the State undertook this work for them: and the impudent people still behaved as though they had no need of the State. "Except ye become as little children " oh, how far we are from this psychological ingenuousness!

      198. The Founder of Christianity had to pay dearly for having directed His teaching at the lowest classes of Jewish society and intelligence. They understood Him only according to the limitations of their own spirit. ... It was a disgrace to concoct a history of salvation, a personal God, a personal Saviour, a personal immortality, and to have retained all the meanness of the " person," and of the "history" of a doctrine which denies the reality of all that is personal and historical. The legend of salvation takes the place of the symbolic " now " and " all time," of the symbolic "here" and "everywhere"; and miracles appear instead of the psychological symbol.

      199. Nothing is less innocent than the New Testa ment. The soil from which it sprang is known. These people, possessed of an inflexible will to assert themselves, and who, once they had lost all natural hold on life, and had long existed without any right to existence, still knew how to prevail by means of hypotheses which were as unnatural as they were imaginary (calling them selves the chosen people, the community of saints, the people of the promised land, and the " Church "): these people made use of their pia fraus with such skill, and with such "clean consciences," that one cannot be too cautious when they preach morality. When Jews step forward as the personification of innocence, the danger must be great. While reading the New Testament a man should have his small fund of intelligence, mistrust, and wickedness constantly at hand. People of the lowest origin, partly mob, out casts not only from good society, but also from respectable society; grown away from the atmosphere of culture, and free from discipline; ignorant, without even a suspicion of the fact that conscience can also rule in spiritual matters; in a word the Jews: an instinctively crafty people, able to create an advantage, a means of seduction out of every conceivable hypothesis of superstition, even out of ignorance itself.

      200. I regard Christianity as the most fatal and seductive lie that has ever yet existed as the greatest and most impious lie: I can discern the !6 4 last sprouts and branches of its ideal beneath every form of disguise, I decline to enter into any compromise or false position in reference to it- I urge people to declare open war with it. The morality of paltry people as the measure of all things: this is the most repugnant kind of degeneracy that civilisation has ever yet brought into existence. And this kind of ideal is hanging still, under the name of "God," over men s heads! !

      201. However mo dest one s demands may be concerning intellectual cleanliness, when one touches the New Testament one cannot help experiencing a sort of inexpressible feeling of dis comfort; for the unbounded cheek with which the least qualified people will have their say in its pages, in regard to the greatest problems of existence, and claim to sit in judgment on such matters, exceeds all limits. The impudent levity with which the most unwieldy problems are spoken of here (life, the world, God, the purpose of life), as if they were not problems at all, but the most simple things which these little bigots know all about.

      202. This was the most fatal form of insanity that has ever yet existed on earth: when these little lying abortions of bigotry begin laying claim to the words "God," "last judgment," "truth," Move," "wisdom," "Holy Spirit," and thereby distinguishing themselves from the rest of the world; when such men begin to revalue values to suit themselves, as though they were the sense the salt, the standard, and the measure of all things; СКАЧАТЬ