The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Antichrist, by F. W.

Nietzsche

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Antichrist

Author: F. W. Nietzsche

Translator: H. L. Mencken

Release Date: September 18, 2006 [EBook #19322]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANTICHRIST ***

Produced by Laura Wisewell and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

THE ANTICHRIST
 BORZOI POCKET BOOKS
A complete list to date of this series of popular reprints, bound
uniformly with a design and endpapers by Claude Bragdon, may be found
at the back of this volume. One book will appear each month, numbered for
convenience in ordering.

THE ANTICHRIST
by

F. W. NIETZSCHE
Translated from the German

with an introduction by

H. L. MENCKEN

Publisher logo.

New York

ALFRED A. KNOPF
 COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

Pocket Book Edition, Published September, 1923

Second Printing, November, 1924

Set up, electrotyped, and printed by the Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton,

N. Y.

Paper manufactured by W. C. Hamilton & Sons, Miquon, Pa., and furnished
by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

 CONTENTS
  page

Introduction by H. L. Mencken 7

Author’s Preface 37
The Antichrist 41
 INTRODUCTION
Save for his raucous, rhapsodical autobiography, “Ecce Homo,” “The
Antichrist” is the last thing that Nietzsche ever wrote, and so it may be
accepted as a statement of some of his most salient ideas in their final form.
Notes for it had been accumulating for years and it was to have constituted
the first volume of his long-projected magnum opus, “The Will to Power.”
His full plan for this work, as originally drawn up, was as follows:
Vol. I. The Antichrist: an Attempt at a Criticism of Christianity.
Vol. II. The Free Spirit: a Criticism of Philosophy as a Nihilistic
Movement.
Vol. III. The Immoralist: a Criticism of Morality, the Most Fatal Form of
Ignorance.
Vol. IV. Dionysus: the Philosophy of Eternal Recurrence.
The first sketches for “The Will to Power” were made in 1884, soon
after the publication of the first three parts of “Thus Spake Zarathustra,”
and thereafter, for four years, Nietzsche piled up notes. They were written at
all the places he visited on his endless travels in search of health—at Nice,
at Venice, at Sils-Maria in the Engadine (for long his favourite resort), at
Cannobio, at Zürich, at Genoa, at Chur, at Leipzig. Several times his work
was interrupted by other books, first by “Beyond Good and Evil,” then by
“The Genealogy of Morals” (written in twenty days), then by his Wagner
pamphlets. Almost as often he changed his plan. Once he decided to expand
“The Will to Power” to ten volumes, with “An Attempt at a New
Interpretation of the World” as a general sub-title. Again he adopted the
sub-title of “An Interpretation of All That Happens.” Finally, he hit upon
“An Attempt at a Transvaluation of All Values,” and went back to four
volumes, though with a number of changes in their arrangement. In
September, 1888, he began actual work upon the first volume, and before
the end of the month it was completed. The Summer had been one of almost
hysterical creative activity. Since the middle of June he had written two
other small books, “The Case of Wagner” and “The Twilight of the Idols,”
and before the end of the year he was destined to write “Ecce Homo.” Some
time during December his health began to fail rapidly, and soon after the
New Year he was helpless. Thereafter he wrote no more.
The Wagner diatribe and “The Twilight of the Idols” were published
immediately, but “The Antichrist” did not get into type until 1895. I suspect
that the delay was due to the influence of the philosopher’s sister, Elisabeth
Förster-Nietzsche, an intelligent and ardent but by no means uniformly
judicious propagandist of his ideas. During his dark days of neglect and
misunderstanding, when even family and friends kept aloof, Frau Förster-
Nietzsche went with him farther than any other, but there were bounds
beyond which she, also, hesitated to go, and those bounds were marked by
crosses. One notes, in her biography of him—a useful but not always
accurate work—an evident desire to purge him of the accusation of
mocking at sacred things. He had, she says, great admiration for “the
elevating effect of Christianity ... upon the weak and ailing,” and “a real
liking for sincere, pious Christians,” and “a tender love for the Founder of
Christianity.” All his wrath, she continues, was reserved for “St. Paul and
his like,” who perverted the Beatitudes, which Christ intended for the lowly
only, into a universal religion which made war upon aristocratic values.
Here, obviously, one is addressed by an interpreter who cannot forget that
she is the daughter of a Lutheran pastor and the grand-daughter of two
others; a touch of conscience gets into her reading of “The Antichrist.” She
even hints that the text may have been garbled, after the author’s collapse,
by some more sinister heretic. There is not the slightest reason to believe
that any such garbling ever took place, nor is there any evidence that their
common heritage of piety rested upon the brother as heavily as it rested
upon the sister. On the contrary, it must be manifest that Nietzsche, in this
book, intended to attack Christianity headlong and with all arms, that for all
his rapid writing he put the utmost care into it, and that he wanted it to be
printed exactly as it stands. The ideas in it were anything but new to him
when he set them down. He had been developing them since the days of his
beginning. You will find some of them, clearly recognizable, in the first
book he ever wrote, “The Birth of Tragedy.” You will find the most
important of all of them—the conception of Christianity as ressentiment—
set forth at length in the first part of “The Genealogy of Morals,” published
under his own supervision in 1887. And the rest are scattered through the
whole vast mass of his notes, sometimes as mere questionings but often
worked out very carefully. Moreover, let it not be forgotten that it was
Wagner’s yielding to Christian sentimentality in “Parsifal” that transformed
Nietzsche from the first among his literary advocates into the most bitter of
his opponents. He could forgive every other sort of mountebankery, but not
that. “In me,” he once said, “the Christianity of my forbears reaches its
logical conclusion. In me the stern intellectual conscience that Christianity
fosters and makes paramount turns against Christianity. In me Christianity
... devours itself.”
In truth, the present philippic is as necessary to the completeness of the
whole of Nietzsche’s system as the keystone is to the arch. All the curves of
his speculation lead up to it. What he flung himself against, from beginning
to end of his days of writing, was always, in the last analysis, Christianity in
some form or other—Christianity as a system of practical ethics,
Christianity as a political code, Christianity as metaphysics, Christianity as
a gauge of the truth. It would be difficult to think of any intellectual
enterprise on his long list that did not, more or less directly and clearly,
relate itself to this master enterprise of them all. It was as if his apostasy
from the faith of his fathers, filling him with the fiery zeal of the convert,
and particularly of the convert to heresy, had blinded him to every other
element in the gigantic self-delusion of civilized man. The will to power
was his answer to Christianity’s affectation of humility and self-sacrifice;
eternal recurrence was his mocking criticism of Christian optimism and
millennialism; the superman was his candidate for the place of the Christian
ideal of the “good” man, prudently abased before the throne of God. The
things he chiefly argued for were anti-Christian things—the abandonment
of the purely moral view of life, the rehabilitation of instinct, the
dethronement of weakness and timidity as ideals, the renunciation of the
whole hocus-pocus of dogmatic religion, the extermination of false
aristocracies (of the priest, of the politician, of the plutocrat), the revival of
the healthy, lordly “innocence” that was Greek. If he was anything in a
word, Nietzsche was a Greek born two thousand years too late. His dreams
were thoroughly Hellenic; his whole manner of thinking was Hellenic; his
peculiar errors were Hellenic no less. But his Hellenism, I need not add,
was anything but the pale neo-Platonism that has run like a thread through
the thinking of the Western world since the days of the Christian Fathers.
From Plato, to be sure, he got what all of us must get, but his real forefather
was Heraclitus. It is in Heraclitus that one finds the germ of his primary
view of the universe—a view, to wit, that sees it, not as moral phenomenon,
but as mere aesthetic representation. The God that Nietzsche imagined, in
the end, was not far from the God that such an artist as Joseph Conrad
imagines—a supreme craftsman, ever experimenting, ever coming closer to
an ideal balancing of lines and forces, and yet always failing to work out the
final harmony.
The late war, awakening all the primitive racial fury of the Western
nations, and therewith all their ancient enthusiasm for religious taboos and
sanctions, naturally focused attention upon Nietzsche, as upon the most
daring and provocative of recent amateur theologians. The Germans, with
their characteristic tendency to explain their every act in terms as realistic
and unpleasant as possible, appear to have mauled him in a belated and
unexpected embrace, to the horror, I daresay, of the Kaiser, and perhaps to
the even greater horror of Nietzsche’s own ghost. The folks of Anglo-
Saxondom, with their equally characteristic tendency to explain all their
enterprises romantically, simultaneously set him up as the Antichrist he no
doubt secretly longed to be. The result was a great deal of misrepresentation
and misunderstanding of him. From the pulpits of the allied countries, and
particularly from those of England and the United States, a horde of
patriotic ecclesiastics denounced him in extravagant terms as the author of
all the horrors of the time, and in the newspapers, until the Kaiser was
elected sole bugaboo, he shared the honors of that office with von
Hindenburg, the Crown Prince, Capt. Boy-Ed, von Bernstorff and von
Tirpitz. Most of this denunciation, of course, was frankly idiotic—the naïve
pishposh of suburban Methodists, notoriety-seeking college professors,
almost illiterate editorial writers, and other such numskulls. In much of it,
including not a few official hymns of hate, Nietzsche was gravely
discovered to be the teacher of such spokesmen of the extremest sort of
German nationalism as von Bernhardi and von Treitschke—which was just
as intelligent as making George Bernard Shaw the mentor of Lloyd-George.
In other solemn pronunciamentoes he was credited with being
philosophically responsible for various imaginary crimes of the enemy—the
wholesale slaughter or mutilation of prisoners of war, the deliberate burning
down of Red Cross hospitals, the utilization of the corpses of the slain for
soap-making. I amused myself, in those gaudy days, by collecting
newspaper clippings to this general effect, and later on I shall probably
publish a digest of them, as a contribution to the study of war hysteria. The
thing went to unbelievable lengths. On the strength of the fact that I had
published a book on Nietzsche in 1906, six years after his death, I was
called upon by agents of the Department of Justice, elaborately outfitted
with badges, to meet the charge that I was an intimate associate and agent
of “the German monster, Nietzsky.” I quote the official procès verbal, an
indignant but often misspelled document. Alas, poor Nietzsche! After all
his laborious efforts to prove that he was not a German, but a Pole—even
after his heroic readiness, via anti-anti-Semitism, to meet the deduction that,
if a Pole, then probably also a Jew!
But under all this alarmed and preposterous tosh there was at least a
sound instinct, and that was the instinct which recognized Nietzsche as the
most eloquent, pertinacious and effective of all the critics of the philosophy
to which the Allies against Germany stood committed, and on the strength
of which, at all events in theory, the United States had engaged itself in the
war. He was not, in point of fact, involved with the visible enemy, save in
remote and transient ways; the German, officially, remained the most ardent
of Christians during the war and became a democrat at its close. But he was
plainly a foe of democracy in all its forms, political, religious and
epistemological, and what is worse, his opposition was set forth in terms
that were not only extraordinarily penetrating and devastating, but also
uncommonly offensive. It was thus quite natural that he should have
aroused a degree of indignation verging upon the pathological in the two
countries that had planted themselves upon the democratic platform most
boldly, and that felt it most shaky, one may add, under their feet. I daresay
that Nietzsche, had he been alive, would have got a lot of satisfaction out of
the execration thus heaped upon him, not only because, being a vain fellow,
he enjoyed execration as a tribute to his general singularity, and hence to his
superiority, but also and more importantly because, being no mean
psychologist, he would have recognized the disconcerting doubts
underlying it. If Nietzsche’s criticism of democracy were as ignorant and
empty, say, as the average evangelical clergyman’s criticism of Darwin’s
hypothesis of natural selection, then the advocates of democracy could
afford to dismiss it as loftily as the Darwinians dismiss the blather of the
holy clerks. And if his attack upon Christianity were mere sound and fury,
signifying nothing, then there would be no call for anathemas from the
sacred desk. But these onslaughts, in point of fact, have behind them a
tremendous learning and a great deal of point and plausibility—there are, in
brief, bullets in the gun, teeth in the tiger,—and so it is no wonder that they
excite the ire of men who hold, as a primary article of belief, that their
acceptance would destroy civilization, darken the sun, and bring Jahveh to
sobs upon His Throne.
But in all this justifiable fear, of course, there remains a false
assumption, and that is the assumption that Nietzsche proposed to destroy
Christianity altogether, and so rob the plain people of the world of their
virtue, their spiritual consolations, and their hope of heaven. Nothing could
be more untrue. The fact is that Nietzsche had no interest whatever in the
delusions of the plain people—that is, intrinsically. It seemed to him of
small moment what they believed, so long as it was safely imbecile. What
he stood against was not their beliefs, but the elevation of those beliefs, by
any sort of democratic process, to the dignity of a state philosophy—what
he feared most was the pollution and crippling of the superior minority by
intellectual disease from below. His plain aim in “The Antichrist” was to
combat that menace by completing the work begun, on the one hand, by
Darwin and the other evolutionist philosophers, and, on the other hand, by
German historians and philologians. The net effect of this earlier attack, in
the eighties, had been the collapse of Christian theology as a serious
concern of educated men. The mob, it must be obvious, was very little
shaken; even to this day it has not put off its belief in the essential Christian
doctrines. But the intelligentsia, by 1885, had been pretty well convinced.
No man of sound information, at the time Nietzsche planned “The
Antichrist,” actually believed that the world was created in seven days, or
that its fauna was once overwhelmed by a flood as a penalty for the sins of
man, or that Noah saved the boa constrictor, the prairie dog and the
pediculus capitis by taking a pair of each into the ark, or that Lot’s wife was
turned into a pillar of salt, or that a fragment of the True Cross could cure
hydrophobia. Such notions, still almost universally prevalent in
Christendom a century before, were now confined to the great body of
ignorant and credulous men—that is, to ninety-five or ninety-six percent. of
the race. For a man of the superior minority to subscribe to one of them
publicly was already sufficient to set him off as one in imminent need of
psychiatrical attention. Belief in them had become a mark of inferiority, like
the allied belief in madstones, magic and apparitions.
But though the theology of Christianity had thus sunk to the lowly
estate of a mere delusion of the rabble, propagated on that level by the
ancient caste of sacerdotal parasites, the ethics of Christianity continued to
enjoy the utmost acceptance, and perhaps even more acceptance than ever
before. It seemed to be generally felt, in fact, that they simply must be saved
from the wreck—that the world would vanish into chaos if they went the
way of the revelations supporting them. In this fear a great many judicious
men joined, and so there arose what was, in essence, an absolutely new
Christian cult—a cult, to wit, purged of all the supernaturalism
superimposed upon the older cult by generations of theologians, and
harking back to what was conceived to be the pure ethical doctrine of Jesus.
This cult still flourishes; Protestantism tends to become identical with it; it
invades Catholicism as Modernism; it is supported by great numbers of men
whose intelligence is manifest and whose sincerity is not open to question.
Even Nietzsche himself yielded to it in weak moments, as you will discover
on examining his somewhat laborious effort to make Paul the villain of
Christian theology, and Jesus no more than an innocent bystander. But this
sentimental yielding never went far enough to distract his attention for long
from his main idea, which was this: that Christian ethics were quite as
dubious, at bottom, as Christian theology—that they were founded, just as
surely as such childish fables as the story of Jonah and the whale, upon the
peculiar prejudices and credulities, the special desires and appetites, of
inferior men—that they warred upon the best interests of men of a better
sort quite as unmistakably as the most extravagant of objective
superstitions. In brief, what he saw in Christian ethics, under all the poetry
and all the fine show of altruism and all the theoretical benefits therein, was
a democratic effort to curb the egoism of the strong—a conspiracy of the
chandala against the free functioning of their superiors, nay, against the free
progress of mankind. This theory is the thing he exposes in “The
Antichrist,” bringing to the business his amazingly chromatic and exigent
eloquence at its finest flower. This is the “conspiracy” he sets forth in all the
panoply of his characteristic italics, dashes, sforzando interjections and
exclamation points.
Well, an idea is an idea. The present one may be right and it may be
wrong. One thing is quite certain: that no progress will be made against it
by denouncing it as merely immoral. If it is ever laid at all, it must be laid
evidentially, logically. The notion to the contrary is thoroughly democratic;
the mob is the most ruthless of tyrants; it is always in a democratic society
that heresy and felony tend to be most constantly confused. One hears
without surprise of a Bismarck philosophizing placidly (at least in his old
age) upon the delusion of Socialism and of a Frederick the Great playing
the hose of his cynicism upon the absolutism that was almost identical with
his own person, but men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion
of their fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident
in those societies in which men in the mass are most influential. Democracy
and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are
eternal enemies. But in any battle between an institution and an idea, the
idea, in the long run, has the better of it. Here I do not venture into the
absurdity of arguing that, as the world wags on, the truth always survives. I
believe nothing of the sort. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that an idea
that happens to be true—or, more exactly, as near to truth as any human
idea can be, and yet remain generally intelligible—it seems to me that such
an idea carries a special and often fatal handicap. The majority of men
prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more
snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and
irrational phenomena, defectively grasped. But though an idea that is true is
thus not likely to prevail, an idea that is attacked enjoys a great advantage.
The evidence behind it is now supported by sympathy, the sporting instinct,
sentimentality—and sentimentality is as powerful as an army with banners.
One never hears of a martyr in history whose notions are seriously disputed
today. The forgotten ideas are those of the men who put them forward
soberly and quietly, hoping fatuously that they would conquer by the force
of their truth; these are the ideas that we now struggle to rediscover. Had
Nietzsche lived to be burned at the stake by outraged Mississippi
Methodists, it would have been a glorious day for his doctrines. As it is,
they are helped on their way every time they are denounced as immoral and
against God. The war brought down upon them the maledictions of vast
herds of right-thinking men. And now “The Antichrist,” after fifteen years
of neglect, is being reprinted....
One imagines the author, a sardonic wraith, snickering somewhat sadly
over the fact. His shade, wherever it suffers, is favoured in these days by
many such consolations, some of them of much greater horsepower. Think
of the facts and arguments, even the underlying theories and attitudes, that
have been borrowed from him, consciously and unconsciously, by the foes
of Bolshevism during these last thrilling years! The face of democracy,
suddenly seen hideously close, has scared the guardians of the reigning
plutocracy half to death, and they have gone to the devil himself for aid.
Southern Senators, almost illiterate men, have mixed his acids with well
water and spouted them like affrighted geysers, not knowing what they did.
Nor are they the first to borrow from him. Years ago I called attention to the
debt incurred with characteristic forgetfulness of obligation by the late
Theodore Roosevelt, in “The Strenuous Life” and elsewhere. Roosevelt, a
typical apologist for the existing order, adeptly dragging a herring across
the trail whenever it was menaced, yet managed to delude the native
boobery, at least until toward the end, into accepting him as a fiery
exponent of pure democracy. Perhaps he even fooled himself; charlatans
usually do so soon or late. A study of Nietzsche reveals the sources of much
that was honest in him, and exposes the hollowness of much that was sham.
Nietzsche, an infinitely harder and more courageous intellect, was incapable
of any such confusion of ideas; he seldom allowed sentimentality to turn
him from the glaring fact. What is called Bolshevism today he saw clearly a
generation ago and described for what it was and is—democracy in another
aspect, the old ressentiment of the lower orders in free function once more.
Socialism, Puritanism, Philistinism, Christianity—he saw them all as
allotropic forms of democracy, as variations upon the endless struggle of
quantity against quality, of the weak and timorous against the strong and
enterprising, of the botched against the fit. The world needed a staggering
exaggeration to make it see even half of the truth. It trembles today as it
trembled during the French Revolution. Perhaps it would tremble less if it
could combat the monster with a clearer conscience and less burden of
compromising theory—if it could launch its forces frankly at the
fundamental doctrine, and not merely employ them to police the transient
orgy.
Nietzsche, in the long run, may help it toward that greater honesty. His
notions, propagated by cuttings from cuttings from cuttings, may
conceivably prepare the way for a sounder, more healthful theory of society
and of the state, and so free human progress from the stupidities which now
hamper it, and men of true vision from the despairs which now sicken them.
I say it is conceivable, but I doubt that it is probable. The soul and the belly
of mankind are too evenly balanced; it is not likely that the belly will ever
put away its hunger or forget its power. Here, perhaps, there is an example
of the eternal recurrence that Nietzsche was fond of mulling over in his
blacker moods. We are in the midst of one of the perennial risings of the
lower orders. It got under way long before any of the current Bolshevist
demons was born; it was given its long, secure start by the intolerable
tyranny of the plutocracy—the end product of the Eighteenth Century revolt
against the old aristocracy. It found resistance suddenly slackened by civil
war within the plutocracy itself—one gang of traders falling upon another
gang, to the tune of vast hymn-singing and yells to God. Perhaps it has
already passed its apogee; the plutocracy, chastened, shows signs of a new
solidarity; the wheel continues to swing ’round. But this combat between
proletariat and plutocracy is, after all, itself a civil war. Two inferiorities
struggle for the privilege of polluting the world. What actual difference
does it make to a civilized man, when there is a steel strike, whether the
workmen win or the mill-owners win? The conflict can interest him only as
spectacle, as the conflict between Bonaparte and the old order in Europe
interested Goethe and Beethoven. The victory, whichever way it goes, will
simply bring chaos nearer, and so set the stage for a genuine revolution later
on, with (let us hope) a new feudalism or something better coming out of it,
and a new Thirteenth Century at dawn. This seems to be the slow, costly
way of the worst of habitable worlds.
In the present case my money is laid upon the plutocracy. It will win
because it will be able, in the long run, to enlist the finer intelligences. The
mob and its maudlin causes attract only sentimentalists and scoundrels,
chiefly the latter. Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere
struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat; even when a superior man
prevails at that disgusting game he must prevail at the cost of his self-
respect. Not many superior men make the attempt. The average great
captain of the rabble, when he is not simply a weeper over irremediable
wrongs, is a hypocrite so far gone that he is unconscious of his own
hypocrisy—a slimy fellow, offensive to the nose. The plutocracy can recruit
measurably more respectable janissaries, if only because it can make self-
interest less obviously costly to amour propre. Its defect and its weakness
lie in the fact that it is still too young to have acquired dignity. But lately
sprung from the mob it now preys upon, it yet shows some of the habits of
mind of that mob: it is blatant, stupid, ignorant, lacking in all delicate
instinct and governmental finesse. Above all, it remains somewhat heavily
moral. One seldom finds it undertaking one of its characteristic imbecilities
without offering a sonorous moral reason; it spends almost as much to
support the Y.  M.  C.  A., vice-crusading, Prohibition and other such
puerilities as it spends upon Congressmen, strike-breakers, gun-men, kept
patriots and newspapers. In England the case is even worse. It is almost
impossible to find a wealthy industrial over there who is not also an
eminent non-conformist layman, and even among financiers there are
praying brothers. On the Continent, the day is saved by the fact that the
plutocracy tends to become more and more Jewish. Here the intellectual
cynicism of the Jew almost counterbalances his social unpleasantness. If he
is destined to lead the plutocracy of the world out of Little Bethel he will
fail, of course, to turn it into an aristocracy—i. e., a caste of gentlemen—,
but he will at least make it clever, and hence worthy of consideration. The
case against the Jews is long and damning; it would justify ten thousand
times as many pogroms as now go on in the world. But whenever you find a
Davidsbündlerschaft making practise against the Philistines, there you will
find a Jew laying on. Maybe it was this fact that caused Nietzsche to speak
up for the children of Israel quite as often as he spoke against them. He was
not blind to their faults, but when he set them beside Christians he could not
deny their general superiority. Perhaps in America and England, as on the
Continent, the increasing Jewishness of the plutocracy, while cutting it off
from all chance of ever developing into an aristocracy, will yet lift it to such
a dignity that it will at least deserve a certain grudging respect.
But even so, it will remain in a sort of half-world, midway between the
gutter and the stars. Above it will still stand the small group of men that
constitutes the permanent aristocracy of the race—the men of imagination
and high purpose, the makers of genuine progress, the brave and ardent
spirits, above all petty fears and discontents and above all petty hopes and
ideals no less. There were heroes before Agamemnon; there will be Bachs
after Johann Sebastian. And beneath the Judaized plutocracy, the
sublimated bourgeoisie, there the immemorial proletariat, I venture to
guess, will roar on, endlessly tortured by its vain hatreds and envies,
stampeded and made to tremble by its ancient superstitions, prodded and
made miserable by its sordid and degrading hopes. It seems to me very
likely that, in this proletariat, Christianity will continue to survive. It is
nonsense, true enough, but it is sweet. Nietzsche, denouncing its dangers as
a poison, almost falls into the error of denying it its undoubtedly sugary
smack. Of all the religions ever devised by the great practical jokers of the
race, this is the one that offers most for the least money, so to speak, to the
inferior man. It starts out by denying his inferiority in plain terms: all men
are equal in the sight of God. It ends by erecting that inferiority into a sort
of actual superiority: it is a merit to be stupid, and miserable, and sorely put
upon—of such are the celestial elect. Not all the eloquence of a million
Nietzsches, nor all the painful marshalling of evidence of a million Darwins
and Harnacks, will ever empty that great consolation of its allure. The most
they can ever accomplish is to make the superior orders of men acutely
conscious of the exact nature of it, and so give them armament against the
contagion. This is going on; this is being done. I think that “The Antichrist”
has a useful place in that enterprise. It is strident, it is often extravagant, it
is, to many sensitive men, in the worst of possible taste, but at bottom it is
enormously apt and effective—and on the surface it is undoubtedly a good
show. One somehow enjoys, with the malice that is native to man, the
spectacle of anathemas batted back; it is refreshing to see the pitchfork
employed against gentlemen who have doomed such innumerable caravans
to hell. In Nietzsche they found, after many long years, a foeman worthy of
them—not a mere fancy swordsman like Voltaire, or a mob orator like Tom
Paine, or a pedant like the heretics of exegesis, but a gladiator armed with
steel and armoured with steel, and showing all the ferocious gusto of a
mediaeval bishop. It is a pity that Holy Church has no process for the
elevation of demons, like its process for the canonization of saints. There
must be a long roll of black miracles to the discredit of the Accursed
Friedrich—sinners purged of conscience and made happy in their sinning,
clerics shaken in their theology by visions of a new and better holy city, the
strong made to exult, the weak robbed of their old sad romance. It would be
a pleasure to see the Advocatus Diaboli turn from the table of the
prosecution to the table of the defence, and move in solemn form for the
damnation of the Naumburg hobgoblin....
Of all Nietzsche’s books, “The Antichrist” comes nearest to
conventionality in form. It presents a connected argument with very few
interludes, and has a beginning, a middle and an end. Most of his works are
in the form of collections of apothegms, and sometimes the subject changes
on every second page. This fact constitutes one of the counts in the
orthodox indictment of him: it is cited as proof that his capacity for
consecutive thought was limited, and that he was thus deficient mentally,
and perhaps a downright moron. The argument, it must be obvious, is
fundamentally nonsensical. What deceives the professors is the traditional
prolixity of philosophers. Because the average philosophical writer, when
he essays to expose his ideas, makes such inordinate drafts upon the parts of
speech that the dictionary is almost emptied these defective observers jump
to the conclusion that his intrinsic notions are of corresponding weight. This
is not unseldom quite untrue. What makes philosophy so garrulous is not
the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians
who sought to cure a slight hyperacidity by giving the patient a carload of
burned oyster-shells to eat. There is, too, the endless poll-parrotting that
goes on: each new philosopher must prove his learning by laboriously
rehearsing the ideas of all previous philosophers.... Nietzsche avoided both
faults. He always assumed that his readers knew the books, and that it was
thus unnecessary to rewrite them. And, having an idea that seemed to him
to be novel and original, he stated it in as few words as possible, and then
shut down. Sometimes he got it into a hundred words; sometimes it took a
thousand; now and then, as in the present case, he developed a series of
related ideas into a connected book. But he never wrote a word too many.
He never pumped up an idea to make it appear bigger than it actually was.
The pedagogues, alas, are not accustomed to that sort of writing in serious
fields. They resent it, and sometimes they even try to improve it. There
exists, in fact, a huge and solemn tome on Nietzsche by a learned man of
America in which all of his brilliancy is painfully translated into the windy
phrases of the seminaries. The tome is satisfactorily ponderous, but the
meat of the cocoanut is left out: there is actually no discussion of the
Nietzschean view of Christianity!... Always Nietzsche daunts the pedants.
He employed too few words for them—and he had too many ideas.

The present translation of “The Antichrist” is published by agreement

with Dr. Oscar Levy, editor of the English edition of Nietzsche. There are
two earlier translations, one by Thomas Common and the other by Anthony
M. Ludovici. That of Mr. Common follows the text very closely, and thus
occasionally shows some essentially German turns of phrase; that of
Mr.  Ludovici is more fluent but rather less exact. I do not offer my own
version on the plea that either of these is useless; on the contrary, I
cheerfully acknowledge that they have much merit, and that they helped me
at almost every line. I began this new Englishing of the book, not in any
hope of supplanting them, and surely not with any notion of meeting a great
public need, but simply as a private amusement in troubled days. But as I
got on with it I began to see ways of putting some flavour of Nietzsche’s
peculiar style into the English, and so amusement turned into a more or less
serious labour. The result, of course, is far from satisfactory, but it at least
represents a very diligent attempt. Nietzsche, always under the influence of
French models, wrote a German that differs materially from any other
German that I know. It is more nervous, more varied, more rapid in tempo;
it runs to more effective climaxes; it is never stodgy. His marks begin to
show upon the writing of the younger Germans of today. They are getting
away from the old thunderous manner, with its long sentences and its
tedious grammatical complexities. In the course of time, I daresay, they will
develop a German almost as clear as French and almost as colourful and
resilient as English.
I owe thanks to Dr.  Levy for his imprimatur, to Mr.  Theodor
Hemberger for criticism, and to Messrs. Common and Ludovici for showing
me the way around many a difficulty.
H. L. Mencken.
 PREFACE
This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is
yet alive. It is possible that they may be among those who understand my
“Zarathustra”: how could I confound myself with those who are now
sprouting ears?—First the day after tomorrow must come for me. Some
men are born posthumously.
The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily
understands me—I know them only too well. Even to endure my
seriousness, my passion, he must carry intellectual integrity to the verge of
hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain tops—and to
looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath
him. He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth
whether it brings profit to him or a fatality to him.... He must have an
inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for;
the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The
experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what
is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained
unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner—to hold together
his strength, his enthusiasm.... Reverence for self; love of self; absolute
freedom of self....
Very well, then! of that sort only are my readers, my true readers, my
readers foreordained: of what account are the rest?—The rest are merely
humanity.—One must make one’s self superior to humanity, in power, in
loftiness of soul,—in contempt.
Friedrich W. Nietzsche.
 THE ANTICHRIST
1.

—Let us look each other in the face. We are Hyperboreans—we know

well enough how remote our place is. “Neither by land nor by water will
you find the road to the Hyperboreans”: even Pindar,[1] in his day, knew
that much about us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death—our
life, our happiness.... We have discovered that happiness; we know the way;
we got our knowledge of it from thousands of years in the labyrinth. Who
else has found it?—The man of today?—“I don’t know either the way out
or the way in; I am whatever doesn’t know either the way out or the way
in”—so sighs the man of today.... This is the sort of modernity that made us
ill,—we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous
dirtiness of the modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart
that “forgives” everything because it “understands” everything is a sirocco
to us. Rather live amid the ice than among modern virtues and other such
south-winds!... We were brave enough; we spared neither ourselves nor
others; but we were a long time finding out where to direct our courage. We
grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate—it was the fulness, the
tension, the storing up of powers. We thirsted for the lightnings and great
deeds; we kept as far as possible from the happiness of the weakling, from
“resignation”... There was thunder in our air; nature, as we embodied it,
became overcast—for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our
happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal....
Cf.
[1] the tenth Pythian ode. See also the fourth book of Herodotus. The
Hyperboreans were a mythical people beyond the Rhipaean mountains, in the far
North. They enjoyed unbroken happiness and perpetual youth.

2.
 What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to
power, power itself, in man.
What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance
is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not
virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of
moral acid).
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity.
And one should help them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the
botched and the weak—Christianity....

3.

The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the
order of living creatures (—man is an end—): but what type of man must be
bred, must be willed, as being the most valuable, the most worthy of life,
the most secure guarantee of the future.
This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but
always as a happy accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed.
Very often it has been precisely the most feared; hitherto it has been almost
the terror of terrors;—and out of that terror the contrary type has been
willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd animal, the
sick brute-man—the Christian....

4.

Mankind surely does not represent an evolution toward a better or

stronger or higher level, as progress is now understood. This “progress” is
merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea. The European of today,
in his essential worth, falls far below the European of the Renaissance; the
process of evolution does not necessarily mean elevation, enhancement,
strengthening.
True enough, it succeeds in isolated and individual cases in various
parts of the earth and under the most widely different cultures, and in these
cases a higher type certainly manifests itself; something which, compared
to mankind in the mass, appears as a sort of superman. Such happy strokes
of high success have always been possible, and will remain possible,
perhaps, for all time to come. Even whole races, tribes and nations may
occasionally represent such lucky accidents.

5.

We should not deck out and embellish Christianity: it has waged a war
to the death against this higher type of man, it has put all the deepest
instincts of this type under its ban, it has developed its concept of evil, of
the Evil One himself, out of these instincts—the strong man as the typical
reprobate, the “outcast among men.” Christianity has taken the part of all
the weak, the low, the botched; it has made an ideal out of antagonism to all
the self-preservative instincts of sound life; it has corrupted even the
faculties of those natures that are intellectually most vigorous, by
representing the highest intellectual values as sinful, as misleading, as full
of temptation. The most lamentable example: the corruption of Pascal, who
believed that his intellect had been destroyed by original sin, whereas it was
actually destroyed by Christianity!—

6.

It is a painful and tragic spectacle that rises before me: I have drawn
back the curtain from the rottenness of man. This word, in my mouth, is at
least free from one suspicion: that it involves a moral accusation against
humanity. It is used—and I wish to emphasize the fact again—without any
moral significance: and this is so far true that the rottenness I speak of is
most apparent to me precisely in those quarters where there has been most
aspiration, hitherto, toward “virtue” and “godliness.” As you probably
surmise, I understand rottenness in the sense of décadence: my argument is
that all the values on which mankind now fixes its highest aspirations are
décadence-values.
I call an animal, a species, an individual corrupt, when it loses its
instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it. A history
of the “higher feelings,” the “ideals of humanity”—and it is possible that
I’ll have to write it—would almost explain why man is so degenerate. Life
itself appears to me as an instinct for growth, for survival, for the
accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is
disaster. My contention is that all the highest values of humanity have been
emptied of this will—that the values of décadence, of nihilism, now prevail
under the holiest names.

7.

Christianity is called the religion of pity.—Pity stands in opposition to

all the tonic passions that augment the energy of the feeling of aliveness: it
is a depressant. A man loses power when he pities. Through pity that drain
upon strength which suffering works is multiplied a thousandfold. Suffering
is made contagious by pity; under certain circumstances it may lead to a
total sacrifice of life and living energy—a loss out of all proportion to the
magnitude of the cause (—the case of the death of the Nazarene). This is
the first view of it; there is, however, a still more important one. If one
measures the effects of pity by the gravity of the reactions it sets up, its
character as a menace to life appears in a much clearer light. Pity thwarts
the whole law of evolution, which is the law of natural selection. It
preserves whatever is ripe for destruction; it fights on the side of those
disinherited and condemned by life; by maintaining life in so many of the
botched of all kinds, it gives life itself a gloomy and dubious aspect.
Mankind has ventured to call pity a virtue (—in every superior moral
system it appears as a weakness—); going still further, it has been called the
virtue, the source and foundation of all other virtues—but let us always bear
in mind that this was from the standpoint of a philosophy that was nihilistic,
and upon whose shield the denial of life was inscribed. Schopenhauer was
right in this: that by means of pity life is denied, and made worthy of denial
—pity is the technic of nihilism. Let me repeat: this depressing and
contagious instinct stands against all those instincts which work for the
preservation and enhancement of life: in the rôle of protector of the
miserable, it is a prime agent in the promotion of décadence—pity
persuades to extinction.... Of course, one doesn’t say “extinction”: one says
“the other world,” or “God,” or “the true life,” or Nirvana, salvation,
blessedness.... This innocent rhetoric, from the realm of religious-ethical
balderdash, appears a good deal less innocent when one reflects upon the
tendency that it conceals beneath sublime words: the tendency to destroy
life. Schopenhauer was hostile to life: that is why pity appeared to him as a
virtue.... Aristotle, as every one knows, saw in pity a sickly and dangerous
state of mind, the remedy for which was an occasional purgative: he
regarded tragedy as that purgative. The instinct of life should prompt us to
seek some means of puncturing any such pathological and dangerous
accumulation of pity as that appearing in Schopenhauer’s case (and also,
alack, in that of our whole literary décadence, from St. Petersburg to Paris,
from Tolstoi to Wagner), that it may burst and be discharged.... Nothing is
more unhealthy, amid all our unhealthy modernism, than Christian pity. To
be the doctors here, to be unmerciful here, to wield the knife here—all this
is our business, all this is our sort of humanity, by this sign we are
philosophers, we Hyperboreans!—

8.

It is necessary to say just whom we regard as our antagonists:

theologians and all who have any theological blood in their veins—this is
our whole philosophy.... One must have faced that menace at close hand,
better still, one must have had experience of it directly and almost
succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly (—the alleged
free-thinking of our naturalists and physiologists seems to me to be a joke
—they have no passion about such things; they have not suffered—). This
poisoning goes a great deal further than most people think: I find the
arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard themselves as
“idealists”—among all who, by virtue of a higher point of departure, claim
a right to rise above reality, and to look upon it with suspicion.... The
idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand
(—and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt
against “understanding,” “the senses,” “honor,” “good living,” “science”; he
sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on
which “the soul” soars as a pure thing-in-itself—as if humility, chastity,
poverty, in a word, holiness, had not already done much more damage to
life than all imaginable horrors and vices.... The pure soul is a pure lie.... So
long as the priest, that professional denier, calumniator and poisoner of life,
is accepted as a higher variety of man, there can be no answer to the
question, What is truth? Truth has already been stood on its head when the
obvious attorney of mere emptiness is mistaken for its representative....

9.

Upon this theological instinct I make war: I find the tracks of it

everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is shifty and
dishonourable in all things. The pathetic thing that grows out of this
condition is called faith: in other words, closing one’s eyes upon one’s self
once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood. People erect
a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness upon this false view of all
things; they ground good conscience upon faulty vision; they argue that no
other sort of vision has value any more, once they have made theirs
sacrosanct with the names of “God,” “salvation” and “eternity.” I unearth
this theological instinct in all directions: it is the most widespread and the
most subterranean form of falsehood to be found on earth. Whatever a
theologian regards as true must be false: there you have almost a criterion of
truth. His profound instinct of self-preservation stands against truth ever
coming into honour in any way, or even getting stated. Wherever the
influence of theologians is felt there is a transvaluation of values, and the
concepts “true” and “false” are forced to change places: whatever is most
damaging to life is there called “true,” and whatever exalts it, intensifies it,
approves it, justifies it and makes it triumphant is there called “false.”...
When theologians, working through the “consciences” of princes (or of
peoples—), stretch out their hands for power, there is never any doubt as to
the fundamental issue: the will to make an end, the nihilistic will exerts that
power....

10.

Among Germans I am immediately understood when I say that

theological blood is the ruin of philosophy. The Protestant pastor is the
grandfather of German philosophy; Protestantism itself is its peccatum
originale. Definition of Protestantism: hemiplegic paralysis of Christianity
—and of reason.... One need only utter the words “Tübingen School” to get
an understanding of what German philosophy is at bottom—a very artful
form of theology.... The Suabians are the best liars in Germany; they lie
innocently.... Why all the rejoicing over the appearance of Kant that went
through the learned world of Germany, three-fourths of which is made up of
the sons of preachers and teachers—why the German conviction still
echoing, that with Kant came a change for the better? The theological
instinct of German scholars made them see clearly just what had become
possible again.... A backstairs leading to the old ideal stood open; the
concept of the “true world,” the concept of morality as the essence of the
world (—the two most vicious errors that ever existed!), were once more,
thanks to a subtle and wily scepticism, if not actually demonstrable, then at
least no longer refutable.... Reason, the prerogative of reason, does not go
so far.... Out of reality there had been made “appearance”; an absolutely
false world, that of being, had been turned into reality.... The success of
Kant is merely a theological success; he was, like Luther and Leibnitz, but
one more impediment to German integrity, already far from steady.—
 11.

A word now against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be our

invention; it must spring out of our personal need and defence. In every
other case it is a source of danger. That which does not belong to our life
menaces it; a virtue which has its roots in mere respect for the concept of
“virtue,” as Kant would have it, is pernicious. “Virtue,” “duty,” “good for
its own sake,” goodness grounded upon impersonality or a notion of
universal validity—these are all chimeras, and in them one finds only an
expression of the decay, the last collapse of life, the Chinese spirit of
Königsberg. Quite the contrary is demanded by the most profound laws of
self-preservation and of growth: to wit, that every man find his own virtue,
his own categorical imperative. A nation goes to pieces when it confounds
its duty with the general concept of duty. Nothing works a more complete
and penetrating disaster than every “impersonal” duty, every sacrifice
before the Moloch of abstraction.—To think that no one has thought of
Kant’s categorical imperative as dangerous to life!... The theological
instinct alone took it under protection!—An action prompted by the life-
instinct proves that it is a right action by the amount of pleasure that goes
with it: and yet that Nihilist, with his bowels of Christian dogmatism,
regarded pleasure as an objection.... What destroys a man more quickly than
to work, think and feel without inner necessity, without any deep personal
desire, without pleasure—as a mere automaton of duty? That is the recipe
for décadence, and no less for idiocy.... Kant became an idiot.—And such a
man was the contemporary of Goethe! This calamitous spinner of cobwebs
passed for the German philosopher—still passes today!... I forbid myself to
say what I think of the Germans.... Didn’t Kant see in the French
Revolution the transformation of the state from the inorganic form to the
organic? Didn’t he ask himself if there was a single event that could be
explained save on the assumption of a moral faculty in man, so that on the
basis of it, “the tendency of mankind toward the good” could be explained,
once and for all time? Kant’s answer: “That is revolution.” Instinct at fault
in everything and anything, instinct as a revolt against nature, German
décadence as a philosophy—that is Kant!—

12.

I put aside a few sceptics, the types of decency in the history of

philosophy: the rest haven’t the slightest conception of intellectual integrity.
They behave like women, all these great enthusiasts and prodigies—they
regard “beautiful feelings” as arguments, the “heaving breast” as the
bellows of divine inspiration, conviction as the criterion of truth. In the end,
with “German” innocence, Kant tried to give a scientific flavour to this
form of corruption, this dearth of intellectual conscience, by calling it
“practical reason.” He deliberately invented a variety of reasons for use on
occasions when it was desirable not to trouble with reason—that is, when
morality, when the sublime command “thou shalt,” was heard. When one
recalls the fact that, among all peoples, the philosopher is no more than a
development from the old type of priest, this inheritance from the priest,
this fraud upon self, ceases to be remarkable. When a man feels that he has
a divine mission, say to lift up, to save or to liberate mankind—when a man
feels the divine spark in his heart and believes that he is the mouthpiece of
supernatural imperatives—when such a mission inflames him, it is only
natural that he should stand beyond all merely reasonable standards of
judgment. He feels that he is himself sanctified by this mission, that he is
himself a type of a higher order!... What has a priest to do with philosophy!
He stands far above it!—And hitherto the priest has ruled!—He has
determined the meaning of “true” and “not true”!...

13.

Let us not underestimate this fact: that we ourselves, we free spirits,

are already a “transvaluation of all values,” a visualized declaration of war
and victory against all the old concepts of “true” and “not true.” The most
valuable intuitions are the last to be attained; the most valuable of all are
those which determine methods. All the methods, all the principles of the
scientific spirit of today, were the targets for thousands of years of the most
profound contempt; if a man inclined to them he was excluded from the
society of “decent” people—he passed as “an enemy of God,” as a scoffer
at the truth, as one “possessed.” As a man of science, he belonged to the
Chandala[2].... We have had the whole pathetic stupidity of mankind against
us—their every notion of what the truth ought to be, of what the service of
the truth ought to be—their every “thou shalt” was launched against us....
Our objectives, our methods, our quiet, cautious, distrustful manner—all
appeared to them as absolutely discreditable and contemptible.—Looking
back, one may almost ask one’s self with reason if it was not actually an
aesthetic sense that kept men blind so long: what they demanded of the
truth was picturesque effectiveness, and of the learned a strong appeal to
their senses. It was our modesty that stood out longest against their taste....
How well they guessed that, these turkey-cocks of God!
The
[2] lowest of the Hindu castes.

14.

We have unlearned something. We have become more modest in every

way. We no longer derive man from the “spirit,” from the “godhead”; we
have dropped him back among the beasts. We regard him as the strongest of
the beasts because he is the craftiest; one of the results thereof is his
intellectuality. On the other hand, we guard ourselves against a conceit
which would assert itself even here: that man is the great second thought in
the process of organic evolution. He is, in truth, anything but the crown of
creation: beside him stand many other animals, all at similar stages of
development.... And even when we say that we say a bit too much, for man,
relatively speaking, is the most botched of all the animals and the sickliest,
and he has wandered the most dangerously from his instincts—though for
all that, to be sure, he remains the most interesting!—As regards the lower
animals, it was Descartes who first had the really admirable daring to
describe them as machina; the whole of our physiology is directed toward
proving the truth of this doctrine. Moreover, it is illogical to set man apart,
as Descartes did: what we know of man today is limited precisely by the
extent to which we have regarded him, too, as a machine. Formerly we
accorded to man, as his inheritance from some higher order of beings, what
was called “free will”; now we have taken even this will from him, for the
term no longer describes anything that we can understand. The old word
“will” now connotes only a sort of result, an individual reaction, that
follows inevitably upon a series of partly discordant and partly harmonious
stimuli—the will no longer “acts,” or “moves.”... Formerly it was thought
that man’s consciousness, his “spirit,” offered evidence of his high origin,
his divinity. That he might be perfected, he was advised, tortoise-like, to
draw his senses in, to have no traffic with earthly things, to shuffle off his
mortal coil—then only the important part of him, the “pure spirit,” would
remain. Here again we have thought out the thing better: to us
consciousness, or “the spirit,” appears as a symptom of a relative
imperfection of the organism, as an experiment, a groping, a
misunderstanding, as an affliction which uses up nervous force
unnecessarily—we deny that anything can be done perfectly so long as it is
done consciously. The “pure spirit” is a piece of pure stupidity: take away
the nervous system and the senses, the so-called “mortal shell,” and the rest
is miscalculation—that is all!...

15.

Under Christianity neither morality nor religion has any point of

contact with actuality. It offers purely imaginary causes (“God,” “soul,”
“ego,” “spirit,” “free will”—or even “unfree”), and purely imaginary effects
(“sin,” “salvation,” “grace,” “punishment,” “forgiveness of sins”).
Intercourse between imaginary beings (“God,” “spirits,” “souls”); an
imaginary natural history (anthropocentric; a total denial of the concept of
natural causes); an imaginary psychology (misunderstandings of self,
misinterpretations of agreeable or disagreeable general feelings—for
example, of the states of the nervus sympathicus with the help of the sign-
language of religio-ethical balderdash—, “repentance,” “pangs of
conscience,” “temptation by the devil,” “the presence of God”); an
imaginary teleology (the “kingdom of God,” “the last judgment,” “eternal
life”).—This purely fictitious world, greatly to its disadvantage, is to be
differentiated from the world of dreams; the latter at least reflects reality,
whereas the former falsifies it, cheapens it and denies it. Once the concept
of “nature” had been opposed to the concept of “God,” the word “natural”
necessarily took on the meaning of “abominable”—the whole of that
fictitious world has its sources in hatred of the natural (—the real!—), and
is no more than evidence of a profound uneasiness in the presence of
reality.... This explains everything. Who alone has any reason for living his
way out of reality? The man who suffers under it. But to suffer from reality
one must be a botched reality.... The preponderance of pains over pleasures
is the cause of this fictitious morality and religion: but such a
preponderance also supplies the formula for décadence....

16.

A criticism of the Christian concept of God leads inevitably to the

same conclusion.—A nation that still believes in itself holds fast to its own
god. In him it does honour to the conditions which enable it to survive, to
its virtues—it projects its joy in itself, its feeling of power, into a being to
whom one may offer thanks. He who is rich will give of his riches; a proud
people need a god to whom they can make sacrifices.... Religion, within
these limits, is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence:
to that end he needs a god.—Such a god must be able to work both benefits
and injuries; he must be able to play either friend or foe—he is wondered at
for the good he does as well as for the evil he does. But the castration,
against all nature, of such a god, making him a god of goodness alone,
would be contrary to human inclination. Mankind has just as much need for
an evil god as for a good god; it doesn’t have to thank mere tolerance and
humanitarianism for its own existence.... What would be the value of a god
who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn, cunning, violence? who
had perhaps never experienced the rapturous ardeurs of victory and of
destruction? No one would understand such a god: why should any one
want him?—True enough, when a nation is on the downward path, when it
feels its belief in its own future, its hope of freedom slipping from it, when
it begins to see submission as a first necessity and the virtues of submission
as measures of self-preservation, then it must overhaul its god. He then
becomes a hypocrite, timorous and demure; he counsels “peace of soul,”
hate-no-more, leniency, “love” of friend and foe. He moralizes endlessly; he
creeps into every private virtue; he becomes the god of every man; he
becomes a private citizen, a cosmopolitan.... Formerly he represented a
people, the strength of a people, everything aggressive and thirsty for power
in the soul of a people; now he is simply the good god.... The truth is that
there is no other alternative for gods: either they are the will to power—in
which case they are national gods—or incapacity for power—in which case
they have to be good....

17.

Wherever the will to power begins to decline, in whatever form, there

is always an accompanying decline physiologically, a décadence. The
divinity of this décadence, shorn of its masculine virtues and passions, is
converted perforce into a god of the physiologically degraded, of the weak.
Of course, they do not call themselves the weak; they call themselves “the
good.”... No hint is needed to indicate the moments in history at which the
dualistic fiction of a good and an evil god first became possible. The same
instinct which prompts the inferior to reduce their own god to “goodness-in-
itself” also prompts them to eliminate all good qualities from the god of
their superiors; they make revenge on their masters by making a devil of the
latter’s god.—The good god, and the devil like him—both are abortions of
décadence.—How can we be so tolerant of the naïveté of Christian
theologians as to join in their doctrine that the evolution of the concept of
god from “the god of Israel,” the god of a people, to the Christian god, the
essence of all goodness, is to be described as progress?—But even Renan
does this. As if Renan had a right to be naïve! The contrary actually stares
one in the face. When everything necessary to ascending life; when all that
is strong, courageous, masterful and proud has been eliminated from the
concept of a god; when he has sunk step by step to the level of a staff for
the weary, a sheet-anchor for the drowning; when he becomes the poor
man’s god, the sinner’s god, the invalid’s god par excellence, and the
attribute of “saviour” or “redeemer” remains as the one essential attribute of
divinity—just what is the significance of such a metamorphosis? what does
such a reduction of the godhead imply?—To be sure, the “kingdom of God”
has thus grown larger. Formerly he had only his own people, his “chosen”
people. But since then he has gone wandering, like his people themselves,
into foreign parts; he has given up settling down quietly anywhere; finally
he has come to feel at home everywhere, and is the great cosmopolitan—
until now he has the “great majority” on his side, and half the earth. But this
god of the “great majority,” this democrat among gods, has not become a
proud heathen god: on the contrary, he remains a Jew, he remains a god in a
corner, a god of all the dark nooks and crevices, of all the noisesome
quarters of the world!... His earthly kingdom, now as always, is a kingdom
of the underworld, a souterrain kingdom, a ghetto kingdom.... And he
himself is so pale, so weak, so décadent.... Even the palest of the pale are
able to master him—messieurs the metaphysicians, those albinos of the
intellect. They spun their webs around him for so long that finally he was
hypnotized, and began to spin himself, and became another metaphysician.
Thereafter he resumed once more his old business of spinning the world out
of his inmost being sub specie Spinozae; thereafter he became ever thinner
and paler—became the “ideal,” became “pure spirit,” became “the
absolute,” became “the thing-in-itself.”... The collapse of a god: he became
a “thing-in-itself.”

18.

The Christian concept of a god—the god as the patron of the sick, the
god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit—is one of the most corrupt
concepts that has ever been set up in the world: it probably touches low-
water mark in the ebbing evolution of the god-type. God degenerated into
the contradiction of life. Instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yea!
In him war is declared on life, on nature, on the will to live! God becomes
the formula for every slander upon the “here and now,” and for every lie
about the “beyond”! In him nothingness is deified, and the will to
nothingness is made holy!...

19.

The fact that the strong races of northern Europe did not repudiate this
Christian god does little credit to their gift for religion—and not much more
to their taste. They ought to have been able to make an end of such a
moribund and worn-out product of the décadence. A curse lies upon them
because they were not equal to it; they made illness, decrepitude and
contradiction a part of their instincts—and since then they have not
managed to create any more gods. Two thousand years have come and gone
—and not a single new god! Instead, there still exists, and as if by some
intrinsic right,—as if he were the ultimatum and maximum of the power to
create gods, of the creator spiritus in mankind—this pitiful god of Christian
monotono-theism! This hybrid image of decay, conjured up out of
emptiness, contradiction and vain imagining, in which all the instincts of
décadence, all the cowardices and wearinesses of the soul find their
sanction!—

20.

In my condemnation of Christianity I surely hope I do no injustice to a

related religion with an even larger number of believers: I allude to
Buddhism. Both are to be reckoned among the nihilistic religions—they are
both décadence religions—but they are separated from each other in a very
remarkable way. For the fact that he is able to compare them at all the critic
of Christianity is indebted to the scholars of India.—Buddhism is a hundred
times as realistic as Christianity—it is part of its living heritage that it is
able to face problems objectively and coolly; it is the product of long
centuries of philosophical speculation. The concept, “god,” was already
disposed of before it appeared. Buddhism is the only genuinely positive
religion to be encountered in history, and this applies even to its
epistemology (which is a strict phenomenalism). It does not speak of a
“struggle with sin,” but, yielding to reality, of the “struggle with suffering.”
Sharply differentiating itself from Christianity, it puts the self-deception that
lies in moral concepts behind it; it is, in my phrase, beyond good and evil.—
The two physiological facts upon which it grounds itself and upon which it
bestows its chief attention are: first, an excessive sensitiveness to sensation,
which manifests itself as a refined susceptibility to pain, and secondly, an
extraordinary spirituality, a too protracted concern with concepts and logical
procedures, under the influence of which the instinct of personality has
yielded to a notion of the “impersonal.” (—Both of these states will be
familiar to a few of my readers, the objectivists, by experience, as they are
to me). These physiological states produced a depression, and Buddha tried
to combat it by hygienic measures. Against it he prescribed a life in the
open, a life of travel; moderation in eating and a careful selection of foods;
caution in the use of intoxicants; the same caution in arousing any of the
passions that foster a bilious habit and heat the blood; finally, no worry,
either on one’s own account or on account of others. He encourages ideas
that make for either quiet contentment or good cheer—he finds means to
combat ideas of other sorts. He understands good, the state of goodness, as
something which promotes health. Prayer is not included, and neither is
asceticism. There is no categorical imperative nor any disciplines, even
within the walls of a monastery (—it is always possible to leave—). These
things would have been simply means of increasing the excessive
sensitiveness above mentioned. For the same reason he does not advocate
any conflict with unbelievers; his teaching is antagonistic to nothing so
much as to revenge, aversion, ressentiment (—“enmity never brings an end
to enmity”: the moving refrain of all Buddhism....) And in all this he was
right, for it is precisely these passions which, in view of his main regiminal
purpose, are unhealthful. The mental fatigue that he observes, already
plainly displayed in too much “objectivity” (that is, in the individual’s loss
of interest in himself, in loss of balance and of “egoism”), he combats by
strong efforts to lead even the spiritual interests back to the ego. In
Buddha’s teaching egoism is a duty. The “one thing needful,” the question
“how can you be delivered from suffering,” regulates and determines the
whole spiritual diet. (—Perhaps one will here recall that Athenian who also
declared war upon pure “scientificality,” to wit, Socrates, who also elevated
egoism to the estate of a morality).

21.

The things necessary to Buddhism are a very mild climate, customs of

great gentleness and liberality, and no militarism; moreover, it must get its
start among the higher and better educated classes. Cheerfulness, quiet and
the absence of desire are the chief desiderata, and they are attained.
Buddhism is not a religion in which perfection is merely an object of
aspiration: perfection is actually normal.—
Under Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and the oppressed
come to the fore: it is only those who are at the bottom who seek their
salvation in it. Here the prevailing pastime, the favourite remedy for
boredom is the discussion of sin, self-criticism, the inquisition of
conscience; here the emotion produced by power (called “God”) is pumped
up (by prayer); here the highest good is regarded as unattainable, as a gift,
as “grace.” Here, too, open dealing is lacking; concealment and the
darkened room are Christian. Here body is despised and hygiene is
denounced as sensual; the church even ranges itself against cleanliness (—
the first Christian order after the banishment of the Moors closed the public
baths, of which there were 270 in Cordova alone). Christian, too, is a
certain cruelty toward one’s self and toward others; hatred of unbelievers;
the will to persecute. Sombre and disquieting ideas are in the foreground;
the most esteemed states of mind, bearing the most respectable names, are
epileptoid; the diet is so regulated as to engender morbid symptoms and
over-stimulate the nerves. Christian, again, is all deadly enmity to the rulers
of the earth, to the “aristocratic”—along with a sort of secret rivalry with
them (—one resigns one’s “body” to them; one wants only one’s “soul”...).
And Christian is all hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage, of freedom,
of intellectual libertinage; Christian is all hatred of the senses, of joy in the
senses, of joy in general....

22.

When Christianity departed from its native soil, that of the lowest
orders, the underworld of the ancient world, and began seeking power
among barbarian peoples, it no longer had to deal with exhausted men, but
with men still inwardly savage and capable of self-torture—in brief, strong
men, but bungled men. Here, unlike in the case of the Buddhists, the cause
of discontent with self, suffering through self, is not merely a general
sensitiveness and susceptibility to pain, but, on the contrary, an inordinate
thirst for inflicting pain on others, a tendency to obtain subjective
satisfaction in hostile deeds and ideas. Christianity had to embrace barbaric
concepts and valuations in order to obtain mastery over barbarians: of such
sort, for example, are the sacrifices of the first-born, the drinking of blood
as a sacrament, the disdain of the intellect and of culture; torture in all its
forms, whether bodily or not; the whole pomp of the cult. Buddhism is a
religion for peoples in a further state of development, for races that have
become kind, gentle and over-spiritualized (—Europe is not yet ripe for it
—): it is a summons that takes them back to peace and cheerfulness, to a
careful rationing of the spirit, to a certain hardening of the body.
Christianity aims at mastering beasts of prey; its modus operandi is to make
them ill—to make feeble is the Christian recipe for taming, for “civilizing.”
Buddhism is a religion for the closing, over-wearied stages of civilization.
Christianity appears before civilization has so much as begun—under
certain circumstances it lays the very foundations thereof.

23.
 Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times more austere, more honest,
more objective. It no longer has to justify its pains, its susceptibility to
suffering, by interpreting these things in terms of sin—it simply says, as it
simply thinks, “I suffer.” To the barbarian, however, suffering in itself is
scarcely understandable: what he needs, first of all, is an explanation as to
why he suffers. (His mere instinct prompts him to deny his suffering
altogether, or to endure it in silence.) Here the word “devil” was a blessing:
man had to have an omnipotent and terrible enemy—there was no need to
be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.—
At the bottom of Christianity there are several subtleties that belong to
the Orient. In the first place, it knows that it is of very little consequence
whether a thing be true or not, so long as it is believed to be true. Truth and
faith: here we have two wholly distinct worlds of ideas, almost two
diametrically opposite worlds—the road to the one and the road to the other
lie miles apart. To understand that fact thoroughly—this is almost enough,
in the Orient, to make one a sage. The Brahmins knew it, Plato knew it,
every student of the esoteric knows it. When, for example, a man gets any
pleasure out of the notion that he has been saved from sin, it is not
necessary for him to be actually sinful, but merely to feel sinful. But when
faith is thus exalted above everything else, it necessarily follows that
reason, knowledge and patient inquiry have to be discredited: the road to
the truth becomes a forbidden road.—Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great
deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever
be. Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict
with actuality can dash it—so high, indeed, that no fulfilment can satisfy it:
a hope reaching out beyond this world. (Precisely because of this power that
hope has of making the suffering hold out, the Greeks regarded it as the evil
of evils, as the most malign of evils; it remained behind at the source of all
evil.)[3]—In order that love may be possible, God must become a person; in
order that the lower instincts may take a hand in the matter God must be
young. To satisfy the ardor of the woman a beautiful saint must appear on
the scene, and to satisfy that of the men there must be a virgin. These things
are necessary if Christianity is to assume lordship over a soil on which
some aphrodisiacal or Adonis cult has already established a notion as to
what a cult ought to be. To insist upon chastity greatly strengthens the
vehemence and subjectivity of the religious instinct—it makes the cult
warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful.—Love is the state in which man
sees things most decidedly as they are not. The force of illusion reaches its
highest here, and so does the capacity for sweetening, for transfiguring.
When a man is in love he endures more than at any other time; he submits
to anything. The problem was to devise a religion which would allow one to
love: by this means the worst that life has to offer is overcome—it is
scarcely even noticed.—So much for the three Christian virtues: faith, hope
and charity: I call them the three Christian ingenuities.—Buddhism is in too
late a stage of development, too full of positivism, to be shrewd in any such
way.—
That
[3] is, in Pandora’s box.

24.

Here I barely touch upon the problem of the origin of Christianity. The
first thing necessary to its solution is this: that Christianity is to be
understood only by examining the soil from which it sprung—it is not a
reaction against Jewish instincts; it is their inevitable product; it is simply
one more step in the awe-inspiring logic of the Jews. In the words of the
Saviour, “salvation is of the Jews.”[4]—The second thing to remember is
this: that the psychological type of the Galilean is still to be recognized, but
it was only in its most degenerate form (which is at once maimed and
overladen with foreign features) that it could serve in the manner in which it
has been used: as a type of the Saviour of mankind.—
John iv,
[4] 22.

The Jews are the most remarkable people in the history of the world,
for when they were confronted with the question, to be or not to be, they
chose, with perfectly unearthly deliberation, to be at any price: this price
involved a radical falsification of all nature, of all naturalness, of all reality,
of the whole inner world, as well as of the outer. They put themselves
against all those conditions under which, hitherto, a people had been able to
live, or had even been permitted to live; out of themselves they evolved an
idea which stood in direct opposition to natural conditions—one by one
they distorted religion, civilization, morality, history and psychology until
each became a contradiction of its natural significance. We meet with the
same phenomenon later on, in an incalculably exaggerated form, but only as
a copy: the Christian church, put beside the “people of God,” shows a
complete lack of any claim to originality. Precisely for this reason the Jews
are the most fateful people in the history of the world: their influence has so
falsified the reasoning of mankind in this matter that today the Christian can
cherish anti-Semitism without realizing that it is no more than the final
consequence of Judaism.
In my “Genealogy of Morals” I give the first psychological
explanation of the concepts underlying those two antithetical things, a noble
morality and a ressentiment morality, the second of which is a mere product
of the denial of the former. The Judaeo-Christian moral system belongs to
the second division, and in every detail. In order to be able to say Nay to
everything representing an ascending evolution of life—that is, to well-
being, to power, to beauty, to self-approval—the instincts of ressentiment,
here become downright genius, had to invent an other world in which the
acceptance of life appeared as the most evil and abominable thing
imaginable. Psychologically, the Jews are a people gifted with the very
strongest vitality, so much so that when they found themselves facing
impossible conditions of life they chose voluntarily, and with a profound
talent for self-preservation, the side of all those instincts which make for
décadence—not as if mastered by them, but as if detecting in them a power
by which “the world” could be defied. The Jews are the very opposite of
décadents: they have simply been forced into appearing in that guise, and
with a degree of skill approaching the non plus ultra of histrionic genius
they have managed to put themselves at the head of all décadent
movements (—for example, the Christianity of Paul—), and so make of
them something stronger than any party frankly saying Yes to life. To the
sort of men who reach out for power under Judaism and Christianity,—that
is to say, to the priestly class—décadence is no more than a means to an
end. Men of this sort have a vital interest in making mankind sick, and in
confusing the values of “good” and “bad,” “true” and “false” in a manner
that is not only dangerous to life, but also slanders it.

25.

The history of Israel is invaluable as a typical history of an attempt to

denaturize all natural values: I point to five facts which bear this out.
Originally, and above all in the time of the monarchy, Israel maintained the
right attitude of things, which is to say, the natural attitude. Its Jahveh was
an expression of its consciousness of power, its joy in itself, its hopes for
itself: to him the Jews looked for victory and salvation and through him
they expected nature to give them whatever was necessary to their existence
—above all, rain. Jahveh is the god of Israel, and consequently the god of
justice: this is the logic of every race that has power in its hands and a good
conscience in the use of it. In the religious ceremonial of the Jews both
aspects of this self-approval stand revealed. The nation is grateful for the
high destiny that has enabled it to obtain dominion; it is grateful for the
benign procession of the seasons, and for the good fortune attending its
herds and its crops.—This view of things remained an ideal for a long
while, even after it had been robbed of validity by tragic blows: anarchy
within and the Assyrian without. But the people still retained, as a
projection of their highest yearnings, that vision of a king who was at once
a gallant warrior and an upright judge—a vision best visualized in the
typical prophet (i. e., critic and satirist of the moment), Isaiah.—But every
hope remained unfulfilled. The old god no longer could do what he used to
do. He ought to have been abandoned. But what actually happened? Simply
this: the conception of him was changed—the conception of him was
denaturized; this was the price that had to be paid for keeping him.—
Jahveh, the god of “justice”—he is in accord with Israel no more, he no
longer vizualizes the national egoism; he is now a god only conditionally....
The public notion of this god now becomes merely a weapon in the hands
of clerical agitators, who interpret all happiness as a reward and all
unhappiness as a punishment for obedience or disobedience to him, for
“sin”: that most fraudulent of all imaginable interpretations, whereby a
“moral order of the world” is set up, and the fundamental concepts, “cause”
and “effect,” are stood on their heads. Once natural causation has been
swept out of the world by doctrines of reward and punishment some sort of
un-natural causation becomes necessary: and all other varieties of the denial
of nature follow it. A god who demands—in place of a god who helps, who
gives counsel, who is at bottom merely a name for every happy inspiration
of courage and self-reliance.... Morality is no longer a reflection of the
conditions which make for the sound life and development of the people; it
is no longer the primary life-instinct; instead it has become abstract and in
opposition to life—a fundamental perversion of the fancy, an “evil eye” on
all things. What is Jewish, what is Christian morality? Chance robbed of its
innocence; unhappiness polluted with the idea of “sin”; well-being
represented as a danger, as a “temptation”; a physiological disorder
produced by the canker worm of conscience....

26.

The concept of god falsified; the concept of morality falsified;—but

even here Jewish priest-craft did not stop. The whole history of Israel
ceased to be of any value: out with it!—These priests accomplished that
miracle of falsification of which a great part of the Bible is the documentary
evidence; with a degree of contempt unparalleled, and in the face of all
tradition and all historical reality, they translated the past of their people
into religious terms, which is to say, they converted it into an idiotic
mechanism of salvation, whereby all offences against Jahveh were punished
and all devotion to him was rewarded. We would regard this act of
historical falsification as something far more shameful if familiarity with
the ecclesiastical interpretation of history for thousands of years had not
blunted our inclinations for uprightness in historicis. And the philosophers
support the church: the lie about a “moral order of the world” runs through
the whole of philosophy, even the newest. What is the meaning of a “moral
order of the world”? That there is a thing called the will of God which, once
and for all time, determines what man ought to do and what he ought not to
do; that the worth of a people, or of an individual thereof, is to be measured
by the extent to which they or he obey this will of God; that the destinies of
a people or of an individual are controlled by this will of God, which
rewards or punishes according to the degree of obedience manifested.—In
place of all that pitiable lie reality has this to say: the priest, a parasitical
variety of man who can exist only at the cost of every sound view of life,
takes the name of God in vain: he calls that state of human society in which
he himself determines the value of all things “the kingdom of God”; he calls
the means whereby that state of affairs is attained “the will of God”; with
cold-blooded cynicism he estimates all peoples, all ages and all individuals
by the extent of their subservience or opposition to the power of the priestly
order. One observes him at work: under the hand of the Jewish priesthood
the great age of Israel became an age of decline; the Exile, with its long
series of misfortunes, was transformed into a punishment for that great age
—during which priests had not yet come into existence. Out of the powerful
and wholly free heroes of Israel’s history they fashioned, according to their
changing needs, either wretched bigots and hypocrites or men entirely
“godless.” They reduced every great event to the idiotic formula: “obedient
or disobedient to God.”—They went a step further: the “will of God” (in
other words some means necessary for preserving the power of the priests)
had to be determined—and to this end they had to have a “revelation.” In
plain English, a gigantic literary fraud had to be perpetrated, and “holy
scriptures” had to be concocted—and so, with the utmost hierarchical
pomp, and days of penance and much lamentation over the long days of
“sin” now ended, they were duly published. The “will of God,” it appears,
had long stood like a rock; the trouble was that mankind had neglected the
“holy scriptures”.... But the “will of God” had already been revealed to
Moses.... What happened? Simply this: the priest had formulated, once and
for all time and with the strictest meticulousness, what tithes were to be
paid to him, from the largest to the smallest (—not forgetting the most
appetizing cuts of meat, for the priest is a great consumer of beefsteaks); in
brief, he let it be known just what he wanted, what “the will of God” was....
From this time forward things were so arranged that the priest became
indispensable everywhere; at all the great natural events of life, at birth, at
marriage, in sickness, at death, not to say at the “sacrifice” (that is, at meal-
times), the holy parasite put in his appearance, and proceeded to denaturize
it—in his own phrase, to “sanctify” it.... For this should be noted: that every
natural habit, every natural institution (the state, the administration of
justice, marriage, the care of the sick and of the poor), everything demanded
by the life-instinct, in short, everything that has any value in itself, is
reduced to absolute worthlessness and even made the reverse of valuable by
the parasitism of priests (or, if you chose, by the “moral order of the
world”). The fact requires a sanction—a power to grant values becomes
necessary, and the only way it can create such values is by denying nature....
The priest depreciates and desecrates nature: it is only at this price that he
can exist at all.—Disobedience to God, which actually means to the priest,
to “the law,” now gets the name of “sin”; the means prescribed for
“reconciliation with God” are, of course, precisely the means which bring
one most effectively under the thumb of the priest; he alone can “save”....
Psychologically considered, “sins” are indispensable to every society
organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of
power; the priest lives upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be
“sinning”.... Prime axiom: “God forgiveth him that repenteth”—in plain
English, him that submitteth to the priest.

27.

Christianity sprang from a soil so corrupt that on it everything natural,

every natural value, every reality was opposed by the deepest instincts of
the ruling class—it grew up as a sort of war to the death upon reality, and as
such it has never been surpassed. The “holy people,” who had adopted
priestly values and priestly names for all things, and who, with a terrible
logical consistency, had rejected everything of the earth as “unholy,”
“worldly,” “sinful”—this people put its instinct into a final formula that was
logical to the point of self-annihilation: as Christianity it actually denied
even the last form of reality, the “holy people,” the “chosen people,” Jewish
reality itself. The phenomenon is of the first order of importance: the small
insurrectionary movement which took the name of Jesus of Nazareth is
simply the Jewish instinct redivivus—in other words, it is the priestly
instinct come to such a pass that it can no longer endure the priest as a fact;
it is the discovery of a state of existence even more fantastic than any
before it, of a vision of life even more unreal than that necessary to an
ecclesiastical organization. Christianity actually denies the church....
I am unable to determine what was the target of the insurrection said to
have been led (whether rightly or wrongly) by Jesus, if it was not the Jewish
church—“church” being here used in exactly the same sense that the word
has today. It was an insurrection against the “good and just,” against the
“prophets of Israel,” against the whole hierarchy of society—not against
corruption, but against caste, privilege, order, formalism. It was unbelief in
“superior men,” a Nay flung at everything that priests and theologians stood
for. But the hierarchy that was called into question, if only for an instant, by
this movement was the structure of piles which, above everything, was
necessary to the safety of the Jewish people in the midst of the “waters”—it
represented their last possibility of survival; it was the final residuum of
their independent political existence; an attack upon it was an attack upon
the most profound national instinct, the most powerful national will to live,
that has ever appeared on earth. This saintly anarchist, who aroused the
people of the abyss, the outcasts and “sinners,” the Chandala of Judaism, to
rise in revolt against the established order of things—and in language
which, if the Gospels are to be credited, would get him sent to Siberia today
—this man was certainly a political criminal, at least in so far as it was
possible to be one in so absurdly unpolitical a community. This is what
brought him to the cross: the proof thereof is to be found in the inscription
that was put upon the cross. He died for his own sins—there is not the
slightest ground for believing, no matter how often it is asserted, that he
died for the sins of others.—

28.

As to whether he himself was conscious of this contradiction—

whether, in fact, this was the only contradiction he was cognizant of—that
is quite another question. Here, for the first time, I touch upon the problem
of the psychology of the Saviour.—I confess, to begin with, that there are
very few books which offer me harder reading than the Gospels. My
difficulties are quite different from those which enabled the learned
curiosity of the German mind to achieve one of its most unforgettable
triumphs. It is a long while since I, like all other young scholars, enjoyed
with all the sapient laboriousness of a fastidious philologist the work of the
incomparable Strauss.[5] At that time I was twenty years old: now I am too
serious for that sort of thing. What do I care for the contradictions of
“tradition”? How can any one call pious legends “traditions”? The histories
of saints present the most dubious variety of literature in existence; to
examine them by the scientific method, in the entire absence of
corroborative documents, seems to me to condemn the whole inquiry from
the start—it is simply learned idling....
David
[5] Friedrich Strauss (1808-74), author of “Das Leben Jesu” (1835-6), a very
famous work in its day. Nietzsche here refers to it.

29.

What concerns me is the psychological type of the Saviour. This type

might be depicted in the Gospels, in however mutilated a form and however
much overladen with extraneous characters—that is, in spite of the Gospels;
just as the figure of Francis of Assisi shows itself in his legends in spite of
his legends. It is not a question of mere truthful evidence as to what he did,
what he said and how he actually died; the question is, whether his type is
still conceivable, whether it has been handed down to us.—All the attempts
that I know of to read the history of a “soul” in the Gospels seem to me to
reveal only a lamentable psychological levity. M. Renan, that mountebank
in psychologicus, has contributed the two most unseemly notions to this
business of explaining the type of Jesus: the notion of the genius and that of
the hero (“héros”). But if there is anything essentially unevangelical, it is
surely the concept of the hero. What the Gospels make instinctive is
precisely the reverse of all heroic struggle, of all taste for conflict: the very
incapacity for resistance is here converted into something moral: (“resist
not evil!”—the most profound sentence in the Gospels, perhaps the true key
to them), to wit, the blessedness of peace, of gentleness, the inability to be
an enemy. What is the meaning of “glad tidings”?—The true life, the life
eternal has been found—it is not merely promised, it is here, it is in you; it
is the life that lies in love free from all retreats and exclusions, from all
keeping of distances. Every one is the child of God—Jesus claims nothing
for himself alone—as the child of God each man is the equal of every other
man.... Imagine making Jesus a hero!—And what a tremendous
misunderstanding appears in the word “genius”! Our whole conception of
the “spiritual,” the whole conception of our civilization, could have had no
meaning in the world that Jesus lived in. In the strict sense of the
physiologist, a quite different word ought to be used here.... We all know
that there is a morbid sensibility of the tactile nerves which causes those
suffering from it to recoil from every touch, and from every effort to grasp a
solid object. Brought to its logical conclusion, such a physiological habitus
becomes an instinctive hatred of all reality, a flight into the “intangible,”
into the “incomprehensible”; a distaste for all formulae, for all conceptions
of time and space, for everything established—customs, institutions, the
church—; a feeling of being at home in a world in which no sort of reality
survives, a merely “inner” world, a “true” world, an “eternal” world.... “The
Kingdom of God is within you”....

30.
 The instinctive hatred of reality: the consequence of an extreme
susceptibility to pain and irritation—so great that merely to be “touched”
becomes unendurable, for every sensation is too profound.
The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all hostility, all bounds and
distances in feeling: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to pain
and irritation—so great that it senses all resistance, all compulsion to
resistance, as unbearable anguish (—that is to say, as harmful, as prohibited
by the instinct of self-preservation), and regards blessedness (joy) as
possible only when it is no longer necessary to offer resistance to anybody
or anything, however evil or dangerous—love, as the only, as the ultimate
possibility of life....
These are the two physiological realities upon and out of which the
doctrine of salvation has sprung. I call them a sublime super-development
of hedonism upon a thoroughly unsalubrious soil. What stands most closely
related to them, though with a large admixture of Greek vitality and nerve-
force, is epicureanism, the theory of salvation of paganism. Epicurus was a
typical décadent: I was the first to recognize him.—The fear of pain, even
of infinitely slight pain—the end of this can be nothing save a religion of
love....

31.

I have already given my answer to the problem. The prerequisite to it

is the assumption that the type of the Saviour has reached us only in a
greatly distorted form. This distortion is very probable: there are many
reasons why a type of that sort should not be handed down in a pure form,
complete and free of additions. The milieu in which this strange figure
moved must have left marks upon him, and more must have been imprinted
by the history, the destiny, of the early Christian communities; the latter
indeed, must have embellished the type retrospectively with characters
which can be understood only as serving the purposes of war and of
propaganda. That strange and sickly world into which the Gospels lead us
—a world apparently out of a Russian novel, in which the scum of society,
nervous maladies and “childish” idiocy keep a tryst—must, in any case,
have coarsened the type: the first disciples, in particular, must have been
forced to translate an existence visible only in symbols and
incomprehensibilities into their own crudity, in order to understand it at all
—in their sight the type could take on reality only after it had been recast in
a familiar mould.... The prophet, the messiah, the future judge, the teacher
of morals, the worker of wonders, John the Baptist—all these merely
presented chances to misunderstand it.... Finally, let us not underrate the
proprium of all great, and especially all sectarian veneration: it tends to
erase from the venerated objects all its original traits and idiosyncrasies,
often so painfully strange—it does not even see them. It is greatly to be
regretted that no Dostoyevsky lived in the neighbourhood of this most
interesting décadent—I mean some one who would have felt the poignant
charm of such a compound of the sublime, the morbid and the childish. In
the last analysis, the type, as a type of the décadence, may actually have
been peculiarly complex and contradictory: such a possibility is not to be
lost sight of. Nevertheless, the probabilities seem to be against it, for in that
case tradition would have been particularly accurate and objective, whereas
we have reasons for assuming the contrary. Meanwhile, there is a
contradiction between the peaceful preacher of the mount, the sea-shore and
the fields, who appears like a new Buddha on a soil very unlike India’s, and
the aggressive fanatic, the mortal enemy of theologians and ecclesiastics,
who stands glorified by Renan’s malice as “le grand maître en ironie.” I
myself haven’t any doubt that the greater part of this venom (and no less of
esprit) got itself into the concept of the Master only as a result of the
excited nature of Christian propaganda: we all know the unscrupulousness
of sectarians when they set out to turn their leader into an apologia for
themselves. When the early Christians had need of an adroit, contentious,
pugnacious and maliciously subtle theologian to tackle other theologians,
they created a “god” that met that need, just as they put into his mouth
without hesitation certain ideas that were necessary to them but that were
utterly at odds with the Gospels—“the second coming,” “the last
judgment,” all sorts of expectations and promises, current at the time.—
 32.

I can only repeat that I set myself against all efforts to intrude the
fanatic into the figure of the Saviour: the very word impérieux, used by
Renan, is alone enough to annul the type. What the “glad tidings” tell us is
simply that there are no more contradictions; the kingdom of heaven
belongs to children; the faith that is voiced here is no more an embattled
faith—it is at hand, it has been from the beginning, it is a sort of
recrudescent childishness of the spirit. The physiologists, at all events, are
familiar with such a delayed and incomplete puberty in the living organism,
the result of degeneration. A faith of this sort is not furious, it does not
denounce, it does not defend itself: it does not come with “the sword”—it
does not realize how it will one day set man against man. It does not
manifest itself either by miracles, or by rewards and promises, or by
“scriptures”: it is itself, first and last, its own miracle, its own reward, its
own promise, its own “kingdom of God.” This faith does not formulate
itself—it simply lives, and so guards itself against formulae. To be sure, the
accident of environment, of educational background gives prominence to
concepts of a certain sort: in primitive Christianity one finds only concepts
of a Judaeo-Semitic character (—that of eating and drinking at the last
supper belongs to this category—an idea which, like everything else
Jewish, has been badly mauled by the church). But let us be careful not to
see in all this anything more than symbolical language, semantics[6] an
opportunity to speak in parables. It is only on the theory that no work is to
be taken literally that this anti-realist is able to speak at all. Set down among
Hindus he would have made use of the concepts of Sankhya,[7] and among
Chinese he would have employed those of Lao-tse[8]—and in neither case
would it have made any difference to him.—With a little freedom in the use
of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit”[9]—he cares nothing
for what is established: the word killeth,[10] whatever is established killeth.
The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed
to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He
speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the
innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature,
even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.—Here it is of
paramount importance to be led into no error by the temptations lying in
Christian, or rather ecclesiastical prejudices: such a symbolism par
excellence stands outside all religion, all notions of worship, all history, all
natural science, all worldly experience, all knowledge, all politics, all
psychology, all books, all art—his “wisdom” is precisely a pure
ignorance[11] of all such things. He has never heard of culture; he doesn’t
have to make war on it—he doesn’t even deny it.... The same thing may be
said of the state, of the whole bourgeoise social order, of labour, of war—he
has no ground for denying “the world,” for he knows nothing of the
ecclesiastical concept of “the world”.... Denial is precisely the thing that is
impossible to him.—In the same way he lacks argumentative capacity, and
has no belief that an article of faith, a “truth,” may be established by proofs
(—his proofs are inner “lights,” subjective sensations of happiness and self-
approval, simple “proofs of power”—). Such a doctrine cannot contradict:
it doesn’t know that other doctrines exist, or can exist, and is wholly
incapable of imagining anything opposed to it.... If anything of the sort is
ever encountered, it laments the “blindness” with sincere sympathy—for it
alone has “light”—but it does not offer objections....
The
[6] word Semiotik is in the text, but it is probable that Semantik is what
Nietzsche had in mind.

One
[7] of the six great systems of Hindu philosophy.

The
[8] reputed founder of Taoism.

Nietzsche’s
[9] name for one accepting his own philosophy.

That
[10] is, the strict letter of the law—the chief target of Jesus’s early preaching.

A
[11]
reference to the “pure ignorance” (reine Thorheit) of Parsifal.

33.

In the whole psychology of the “Gospels” the concepts of guilt and

punishment are lacking, and so is that of reward. “Sin,” which means
anything that puts a distance between God and man, is abolished—this is
precisely the “glad tidings.” Eternal bliss is not merely promised, nor is it
bound up with conditions: it is conceived as the only reality—what remains
consists merely of signs useful in speaking of it.
The results of such a point of view project themselves into a new way
of life, the special evangelical way of life. It is not a “belief” that marks off
the Christian; he is distinguished by a different mode of action; he acts
differently. He offers no resistance, either by word or in his heart, to those
who stand against him. He draws no distinction between strangers and
countrymen, Jews and Gentiles (“neighbour,” of course, means fellow-
believer, Jew). He is angry with no one, and he despises no one. He neither
appeals to the courts of justice nor heeds their mandates (“Swear not at
all”).[12] He never under any circumstances divorces his wife, even when he
has proofs of her infidelity.—And under all of this is one principle; all of it
arises from one instinct.—
Matthew
[12] v, 34.

The life of the Saviour was simply a carrying out of this way of life—
and so was his death.... He no longer needed any formula or ritual in his
relations with God—not even prayer. He had rejected the whole of the
Jewish doctrine of repentance and atonement; he knew that it was only by a
way of life that one could feel one’s self “divine,” “blessed,” “evangelical,”
a “child of God.” Not by “repentance,” not by “prayer and forgiveness” is
the way to God: only the Gospel way leads to God—it is itself “God!”—
What the Gospels abolished was the Judaism in the concepts of “sin,”
“forgiveness of sin,” “faith,” “salvation through faith”—the whole
ecclesiastical dogma of the Jews was denied by the “glad tidings.”
The deep instinct which prompts the Christian how to live so that he
will feel that he is “in heaven” and is “immortal,” despite many reasons for
feeling that he is not “in heaven”: this is the only psychological reality in
“salvation.”—A new way of life, not a new faith....

34.
 If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that
he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths”—that he saw
everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely
as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “the Son of God” does
not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual,
but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of
time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this
typical symbolist, of the “kingdom of God,” and of the “sonship of God.”
Nothing could be more un-Christian than the crude ecclesiastical notions of
God as a person, of a “kingdom of God” that is to come, of a “kingdom of
heaven” beyond, and of a “son of God” as the second person of the Trinity.
All this—if I may be forgiven the phrase—is like thrusting one’s fist into
the eye (and what an eye!) of the Gospels: a disrespect for symbols
amounting to world-historical cynicism.... But it is nevertheless obvious
enough what is meant by the symbols “Father” and “Son”—not, of course,
to every one—: the word “Son” expresses entrance into the feeling that
there is a general transformation of all things (beatitude), and “Father”
expresses that feeling itself—the sensation of eternity and of perfection.—I
am ashamed to remind you of what the church has made of this symbolism:
has it not set an Amphitryon story[13] at the threshold of the Christian
“faith”? And a dogma of “immaculate conception” for good measure?...
And thereby it has robbed conception of its immaculateness—
Amphitryon
[13] was the son of Alcaeus, King of Tiryns. His wife was Alcmene.
During his absence she was visited by Zeus, and bore Heracles.

The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to

come “beyond the world” or “after death.” The whole idea of natural death
is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent
because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only
as a symbol. The “hour of death” is not a Christian idea—“hours,” time, the
physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of “glad
tidings.”... The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had
no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a
“millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is
nowhere....

35.

This “bearer of glad tidings” died as he lived and taught—not to “save

mankind,” but to show mankind how to live. It was a way of life that he
bequeathed to man: his demeanour before the judges, before the officers,
before his accusers—his demeanour on the cross. He does not resist; he
does not defend his rights; he makes no effort to ward off the most extreme
penalty—more, he invites it.... And he prays, suffers and loves with those,
in those, who do him evil.... Not to defend one’s self, not to show anger, not
to lay blames.... On the contrary, to submit even to the Evil One—to love
him....

36.

—We free spirits—we are the first to have the necessary prerequisite
to understanding what nineteen centuries have misunderstood—that instinct
and passion for integrity which makes war upon the “holy lie” even more
than upon all other lies.... Mankind was unspeakably far from our
benevolent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the spirit which
alone makes possible the solution of such strange and subtle things: what
men always sought, with shameless egoism, was their own advantage
therein; they created the church out of denial of the Gospels....
Whoever sought for signs of an ironical divinity’s hand in the great
drama of existence would find no small indication thereof in the stupendous
question-mark that is called Christianity. That mankind should be on its
knees before the very antithesis of what was the origin, the meaning and the
law of the Gospels—that in the concept of the “church” the very things
should be pronounced holy that the “bearer of glad tidings” regards as
beneath him and behind him—it would be impossible to surpass this as a
grand example of world-historical irony—
 37.

—Our age is proud of its historical sense: how, then, could it delude
itself into believing that the crude fable of the wonder-worker and Saviour
constituted the beginnings of Christianity—and that everything spiritual and
symbolical in it only came later? Quite to the contrary, the whole history of
Christianity—from the death on the cross onward—is the history of a
progressively clumsier misunderstanding of an original symbolism. With
every extension of Christianity among larger and ruder masses, even less
capable of grasping the principles that gave birth to it, the need arose to
make it more and more vulgar and barbarous—it absorbed the teachings
and rites of all the subterranean cults of the imperium Romanum, and the
absurdities engendered by all sorts of sickly reasoning. It was the fate of
Christianity that its faith had to become as sickly, as low and as vulgar as
the needs were sickly, low and vulgar to which it had to administer. A sickly
barbarism finally lifts itself to power as the church—the church, that
incarnation of deadly hostility to all honesty, to all loftiness of soul, to all
discipline of the spirit, to all spontaneous and kindly humanity.—Christian
values—noble values: it is only we, we free spirits, who have re-established
this greatest of all antitheses in values!...

38.

—I cannot, at this place, avoid a sigh. There are days when I am

visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—contempt of
man. Let me leave no doubt as to what I despise, whom I despise: it is the
man of today, the man with whom I am unhappily contemporaneous. The
man of today—I am suffocated by his foul breath!... Toward the past, like
all who understand, I am full of tolerance, which is to say, generous self-
control: with gloomy caution I pass through whole millenniums of this
madhouse of a world, call it “Christianity,” “Christian faith” or the
“Christian church,” as you will—I take care not to hold mankind
responsible for its lunacies. But my feeling changes and breaks out
irresistibly the moment I enter modern times, our times. Our age knows
better.... What was formerly merely sickly now becomes indecent—it is
indecent to be a Christian today. And here my disgust begins.—I look about
me: not a word survives of what was once called “truth”; we can no longer
bear to hear a priest pronounce the word. Even a man who makes the most
modest pretensions to integrity must know that a theologian, a priest, a pope
of today not only errs when he speaks, but actually lies—and that he no
longer escapes blame for his lie through “innocence” or “ignorance.” The
priest knows, as every one knows, that there is no longer any “God,” or any
“sinner,” or any “Saviour”—that “free will” and the “moral order of the
world” are lies—: serious reflection, the profound self-conquest of the
spirit, allow no man to pretend that he does not know it.... All the ideas of
the church are now recognized for what they are—as the worst counterfeits
in existence, invented to debase nature and all natural values; the priest
himself is seen as he actually is—as the most dangerous form of parasite, as
the venomous spider of creation.... We know, our conscience now knows—
just what the real value of all those sinister inventions of priest and church
has been and what ends they have served, with their debasement of
humanity to a state of self-pollution, the very sight of which excites
loathing,—the concepts “the other world,” “the last judgment,” “the
immortality of the soul,” the “soul” itself: they are all merely so many
instruments of torture, systems of cruelty, whereby the priest becomes
master and remains master.... Every one knows this, but nevertheless things
remain as before. What has become of the last trace of decent feeling, of
self-respect, when our statesmen, otherwise an unconventional class of men
and thoroughly anti-Christian in their acts, now call themselves Christians
and go to the communion-table?... A prince at the head of his armies,
magnificent as the expression of the egoism and arrogance of his people—
and yet acknowledging, without any shame, that he is a Christian!... Whom,
then, does Christianity deny? what does it call “the world”? To be a soldier,
to be a judge, to be a patriot; to defend one’s self; to be careful of one’s
honour; to desire one’s own advantage; to be proud ... every act of
everyday, every instinct, every valuation that shows itself in a deed, is now
anti-Christian: what a monster of falsehood the modern man must be to call
himself nevertheless, and without shame, a Christian!—

39.

—I shall go back a bit, and tell you the authentic history of

Christianity.—The very word “Christianity” is a misunderstanding—at
bottom there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross. The
“Gospels” died on the cross. What, from that moment onward, was called
the “Gospels” was the very reverse of what he had lived: “bad tidings,” a
Dysangelium.[14] It is an error amounting to nonsensicality to see in “faith,”
and particularly in faith in salvation through Christ, the distinguishing mark
of the Christian: only the Christian way of life, the life lived by him who
died on the cross, is Christian.... To this day such a life is still possible, and
for certain men even necessary: genuine, primitive Christianity will remain
possible in all ages.... Not faith, but acts; above all, an avoidance of acts, a
different state of being.... States of consciousness, faith of a sort, the
acceptance, for example, of anything as true—as every psychologist knows,
the value of these things is perfectly indifferent and fifth-rate compared to
that of the instincts: strictly speaking, the whole concept of intellectual
causality is false. To reduce being a Christian, the state of Christianity, to an
acceptance of truth, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is to
formulate the negation of Christianity. In fact, there are no Christians. The
“Christian”—he who for two thousand years has passed as a Christian—is
simply a psychological self-delusion. Closely examined, it appears that,
despite all his “faith,” he has been ruled only by his instincts—and what
instincts!—In all ages—for example, in the case of Luther—“faith” has
been no more than a cloak, a pretense, a curtain behind which the instincts
have played their game—a shrewd blindness to the domination of certain of
the instincts.... I have already called “faith” the specially Christian form of
shrewdness—people always talk of their “faith” and act according to their
instincts.... In the world of ideas of the Christian there is nothing that so
much as touches reality: on the contrary, one recognizes an instinctive
hatred of reality as the motive power, the only motive power at the bottom
of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That even here, in psychologicis,
there is a radical error, which is to say one conditioning fundamentals,
which is to say, one in substance. Take away one idea and put a genuine
reality in its place—and the whole of Christianity crumbles to nothingness!
—Viewed calmly, this strangest of all phenomena, a religion not only
depending on errors, but inventive and ingenious only in devising injurious
errors, poisonous to life and to the heart—this remains a spectacle for the
gods—for those gods who are also philosophers, and whom I have
encountered, for example, in the celebrated dialogues at Naxos. At the
moment when their disgust leaves them (—and us!) they will be thankful
for the spectacle afforded by the Christians: perhaps because of this curious
exhibition alone the wretched little planet called the earth deserves a glance
from omnipotence, a show of divine interest.... Therefore, let us not
underestimate the Christians: the Christian, false to the point of innocence,
is far above the ape—in its application to the Christians a well-known
theory of descent becomes a mere piece of politeness....
So
[14]in the text. One of Nietzsche’s numerous coinages, obviously suggested by
Evangelium, the German for gospel.

40.

—The fate of the Gospels was decided by death—it hung on the

“cross.”... It was only death, that unexpected and shameful death; it was
only the cross, which was usually reserved for the canaille only—it was
only this appalling paradox which brought the disciples face to face with
the real riddle: “Who was it? what was it?”—The feeling of dismay, of
profound affront and injury; the suspicion that such a death might involve a
refutation of their cause; the terrible question, “Why just in this way?”—
this state of mind is only too easy to understand. Here everything must be
accounted for as necessary; everything must have a meaning, a reason, the
highest sort of reason; the love of a disciple excludes all chance. Only then
did the chasm of doubt yawn: “Who put him to death? who was his natural
enemy?”—this question flashed like a lightning-stroke. Answer: dominant
Judaism, its ruling class. From that moment, one found one’s self in revolt
against the established order, and began to understand Jesus as in revolt
against the established order. Until then this militant, this nay-saying, nay-
doing element in his character had been lacking; what is more, he had
appeared to present its opposite. Obviously, the little community had not
understood what was precisely the most important thing of all: the example
offered by this way of dying, the freedom from and superiority to every
feeling of ressentiment—a plain indication of how little he was understood
at all! All that Jesus could hope to accomplish by his death, in itself, was to
offer the strongest possible proof, or example, of his teachings in the most
public manner.... But his disciples were very far from forgiving his death—
though to have done so would have accorded with the Gospels in the
highest degree; and neither were they prepared to offer themselves, with
gentle and serene calmness of heart, for a similar death.... On the contrary, it
was precisely the most unevangelical of feelings, revenge, that now
possessed them. It seemed impossible that the cause should perish with his
death: “recompense” and “judgment” became necessary (—yet what could
be less evangelical than “recompense,” “punishment,” and “sitting in
judgment”!). Once more the popular belief in the coming of a messiah
appeared in the foreground; attention was rivetted upon an historical
moment: the “kingdom of God” is to come, with judgment upon his
enemies.... But in all this there was a wholesale misunderstanding: imagine
the “kingdom of God” as a last act, as a mere promise! The Gospels had
been, in fact, the incarnation, the fulfilment, the realization of this
“kingdom of God.” It was only now that all the familiar contempt for and
bitterness against Pharisees and theologians began to appear in the character
of the Master—he was thereby turned into a Pharisee and theologian
himself! On the other hand, the savage veneration of these completely
unbalanced souls could no longer endure the Gospel doctrine, taught by
Jesus, of the equal right of all men to be children of God: their revenge took
the form of elevating Jesus in an extravagant fashion, and thus separating
him from themselves: just as, in earlier times, the Jews, to revenge
themselves upon their enemies, separated themselves from their God, and
placed him on a great height. The One God and the Only Son of God: both
were products of ressentiment....

41.

—And from that time onward an absurd problem offered itself: “how
could God allow it!” To which the deranged reason of the little community
formulated an answer that was terrifying in its absurdity: God gave his son
as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. At once there was an end of the
gospels! Sacrifice for sin, and in its most obnoxious and barbarous form:
sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What appalling
paganism!—Jesus himself had done away with the very concept of “guilt,”
he denied that there was any gulf fixed between God and man; he lived this
unity between God and man, and that was precisely his “glad tidings”....
And not as a mere privilege!—From this time forward the type of the
Saviour was corrupted, bit by bit, by the doctrine of judgment and of the
second coming, the doctrine of death as a sacrifice, the doctrine of the
resurrection, by means of which the entire concept of “blessedness,” the
whole and only reality of the gospels, is juggled away—in favour of a state
of existence after death!... St. Paul, with that rabbinical impudence which
shows itself in all his doings, gave a logical quality to that conception, that
indecent conception, in this way: “If Christ did not rise from the dead, then
all our faith is in vain!”—And at once there sprang from the Gospels the
most contemptible of all unfulfillable promises, the shameless doctrine of
personal immortality.... Paul even preached it as a reward....

42.

One now begins to see just what it was that came to an end with the
death on the cross: a new and thoroughly original effort to found a
Buddhistic peace movement, and so establish happiness on earth—real, not
merely promised. For this remains—as I have already pointed out—the
essential difference between the two religions of décadence: Buddhism
promises nothing, but actually fulfils; Christianity promises everything, but
fulfils nothing.—Hard upon the heels of the “glad tidings” came the worst
imaginable: those of Paul. In Paul is incarnated the very opposite of the
“bearer of glad tidings”; he represents the genius for hatred, the vision of
hatred, the relentless logic of hatred. What, indeed, has not this dysangelist
sacrificed to hatred! Above all, the Saviour: he nailed him to his own cross.
The life, the example, the teaching, the death of Christ, the meaning and the
law of the whole gospels—nothing was left of all this after that
counterfeiter in hatred had reduced it to his uses. Surely not reality; surely
not historical truth!... Once more the priestly instinct of the Jew perpetrated
the same old master crime against history—he simply struck out the
yesterday and the day before yesterday of Christianity, and invented his own
history of Christian beginnings. Going further, he treated the history of
Israel to another falsification, so that it became a mere prologue to his
achievement: all the prophets, it now appeared, had referred to his
“Saviour.”... Later on the church even falsified the history of man in order
to make it a prologue to Christianity.... The figure of the Saviour, his
teaching, his way of life, his death, the meaning of his death, even the
consequences of his death—nothing remained untouched, nothing remained
in even remote contact with reality. Paul simply shifted the centre of gravity
of that whole life to a place behind this existence—in the lie of the “risen”
Jesus. At bottom, he had no use for the life of the Saviour—what he needed
was the death on the cross, and something more. To see anything honest in
such a man as Paul, whose home was at the centre of the Stoical
enlightenment, when he converts an hallucination into a proof of the
resurrection of the Saviour, or even to believe his tale that he suffered from
this hallucination himself—this would be a genuine niaiserie in a
psychologist. Paul willed the end; therefore he also willed the means....
What he himself didn’t believe was swallowed readily enough by the idiots
among whom he spread his teaching.—What he wanted was power; in Paul
the priest once more reached out for power—he had use only for such
concepts, teachings and symbols as served the purpose of tyrannizing over
the masses and organizing mobs. What was the only part of Christianity that
Mohammed borrowed later on? Paul’s invention, his device for establishing
priestly tyranny and organizing the mob: the belief in the immortality of the
soul—that is to say, the doctrine of “judgment”....

43.

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself, but in “the
beyond”—in nothingness—then one has taken away its centre of gravity
altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all
natural instinct—henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial,
that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to
live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the “meaning” of life....
Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers?
Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one’s self about the
common welfare, and try to serve it?... Merely so many “temptations,” so
many strayings from the “straight path.”—“One thing only is necessary”....
That every man, because he has an “immortal soul,” is as good as every
other man; that in an infinite universe of things the “salvation” of every
individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and
the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly
suspended in their behalf—it is impossible to lavish too much contempt
upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to
insolence. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery
of personal vanity for its triumph—it was thus that it lured all the botched,
the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring
of humanity to its side. The “salvation of the soul”—in plain English: “the
world revolves around me.”... The poisonous doctrine, “equal rights for
all,” has been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks
and crannies of bad instinct Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all
feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say,
upon the first prerequisite to every step upward, to every development of
civilization—out of the ressentiment of the masses it has forged its chief
weapons against us, against everything noble, joyous and high-spirited on
earth, against our happiness on earth.... To allow “immortality” to every
Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble
humanity ever perpetrated.—And let us not underestimate the fatal
influence that Christianity has had, even upon politics! Nowadays no one
has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for
feelings of honourable pride in himself and his equals—for the pathos of
distance.... Our politics is sick with this lack of courage!—The aristocratic
attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and
if belief in the “privileges of the majority” makes and will continue to make
revolutions—it is Christianity, let us not doubt, and Christian valuations,
which convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and crime!
Christianity is a revolt of all creatures that creep on the ground against
everything that is lofty: the gospel of the “lowly” lowers....

44.

—The gospels are invaluable as evidence of the corruption that was

already persistent within the primitive community. That which Paul, with
the cynical logic of a rabbi, later developed to a conclusion was at bottom
merely a process of decay that had begun with the death of the Saviour.—
These gospels cannot be read too carefully; difficulties lurk behind every
word. I confess—I hope it will not be held against me—that it is precisely
for this reason that they offer first-rate joy to a psychologist—as the
opposite of all merely naïve corruption, as refinement par excellence, as an
artistic triumph in psychological corruption. The gospels, in fact, stand
alone. The Bible as a whole is not to be compared to them. Here we are
among Jews: this is the first thing to be borne in mind if we are not to lose
the thread of the matter. This positive genius for conjuring up a delusion of
personal “holiness” unmatched anywhere else, either in books or by men;
this elevation of fraud in word and attitude to the level of an art—all this is
not an accident due to the chance talents of an individual, or to any
violation of nature. The thing responsible is race. The whole of Judaism
appears in Christianity as the art of concocting holy lies, and there, after
many centuries of earnest Jewish training and hard practice of Jewish
technic, the business comes to the stage of mastery. The Christian, that
ultima ratio of lying, is the Jew all over again—he is threefold the Jew....
The underlying will to make use only of such concepts, symbols and
attitudes as fit into priestly practice, the instinctive repudiation of every
other mode of thought, and every other method of estimating values and
utilities—this is not only tradition, it is inheritance: only as an inheritance is
it able to operate with the force of nature. The whole of mankind, even the
best minds of the best ages (with one exception, perhaps hardly human—),
have permitted themselves to be deceived. The gospels have been read as a
book of innocence ... surely no small indication of the high skill with which
the trick has been done.—Of course, if we could actually see these
astounding bigots and bogus saints, even if only for an instant, the farce
would come to an end,—and it is precisely because I cannot read a word of
theirs without seeing their attitudinizing that I have made an end of them....
I simply cannot endure the way they have of rolling up their eyes.—For the
majority, happily enough, books are mere literature.—Let us not be led
astray: they say “judge not,” and yet they condemn to hell whoever stands
in their way. In letting God sit in judgment they judge themselves; in
glorifying God they glorify themselves; in demanding that every one show
the virtues which they themselves happen to be capable of—still more,
which they must have in order to remain on top—they assume the grand air
of men struggling for virtue, of men engaging in a war that virtue may
prevail. “We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves for the good” (—“the
truth,” “the light,” “the kingdom of God”): in point of fact, they simply do
what they cannot help doing. Forced, like hypocrites, to be sneaky, to hide
in corners, to slink along in the shadows, they convert their necessity into a
duty: it is on grounds of duty that they account for their lives of humility,
and that humility becomes merely one more proof of their piety.... Ah, that
humble, chaste, charitable brand of fraud! “Virtue itself shall bear witness
for us.”... One may read the gospels as books of moral seduction: these
petty folks fasten themselves to morality—they know the uses of morality!
Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by the nose!—The
fact is that the conscious conceit of the chosen here disguises itself as
modesty: it is in this way that they, the “community,” the “good and just,”
range themselves, once and for always, on one side, the side of “the
truth”—and the rest of mankind, “the world,” on the other.... In that we
observe the most fatal sort of megalomania that the earth has ever seen:
little abortions of bigots and liars began to claim exclusive rights in the
concepts of “God,” “the truth,” “the light,” “the spirit,” “love,” “wisdom”
and “life,” as if these things were synonyms of themselves and thereby they
sought to fence themselves off from the “world”; little super-Jews, ripe for
some sort of madhouse, turned values upside down in order to meet their
notions, just as if the Christian were the meaning, the salt, the standard and
even the last judgment of all the rest.... The whole disaster was only made
possible by the fact that there already existed in the world a similar
megalomania, allied to this one in race, to wit, the Jewish: once a chasm
began to yawn between Jews and Judaeo-Christians, the latter had no
choice but to employ the self-preservative measures that the Jewish instinct
had devised, even against the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews had
employed them only against non-Jews. The Christian is simply a Jew of the
“reformed” confession.—

45.

—I offer a few examples of the sort of thing these petty people have
got into their heads—what they have put into the mouth of the Master: the
unalloyed creed of “beautiful souls.”—
“And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart
thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them.
Verily I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in
the day of judgment, than for that city” (Mark vi, 11)—How evangelical!...
“And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in
me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he
were cast into the sea” (Mark ix, 42).—How evangelical!...
 “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter
into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into
hell fire; Where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark ix,
47.[15])—It is not exactly the eye that is meant....
 To
[15]which, without mentioning it, Nietzsche adds verse 48.

“Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here,
which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come
with power.” (Mark ix, 1.)—Well lied, lion![16]....
A
[16]paraphrase of Demetrius’ “Well roar’d, Lion!” in act v, scene 1 of “A
Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The lion, of course, is the familiar Christian
symbol for Mark.

“Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross, and follow me. For...” (Note of a psychologist. Christian morality is
refuted by its fors: its reasons are against it,—this makes it Christian.) Mark
viii, 34.—
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. With what measure ye mete, it shall
be measured to you again.” (Matthew vii, 1.[17])—What a notion of justice,
of a “just” judge!...
Nietzsche
[17] also quotes part of verse 2.

“For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not
even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do
ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?” (Matthew v, 46.[18])—
Principle of “Christian love”: it insists upon being well paid in the end....
The
[18] quotation also includes verse 47.

“But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father
forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew  vi, 15.)—Very compromising for the
said “father.”...
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all
these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew vi, 33.)—All these things:
namely, food, clothing, all the necessities of life. An error, to put it
mildly.... A bit before this God appears as a tailor, at least in certain cases....
“Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is
great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.”
(Luke vi, 23.)—Impudent rabble! It compares itself to the prophets....
 “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God
dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God
destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” (Paul,
1  Corinthians  iii, 16.[19])—For that sort of thing one cannot have enough
contempt....
And
[19] 17.

“Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world
shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?”
(Paul, 1  Corinthians  vi, 2.)—Unfortunately, not merely the speech of a
lunatic.... This frightful impostor then proceeds: “Know ye not that we shall
judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?”...
“Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in
the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by
the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.... Not many wise
men after the flesh, not men mighty, not many noble are called: But God
hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God
hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are
mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath
God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that
are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.” (Paul, 1 Corinthians i, 20ff.
[20])—In order to understand this passage, a first-rate example of the

psychology underlying every Chandala-morality, one should read the first

part of my “Genealogy of Morals”: there, for the first time, the antagonism
between a noble morality and a morality born of ressentiment and impotent
vengefulness is exhibited. Paul was the greatest of all apostles of revenge....
Verses
[20] 20, 21, 26, 27, 28, 29.

46.

—What follows, then? That one had better put on gloves before
reading the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it very
advisable. One would as little choose “early Christians” for companions as
Polish Jews: not that one need seek out an objection to them.... Neither has
a pleasant smell.—I have searched the New Testament in vain for a single
sympathetic touch; nothing is there that is free, kindly, open-hearted or
upright. In it humanity does not even make the first step upward—the
instinct for cleanliness is lacking.... Only evil instincts are there, and there is
not even the courage of these evil instincts. It is all cowardice; it is all a
shutting of the eyes, a self-deception. Every other book becomes clean,
once one has read the New Testament: for example, immediately after
reading Paul I took up with delight that most charming and wanton of
scoffers, Petronius, of whom one may say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote
of Cæsar Borgia to the Duke of Parma: “è tutto festo”—immortally healthy,
immortally cheerful and sound.... These petty bigots make a capital
miscalculation. They attack, but everything they attack is thereby
distinguished. Whoever is attacked by an “early Christian” is surely not
befouled.... On the contrary, it is an honour to have an “early Christian” as
an opponent. One cannot read the New Testament without acquired
admiration for whatever it abuses—not to speak of the “wisdom of this
world,” which an impudent wind-bag tries to dispose of “by the foolishness
of preaching.”... Even the scribes and pharisees are benefitted by such
opposition: they must certainly have been worth something to have been
hated in such an indecent manner. Hypocrisy—as if this were a charge that
the “early Christians” dared to make!—After all, they were the privileged,
and that was enough: the hatred of the Chandala needed no other excuse.
The “early Christian”—and also, I fear, the “last Christian,” whom I may
perhaps live to see—is a rebel against all privilege by profound instinct—he
lives and makes war for ever for “equal rights.”... Strictly speaking, he has
no alternative. When a man proposes to represent, in his own person, the
“chosen of God”—or to be a “temple of God,” or a “judge of the angels”—
then every other criterion, whether based upon honesty, upon intellect, upon
manliness and pride, or upon beauty and freedom of the heart, becomes
simply “worldly”—evil in itself.... Moral: every word that comes from the
lips of an “early Christian” is a lie, and his every act is instinctively
dishonest—all his values, all his aims are noxious, but whoever he hates,
whatever he hates, has real value.... The Christian, and particularly the
Christian priest, is thus a criterion of values.
—Must I add that, in the whole New Testament, there appears but a
solitary figure worthy of honour? Pilate, the Roman viceroy. To regard a
Jewish imbroglio seriously—that was quite beyond him. One Jew more or
less—what did it matter?... The noble scorn of a Roman, before whom the
word “truth” was shamelessly mishandled, enriched the New Testament
with the only saying that has any value—and that is at once its criticism
and its destruction: “What is truth?...”

47.

—The thing that sets us apart is not that we are unable to find God,
either in history, or in nature, or behind nature—but that we regard what has
been honoured as God, not as “divine,” but as pitiable, as absurd, as
injurious; not as a mere error, but as a crime against life.... We deny that
God is God.... If any one were to show us this Christian God, we’d be still
less inclined to believe in him.—In a formula: deus, qualem Paulus creavit,
dei negatio.—Such a religion as Christianity, which does not touch reality
at a single point and which goes to pieces the moment reality asserts its
rights at any point, must be inevitably the deadly enemy of the “wisdom of
this world,” which is to say, of science—and it will give the name of good
to whatever means serve to poison, calumniate and cry down all intellectual
discipline, all lucidity and strictness in matters of intellectual conscience,
and all noble coolness and freedom of the mind. “Faith,” as an imperative,
vetoes science—in praxi, lying at any price.... Paul well knew that lying—
that “faith”—was necessary; later on the church borrowed the fact from
Paul.—The God that Paul invented for himself, a God who “reduced to
absurdity” “the wisdom of this world” (especially the two great enemies of
superstition, philology and medicine), is in truth only an indication of Paul’s
resolute determination to accomplish that very thing himself: to give one’s
own will the name of God, thora—that is essentially Jewish. Paul wants to
dispose of the “wisdom of this world”: his enemies are the good
philologians and physicians of the Alexandrine school—on them he makes
his war. As a matter of fact no man can be a philologian or a physician
without being also Antichrist. That is to say, as a philologian a man sees
behind the “holy books,” and as a physician he sees behind the
physiological degeneration of the typical Christian. The physician says
“incurable”; the philologian says “fraud.”...

48.

—Has any one ever clearly understood the celebrated story at the
beginning of the Bible—of God’s mortal terror of science?... No one, in
fact, has understood it. This priest-book par excellence opens, as is fitting,
with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he faces only one great danger;
ergo, “God” faces only one great danger.—
The old God, wholly “spirit,” wholly the high-priest, wholly perfect, is
promenading his garden: he is bored and trying to kill time. Against
boredom even gods struggle in vain.[21] What does he do? He creates man
—man is entertaining.... But then he notices that man is also bored. God’s
pity for the only form of distress that invades all paradises knows no
bounds: so he forthwith creates other animals. God’s first mistake: to man
these other animals were not entertaining—he sought dominion over them;
he did not want to be an “animal” himself.—So God created woman. In the
act he brought boredom to an end—and also many other things! Woman
was the second mistake of God.—“Woman, at bottom, is a serpent,
Heva”—every priest knows that; “from woman comes every evil in the
world”—every priest knows that, too. Ergo, she is also to blame for
science.... It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of
knowledge.—What happened? The old God was seized by mortal terror.
Man himself had been his greatest blunder; he had created a rival to
himself; science makes men godlike—it is all up with priests and gods
when man becomes scientific!—Moral: science is the forbidden per se; it
alone is forbidden. Science is the first of sins, the germ of all sins, the
original sin. This is all there is of morality.—“Thou shall not know”:—the
rest follows from that.—God’s mortal terror, however, did not hinder him
from being shrewd. How is one to protect one’s self against science? For a
long while this was the capital problem. Answer: Out of paradise with man!
Happiness, leisure, foster thought—and all thoughts are bad thoughts!—
Man must not think.—And so the priest invents distress, death, the mortal
dangers of childbirth, all sorts of misery, old age, decrepitude, above all,
sickness—nothing but devices for making war on science! The troubles of
man don’t allow him to think.... Nevertheless—how terrible!—, the edifice
of knowledge begins to tower aloft, invading heaven, shadowing the gods—
what is to be done?—The old God invents war; he separates the peoples; he
makes men destroy one another (—the priests have always had need of
war....). War—among other things, a great disturber of science!—
Incredible! Knowledge, deliverance from the priests, prospers in spite of
war.—So the old God comes to his final resolution: “Man has become
scientific—there is no help for it: he must be drowned!”...
A
[21]
paraphrase of Schiller’s “Against stupidity even gods struggle in vain.”

49.

—I have been understood. At the opening of the Bible there is the

whole psychology of the priest.—The priest knows of only one great
danger: that is science—the sound comprehension of cause and effect. But
science flourishes, on the whole, only under favourable conditions—a man
must have time, he must have an overflowing intellect, in order to
“know.”... “Therefore, man must be made unhappy,”—this has been, in all
ages, the logic of the priest.—It is easy to see just what, by this logic, was
the first thing to come into the world:—“sin.”... The concept of guilt and
punishment, the whole “moral order of the world,” was set up against
science—against the deliverance of man from priests.... Man must not look
outward; he must look inward. He must not look at things shrewdly and
cautiously, to learn about them; he must not look at all; he must suffer....
And he must suffer so much that he is always in need of the priest.—Away
with physicians! What is needed is a Saviour.—The concept of guilt and
punishment, including the doctrines of “grace,” of “salvation,” of
“forgiveness”—lies through and through, and absolutely without
psychological reality—were devised to destroy man’s sense of causality:
they are an attack upon the concept of cause and effect!—And not an attack
with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! On the contrary,
one inspired by the most cowardly, the most crafty, the most ignoble of
instincts! An attack of priests! An attack of parasites! The vampirism of
pale, subterranean leeches!... When the natural consequences of an act are
no longer “natural,” but are regarded as produced by the ghostly creations
of superstition—by “God,” by “spirits,” by “souls”—and reckoned as
merely “moral” consequences, as rewards, as punishments, as hints, as
lessons, then the whole ground-work of knowledge is destroyed—then the
greatest of crimes against humanity has been perpetrated.—I repeat that
sin, man’s self-desecration par excellence, was invented in order to make
science, culture, and every elevation and ennobling of man impossible; the
priest rules through the invention of sin.—

50.

—In this place I can’t permit myself to omit a psychology of “belief,”

of the “believer,” for the special benefit of “believers.” If there remain any
today who do not yet know how indecent it is to be “believing”—or how
much a sign of décadence, of a broken will to live—then they will know it
well enough tomorrow. My voice reaches even the deaf.—It appears, unless
I have been incorrectly informed, that there prevails among Christians a sort
of criterion of truth that is called “proof by power.” “Faith makes blessed:
therefore it is true.”—It might be objected right here that blessedness is not
demonstrated, it is merely promised: it hangs upon “faith” as a condition—
one shall be blessed because one believes.... But what of the thing that the
priest promises to the believer, the wholly transcendental “beyond”—how is
that to be demonstrated?—The “proof by power,” thus assumed, is actually
no more at bottom than a belief that the effects which faith promises will
not fail to appear. In a formula: “I believe that faith makes for blessedness
—therefore, it is true.”... But this is as far as we may go. This “therefore”
would be absurdum itself as a criterion of truth.—But let us admit, for the
sake of politeness, that blessedness by faith may be demonstrated (—not
merely hoped for, and not merely promised by the suspicious lips of a
priest): even so, could blessedness—in a technical term, pleasure—ever be
a proof of truth? So little is this true that it is almost a proof against truth
when sensations of pleasure influence the answer to the question “What is
true?” or, at all events, it is enough to make that “truth” highly suspicious.
The proof by “pleasure” is a proof of “pleasure”—nothing more; why in the
world should it be assumed that true judgments give more pleasure than
false ones, and that, in conformity to some pre-established harmony, they
necessarily bring agreeable feelings in their train?—The experience of all
disciplined and profound minds teaches the contrary. Man has had to fight
for every atom of the truth, and has had to pay for it almost everything that
the heart, that human love, that human trust cling to. Greatness of soul is
needed for this business: the service of truth is the hardest of all services.—
What, then, is the meaning of integrity in things intellectual? It means that a
man must be severe with his own heart, that he must scorn “beautiful
feelings,” and that he makes every Yea and Nay a matter of conscience!—
Faith makes blessed: therefore, it lies....

51.

The fact that faith, under certain circumstances, may work for
blessedness, but that this blessedness produced by an idée fixe by no means
makes the idea itself true, and the fact that faith actually moves no
mountains, but instead raises them up where there were none before: all this
is made sufficiently clear by a walk through a lunatic asylum. Not, of
course, to a priest: for his instincts prompt him to the lie that sickness is not
sickness and lunatic asylums not lunatic asylums. Christianity finds
sickness necessary, just as the Greek spirit had need of a superabundance of
health—the actual ulterior purpose of the whole system of salvation of the
church is to make people ill. And the church itself—doesn’t it set up a
Catholic lunatic asylum as the ultimate ideal?—The whole earth as a
madhouse?—The sort of religious man that the church wants is a typical
décadent; the moment at which a religious crisis dominates a people is
always marked by epidemics of nervous disorder; the “inner world” of the
religious man is so much like the “inner world” of the overstrung and
exhausted that it is difficult to distinguish between them; the “highest”
states of mind, held up before mankind by Christianity as of supreme worth,
are actually epileptoid in form—the church has granted the name of holy
only to lunatics or to gigantic frauds in majorem dei honorem.... Once I
ventured to designate the whole Christian system of training[22] in penance
and salvation (now best studied in England) as a method of producing a
folie circulaire upon a soil already prepared for it, which is to say, a soil
thoroughly unhealthy. Not every one may be a Christian: one is not
“converted” to Christianity—one must first be sick enough for it.... We
others, who have the courage for health and likewise for contempt,—we
may well despise a religion that teaches misunderstanding of the body! that
refuses to rid itself of the superstition about the soul! that makes a “virtue”
of insufficient nourishment! that combats health as a sort of enemy, devil,
temptation! that persuades itself that it is possible to carry about a “perfect
soul” in a cadaver of a body, and that, to this end, had to devise for itself a
new concept of “perfection,” a pale, sickly, idiotically ecstatic state of
existence, so-called “holiness”—a holiness that is itself merely a series of
symptoms of an impoverished, enervated and incurably disordered body!...
The Christian movement, as a European movement, was from the start no
more than a general uprising of all sorts of outcast and refuse elements (—
who now, under cover of Christianity, aspire to power). It does not represent
the decay of a race; it represents, on the contrary, a conglomeration of
décadence products from all directions, crowding together and seeking one
another out. It was not, as has been thought, the corruption of antiquity, of
noble antiquity, which made Christianity possible; one cannot too sharply
challenge the learned imbecility which today maintains that theory. At the
time when the sick and rotten Chandala classes in the whole imperium were
Christianized, the contrary type, the nobility, reached its finest and ripest
development. The majority became master; democracy, with its Christian
instincts, triumphed.... Christianity was not “national,” it was not based on
race—it appealed to all the varieties of men disinherited by life, it had its
allies everywhere. Christianity has the rancour of the sick at its very core—
the instinct against the healthy, against health. Everything that is well-
constituted, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offence to its ears
and eyes. Again I remind you of Paul’s priceless saying: “And God hath
chosen the weak things of the world, the foolish things of the world, the
base things of the world, and things which are despised”:[23] this was the
formula; in hoc signo the décadence triumphed.—God on the cross—is
man always to miss the frightful inner significance of this symbol?—
Everything that suffers, everything that hangs on the cross, is divine.... We
all hang on the cross, consequently we are divine.... We alone are divine....
Christianity was thus a victory: a nobler attitude of mind was destroyed by
it—Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.—
The
[22] word training is in English in the text.

1 Corinthians i,
[23] 27, 28.

52.

Christianity also stands in opposition to all intellectual well-being,—

sick reasoning is the only sort that it can use as Christian reasoning; it takes
the side of everything that is idiotic; it pronounces a curse upon “intellect,”
upon the superbia of the healthy intellect. Since sickness is inherent in
Christianity, it follows that the typically Christian state of “faith” must be a
form of sickness too, and that all straight, straightforward and scientific
paths to knowledge must be banned by the church as forbidden ways. Doubt
is thus a sin from the start.... The complete lack of psychological cleanliness
in the priest—revealed by a glance at him—is a phenomenon resulting from
décadence,—one may observe in hysterical women and in rachitic children
how regularly the falsification of instincts, delight in lying for the mere sake
of lying, and incapacity for looking straight and walking straight are
symptoms of décadence. “Faith” means the will to avoid knowing what is
true. The pietist, the priest of either sex, is a fraud because he is sick: his
instinct demands that the truth shall never be allowed its rights on any
point. “Whatever makes for illness is good; whatever issues from
abundance, from superabundance, from power, is evil”: so argues the
believer. The impulse to lie—it is by this that I recognize every
foreordained theologian.—Another characteristic of the theologian is his
unfitness for philology. What I here mean by philology is, in a general
sense, the art of reading with profit—the capacity for absorbing facts
without interpreting them falsely, and without losing caution, patience and
subtlety in the effort to understand them. Philology as ephexis[24] in
interpretation: whether one be dealing with books, with newspaper reports,
with the most fateful events or with weather statistics—not to mention the
“salvation of the soul.”... The way in which a theologian, whether in Berlin
or in Rome, is ready to explain, say, a “passage of Scripture,” or an
experience, or a victory by the national army, by turning upon it the high
illumination of the Psalms of David, is always so daring that it is enough to
make a philologian run up a wall. But what shall he do when pietists and
other such cows from Suabia[25] use the “finger of God” to convert their
miserably commonplace and huggermugger existence into a miracle of
“grace,” a “providence” and an “experience of salvation”? The most modest
exercise of the intellect, not to say of decency, should certainly be enough
to convince these interpreters of the perfect childishness and unworthiness
of such a misuse of the divine digital dexterity. However small our piety, if
we ever encountered a god who always cured us of a cold in the head at just
the right time, or got us into our carriage at the very instant heavy rain
began to fall, he would seem so absurd a god that he’d have to be abolished
even if he existed. God as a domestic servant, as a letter carrier, as an
almanac-man—at bottom, he is a mere name for the stupidest sort of
chance.... “Divine Providence,” which every third man in “educated
Germany” still believes in, is so strong an argument against God that it
would be impossible to think of a stronger. And in any case it is an
argument against Germans!...
 That
[24] is, to say, scepticism. Among the Greeks scepticism was also occasionally
called ephecticism.

A
[25]
reference to the University of Tübingen and its famous school of Biblical
criticism. The leader of this school was F. C. Baur, and one of the men greatly
influenced by it was Nietzsche’s pet abomination, David F. Strauss, himself a
Suabian. Vide § 10 and § 28.

53.

—It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a
cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do
with the truth at all. In the very tone in which a martyr flings what he
fancies to be true at the head of the world there appears so low a grade of
intellectual honesty and such insensibility to the problem of “truth,” that it
is never necessary to refute him. Truth is not something that one man has
and another man has not: at best, only peasants, or peasant-apostles like
Luther, can think of truth in any such way. One may rest assured that the
greater the degree of a man’s intellectual conscience the greater will be his
modesty, his discretion, on this point. To know in five cases, and to refuse,
with delicacy, to know anything further.... “Truth,” as the word is
understood by every prophet, every sectarian, every free-thinker, every
Socialist and every churchman, is simply a complete proof that not even a
beginning has been made in the intellectual discipline and self-control that
are necessary to the unearthing of even the smallest truth.—The deaths of
the martyrs, it may be said in passing, have been misfortunes of history:
they have misled.... The conclusion that all idiots, women and plebeians
come to, that there must be something in a cause for which any one goes to
his death (or which, as under primitive Christianity, sets off epidemics of
death-seeking)—this conclusion has been an unspeakable drag upon the
testing of facts, upon the whole spirit of inquiry and investigation. The
martyrs have damaged the truth.... Even to this day the crude fact of
persecution is enough to give an honourable name to the most empty sort of
sectarianism.—But why? Is the worth of a cause altered by the fact that
some one had laid down his life for it?—An error that becomes honourable
is simply an error that has acquired one seductive charm the more: do you
suppose, Messrs. Theologians, that we shall give you the chance to be
martyred for your lies?—One best disposes of a cause by respectfully
putting it on ice—that is also the best way to dispose of theologians.... This
was precisely the world-historical stupidity of all the persecutors: that they
gave the appearance of honour to the cause they opposed—that they made it
a present of the fascination of martyrdom.... Women are still on their knees
before an error because they have been told that some one died on the cross
for it. Is the cross, then, an argument?—But about all these things there is
one, and one only, who has said what has been needed for thousands of
years—Zarathustra.
They made signs in blood along the way that they went, and their folly taught them that the truth is
proved by blood.

But blood is the worst of all testimonies to the truth; blood poisoneth even the purest teaching and
turneth it into madness and hatred in the heart.

And when one goeth through fire for his teaching—what doth that prove? Verily, it is more when
one’s teaching cometh out of one’s own burning![26]

The
[26] quotations are from “Also sprach Zarathustra” ii, 24: “Of Priests.”

54.

Do not let yourself be deceived: great intellects are sceptical.

Zarathustra is a sceptic. The strength, the freedom which proceed from
intellectual power, from a superabundance of intellectual power, manifest
themselves as scepticism. Men of fixed convictions do not count when it
comes to determining what is fundamental in values and lack of values.
Men of convictions are prisoners. They do not see far enough, they do not
see what is below them: whereas a man who would talk to any purpose
about value and non-value must be able to see five hundred convictions
beneath him—and behind him.... A mind that aspires to great things, and
that wills the means thereto, is necessarily sceptical. Freedom from any sort
of conviction belongs to strength, and to an independent point of view....
That grand passion which is at once the foundation and the power of a
sceptic’s existence, and is both more enlightened and more despotic than he
is himself, drafts the whole of his intellect into its service; it makes him
unscrupulous; it gives him courage to employ unholy means; under certain
circumstances it does not begrudge him even convictions. Conviction as a
means: one may achieve a good deal by means of a conviction. A grand
passion makes use of and uses up convictions; it does not yield to them—it
knows itself to be sovereign.—On the contrary, the need of faith, of
something unconditioned by yea or nay, of Carlylism, if I may be allowed
the word, is a need of weakness. The man of faith, the “believer” of any
sort, is necessarily a dependent man—such a man cannot posit himself as a
goal, nor can he find goals within himself. The “believer” does not belong
to himself; he can only be a means to an end; he must be used up; he needs
some one to use him up. His instinct gives the highest honours to an ethic of
self-effacement; he is prompted to embrace it by everything: his prudence,
his experience, his vanity. Every sort of faith is in itself an evidence of self-
effacement, of self-estrangement.... When one reflects how necessary it is to
the great majority that there be regulations to restrain them from without
and hold them fast, and to what extent control, or, in a higher sense, slavery,
is the one and only condition which makes for the well-being of the weak-
willed man, and especially woman, then one at once understands conviction
and “faith.” To the man with convictions they are his backbone. To avoid
seeing many things, to be impartial about nothing, to be a party man
through and through, to estimate all values strictly and infallibly—these are
conditions necessary to the existence of such a man. But by the same token
they are antagonists of the truthful man—of the truth.... The believer is not
free to answer the question, “true” or “not true,” according to the dictates of
his own conscience: integrity on this point would work his instant downfall.
The pathological limitations of his vision turn the man of convictions into a
fanatic—Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon—these
types stand in opposition to the strong, emancipated spirit. But the
grandiose attitudes of these sick intellects, these intellectual epileptics, are
of influence upon the great masses—fanatics are picturesque, and mankind
prefers observing poses to listening to reasons....
 55.

—One step further in the psychology of conviction, of “faith.” It is

now a good while since I first proposed for consideration the question
whether convictions are not even more dangerous enemies to truth than lies.
(“Human, All-Too-Human,” I, aphorism 483.)[27] This time I desire to put
the question definitely: is there any actual difference between a lie and a
conviction?—All the world believes that there is; but what is not believed
by all the world!—Every conviction has its history, its primitive forms, its
stage of tentativeness and error: it becomes a conviction only after having
been, for a long time, not one, and then, for an even longer time, hardly
one. What if falsehood be also one of these embryonic forms of conviction?
—Sometimes all that is needed is a change in persons: what was a lie in the
father becomes a conviction in the son.—I call it lying to refuse to see what
one sees, or to refuse to see it as it is: whether the lie be uttered before
witnesses or not before witnesses is of no consequence. The most common
sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others
is a relatively rare offence.—Now, this will not to see what one sees, this
will not to see it as it is, is almost the first requisite for all who belong to a
party of whatever sort: the party man becomes inevitably a liar. For
example, the German historians are convinced that Rome was synonymous
with despotism and that the Germanic peoples brought the spirit of liberty
into the world: what is the difference between this conviction and a lie? Is it
to be wondered at that all partisans, including the German historians,
instinctively roll the fine phrases of morality upon their tongues—that
morality almost owes its very survival to the fact that the party man of
every sort has need of it every moment?—“This is our conviction: we
publish it to the whole world; we live and die for it—let us respect all who
have convictions!”—I have actually heard such sentiments from the mouths
of anti-Semites. On the contrary, gentlemen! An anti-Semite surely does not
become more respectable because he lies on principle.... The priests, who
have more finesse in such matters, and who well understand the objection
that lies against the notion of a conviction, which is to say, of a falsehood
that becomes a matter of principle because it serves a purpose, have
borrowed from the Jews the shrewd device of sneaking in the concepts,
“God,” “the will of God” and “the revelation of God” at this place. Kant,
too, with his categorical imperative, was on the same road: this was his
practical reason.[28] There are questions regarding the truth or untruth of
which it is not for man to decide; all the capital questions, all the capital
problems of valuation, are beyond human reason.... To know the limits of
reason—that alone is genuine philosophy.... Why did God make a
revelation to man? Would God have done anything superfluous? Man could
not find out for himself what was good and what was evil, so God taught
him His will.... Moral: the priest does not lie—the question, “true” or
“untrue,” has nothing to do with such things as the priest discusses; it is
impossible to lie about these things. In order to lie here it would be
necessary to know what is true. But this is more than man can know;
therefore, the priest is simply the mouthpiece of God.—Such a priestly
syllogism is by no means merely Jewish and Christian; the right to lie and
the shrewd dodge of “revelation” belong to the general priestly type—to the
priest of the décadence as well as to the priest of pagan times (—Pagans are
all those who say yes to life, and to whom “God” is a word signifying
acquiescence in all things).—The “law,” the “will of God,” the “holy book,”
and “inspiration”—all these things are merely words for the conditions
under which the priest comes to power and with which he maintains his
power,—these concepts are to be found at the bottom of all priestly
organizations, and of all priestly or priestly-philosophical schemes of
governments. The “holy lie”—common alike to Confucius, to the Code of
Manu, to Mohammed and to the Christian church—is not even wanting in
Plato. “Truth is here”: this means, no matter where it is heard, the priest
lies....
The
[27] aphorism, which is headed “The Enemies of Truth,” makes the direct
statement: “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.”

A
[28]
reference, of course, to Kant’s “Kritik der praktischen Vernunft” (Critique of
Practical Reason).
 56.

—In the last analysis it comes to this: what is the end of lying? The
fact that, in Christianity, “holy” ends are not visible is my objection to the
means it employs. Only bad ends appear: the poisoning, the calumniation,
the denial of life, the despising of the body, the degradation and self-
contamination of man by the concept of sin—therefore, its means are also
bad.—I have a contrary feeling when I read the Code of Manu, an
incomparably more intellectual and superior work, which it would be a sin
against the intelligence to so much as name in the same breath with the
Bible. It is easy to see why: there is a genuine philosophy behind it, in it,
not merely an evil-smelling mess of Jewish rabbinism and superstition,—it
gives even the most fastidious psychologist something to sink his teeth into.
And, not to forget what is most important, it differs fundamentally from
every kind of Bible: by means of it the nobles, the philosophers and the
warriors keep the whip-hand over the majority; it is full of noble valuations,
it shows a feeling of perfection, an acceptance of life, and triumphant
feeling toward self and life—the sun shines upon the whole book.—All the
things on which Christianity vents its fathomless vulgarity—for example,
procreation, women and marriage—are here handled earnestly, with
reverence and with love and confidence. How can any one really put into
the hands of children and ladies a book which contains such vile things as
this: “to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every
woman have her own husband; ... it is better to marry than to burn”?[29]
And is it possible to be a Christian so long as the origin of man is
Christianized, which is to say, befouled, by the doctrine of the immaculata
conceptio?... I know of no book in which so many delicate and kindly
things are said of women as in the Code of Manu; these old grey-beards and
saints have a way of being gallant to women that it would be impossible,
perhaps, to surpass. “The mouth of a woman,” it says in one place, “the
breasts of a maiden, the prayer of a child and the smoke of sacrifice are
always pure.” In another place: “there is nothing purer than the light of the
sun, the shadow cast by a cow, air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden.”
Finally, in still another place—perhaps this is also a holy lie—: “all the
orifices of the body above the navel are pure, and all below are impure.
Only in the maiden is the whole body pure.”
1 Corinthians vii,
[29] 2, 9.

57.

One catches the unholiness of Christian means in flagranti by the

simple process of putting the ends sought by Christianity beside the ends
sought by the Code of Manu—by putting these enormously antithetical
ends under a strong light. The critic of Christianity cannot evade the
necessity of making Christianity contemptible.—A book of laws such as the
Code of Manu has the same origin as every other good law-book: it
epitomizes the experience, the sagacity and the ethical experimentation of
long centuries; it brings things to a conclusion; it no longer creates. The
prerequisite to a codification of this sort is recognition of the fact that the
means which establish the authority of a slowly and painfully attained truth
are fundamentally different from those which one would make use of to
prove it. A law-book never recites the utility, the grounds, the casuistical
antecedents of a law: for if it did so it would lose the imperative tone, the
“thou shall,” on which obedience is based. The problem lies exactly here.—
At a certain point in the evolution of a people, the class within it of the
greatest insight, which is to say, the greatest hindsight and foresight,
declares that the series of experiences determining how all shall live—or
can live—has come to an end. The object now is to reap as rich and as
complete a harvest as possible from the days of experiment and hard
experience. In consequence, the thing that is to be avoided above everything
is further experimentation—the continuation of the state in which values are
fluent, and are tested, chosen and criticized ad infinitum. Against this a
double wall is set up: on the one hand, revelation, which is the assumption
that the reasons lying behind the laws are not of human origin, that they
were not sought out and found by a slow process and after many errors, but
that they are of divine ancestry, and came into being complete, perfect,
without a history, as a free gift, a miracle...; and on the other hand,
tradition, which is the assumption that the law has stood unchanged from
time immemorial, and that it is impious and a crime against one’s
forefathers to bring it into question. The authority of the law is thus
grounded on the thesis: God gave it, and the fathers lived it.—The higher
motive of such procedure lies in the design to distract consciousness, step
by step, from its concern with notions of right living (that is to say, those
that have been proved to be right by wide and carefully considered
experience), so that instinct attains to a perfect automatism—a primary
necessity to every sort of mastery, to every sort of perfection in the art of
life. To draw up such a law-book as Manu’s means to lay before a people
the possibility of future mastery, of attainable perfection—it permits them
to aspire to the highest reaches of the art of life. To that end the thing must
be made unconscious: that is the aim of every holy lie.—The order of
castes, the highest, the dominating law, is merely the ratification of an order
of nature, of a natural law of the first rank, over which no arbitrary fiat, no
“modern idea,” can exert any influence. In every healthy society there are
three physiological types, gravitating toward differentiation but mutually
conditioning one another, and each of these has its own hygiene, its own
sphere of work, its own special mastery and feeling of perfection. It is not
Manu but nature that sets off in one class those who are chiefly intellectual,
in another those who are marked by muscular strength and temperament,
and in a third those who are distinguished in neither one way or the other,
but show only mediocrity—the last-named represents the great majority,
and the first two the select. The superior caste—I call it the fewest—has, as
the most perfect, the privileges of the few: it stands for happiness, for
beauty, for everything good upon earth. Only the most intellectual of men
have any right to beauty, to the beautiful; only in them can goodness escape
being weakness. Pulchrum est paucorum hominum:[30] goodness is a
privilege. Nothing could be more unbecoming to them than uncouth
manners or a pessimistic look, or an eye that sees ugliness—or indignation
against the general aspect of things. Indignation is the privilege of the
Chandala; so is pessimism. “The world is perfect”—so prompts the instinct
of the intellectual, the instinct of the man who says yes to life.
“Imperfection, whatever is inferior to us, distance, the pathos of distance,
even the Chandala themselves are parts of this perfection.” The most
intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would
find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with
others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes
second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a
privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all
others.... Knowledge—a form of asceticism.—They are the most
honourable kind of men: but that does not prevent them being the most
cheerful and most amiable. They rule, not because they want to, but because
they are; they are not at liberty to play second.—The second caste: to this
belong the guardians of the law, the keepers of order and security, the more
noble warriors, above all, the king as the highest form of warrior, judge and
preserver of the law. The second in rank constitute the executive arm of the
intellectuals, the next to them in rank, taking from them all that is rough in
the business of ruling—their followers, their right hand, their most apt
disciples.—In all this, I repeat, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing “made
up”; whatever is to the contrary is made up—by it nature is brought to
shame.... The order of castes, the order of rank, simply formulates the
supreme law of life itself; the separation of the three types is necessary to
the maintenance of society, and to the evolution of higher types, and the
highest types—the inequality of rights is essential to the existence of any
rights at all.—A right is a privilege. Every one enjoys the privileges that
accord with his state of existence. Let us not underestimate the privileges of
the mediocre. Life is always harder as one mounts the heights—the cold
increases, responsibility increases. A high civilization is a pyramid: it can
stand only on a broad base; its primary prerequisite is a strong and soundly
consolidated mediocrity. The handicrafts, commerce, agriculture, science,
the greater part of art, in brief, the whole range of occupational activities,
are compatible only with mediocre ability and aspiration; such callings
would be out of place for exceptional men; the instincts which belong to
them stand as much opposed to aristocracy as to anarchism. The fact that a
man is publicly useful, that he is a wheel, a function, is evidence of a
natural predisposition; it is not society, but the only sort of happiness that
the majority are capable of, that makes them intelligent machines. To the
mediocre mediocrity is a form of happiness; they have a natural instinct for
mastering one thing, for specialization. It would be altogether unworthy of a
profound intellect to see anything objectionable in mediocrity in itself. It is,
in fact, the first prerequisite to the appearance of the exceptional: it is a
necessary condition to a high degree of civilization. When the exceptional
man handles the mediocre man with more delicate fingers than he applies to
himself or to his equals, this is not merely kindness of heart—it is simply
his duty.... Whom do I hate most heartily among the rabbles of today? The
rabble of Socialists, the apostles to the Chandala, who undermine the
workingman’s instincts, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his
petty existence—who make him envious and teach him revenge.... Wrong
never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the assertion of “equal” rights.... What
is bad? But I have already answered: all that proceeds from weakness, from
envy, from revenge.—The anarchist and the Christian have the same
ancestry....
Few
[30] men are noble.

58.

In point of fact, the end for which one lies makes a great difference:
whether one preserves thereby or destroys. There is a perfect likeness
between Christian and anarchist: their object, their instinct, points only
toward destruction. One need only turn to history for a proof of this: there it
appears with appalling distinctness. We have just studied a code of religious
legislation whose object it was to convert the conditions which cause life to
flourish into an “eternal” social organization,—Christianity found its
mission in putting an end to such an organization, because life flourished
under it. There the benefits that reason had produced during long ages of
experiment and insecurity were applied to the most remote uses, and an
effort was made to bring in a harvest that should be as large, as rich and as
complete as possible; here, on the contrary, the harvest is blighted
overnight.... That which stood there aere perennis, the imperium Romanum,
the most magnificent form of organization under difficult conditions that
has ever been achieved, and compared to which everything before it and
after it appears as patchwork, bungling, dilletantism—those holy anarchists
made it a matter of “piety” to destroy “the world,” which is to say, the
imperium Romanum, so that in the end not a stone stood upon another—and
even Germans and other such louts were able to become its masters.... The
Christian and the anarchist: both are décadents; both are incapable of any
act that is not disintegrating, poisonous, degenerating, blood-sucking; both
have an instinct of mortal hatred of everything that stands up, and is great,
and has durability, and promises life a future.... Christianity was the
vampire of the imperium Romanum,—overnight it destroyed the vast
achievement of the Romans: the conquest of the soil for a great culture that
could await its time. Can it be that this fact is not yet understood? The
imperium Romanum that we know, and that the history of the Roman
provinces teaches us to know better and better,—this most admirable of all
works of art in the grand manner was merely the beginning, and the
structure to follow was not to prove its worth for thousands of years. To this
day, nothing on a like scale sub specie aeterni has been brought into being,
or even dreamed of!—This organization was strong enough to withstand
bad emperors: the accident of personality has nothing to do with such things
—the first principle of all genuinely great architecture. But it was not strong
enough to stand up against the corruptest of all forms of corruption—
against Christians.... These stealthy worms, which under the cover of night,
mist and duplicity, crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all
earnest interest in real things, of all instinct for reality—this cowardly,
effeminate and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all “souls,” step by
step, from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious, manly
and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own cause,
their own serious purpose, their own pride. The sneakishness of hypocrisy,
the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell, such as the
sacrifice of the innocent, the unio mystica in the drinking of blood, above
all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge—all that sort
of thing became master of Rome: the same kind of religion which, in a pre-
existent form, Epicurus had combatted. One has but to read Lucretius to
know what Epicurus made war upon—not paganism, but “Christianity,”
which is to say, the corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt,
punishment and immortality.—He combatted the subterranean cults, the
whole of latent Christianity—to deny immortality was already a form of
genuine salvation.—Epicurus had triumphed, and every respectable
intellect in Rome was Epicurean—when Paul appeared ... Paul, the
Chandala hatred of Rome, of “the world,” in the flesh and inspired by
genius—the Jew, the eternal Jew par excellence.... What he saw was how,
with the aid of the small sectarian Christian movement that stood apart from
Judaism, a “world conflagration” might be kindled; how, with the symbol of
“God on the cross,” all secret seditions, all the fruits of anarchistic intrigues
in the empire, might be amalgamated into one immense power. “Salvation
is of the Jews.”—Christianity is the formula for exceeding and summing up
the subterranean cults of all varieties, that of Osiris, that of the Great
Mother, that of Mithras, for instance: in his discernment of this fact the
genius of Paul showed itself. His instinct was here so sure that, with
reckless violence to the truth, he put the ideas which lent fascination to
every sort of Chandala religion into the mouth of the “Saviour” as his own
inventions, and not only into the mouth—he made out of him something
that even a priest of Mithras could understand.... This was his revelation at
Damascus: he grasped the fact that he needed the belief in immortality in
order to rob “the world” of its value, that the concept of “hell” would
master Rome—that the notion of a “beyond” is the death of life.... Nihilist
and Christian: they rhyme in German, and they do more than rhyme....

59.

The whole labour of the ancient world gone for naught: I have no word
to describe the feelings that such an enormity arouses in me.—And,
considering the fact that its labour was merely preparatory, that with
adamantine self-consciousness it laid only the foundations for a work to go
on for thousands of years, the whole meaning of antiquity disappears!... To
what end the Greeks? to what end the Romans?—All the prerequisites to a
learned culture, all the methods of science, were already there; man had
already perfected the great and incomparable art of reading profitably—that
first necessity to the tradition of culture, the unity of the sciences; the
natural sciences, in alliance with mathematics and mechanics, were on the
right road,—the sense of fact, the last and more valuable of all the senses,
had its schools, and its traditions were already centuries old! Is all this
properly understood? Every essential to the beginning of the work was
ready:—and the most essential, it cannot be said too often, are methods, and
also the most difficult to develop, and the longest opposed by habit and
laziness. What we have today reconquered, with unspeakable self-
discipline, for ourselves—for certain bad instincts, certain Christian
instincts, still lurk in our bodies—that is to say, the keen eye for reality, the
cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest things, the whole
integrity of knowledge—all these things were already there, and had been
there for two thousand years! More, there was also a refined and excellent
tact and taste! Not as mere brain-drilling! Not as “German” culture, with its
loutish manners! But as body, as bearing, as instinct—in short, as reality....
All gone for naught! Overnight it became merely a memory!—The Greeks!
The Romans! Instinctive nobility, taste, methodical inquiry, genius for
organization and administration, faith in and the will to secure the future of
man, a great yes to everything entering into the imperium Romanum and
palpable to all the senses, a grand style that was beyond mere art, but had
become reality, truth, life....—All overwhelmed in a night, but not by a
convulsion of nature! Not trampled to death by Teutons and others of heavy
hoof! But brought to shame by crafty, sneaking, invisible, anæmic
vampires! Not conquered,—only sucked dry!... Hidden vengefulness, petty
envy, became master! Everything wretched, intrinsically ailing, and invaded
by bad feelings, the whole ghetto-world of the soul, was at once on top!—
One needs but read any of the Christian agitators, for example, St.
Augustine, in order to realize, in order to smell, what filthy fellows came to
the top. It would be an error, however, to assume that there was any lack of
understanding in the leaders of the Christian movement:—ah, but they were
clever, clever to the point of holiness, these fathers of the church! What they
lacked was something quite different. Nature neglected—perhaps forgot—
to give them even the most modest endowment of respectable, of upright, of
cleanly instincts.... Between ourselves, they are not even men.... If Islam
despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam at least
assumes that it is dealing with men....

60.

Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization,

and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan
civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was
fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than
that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down (—I do not say by what sort
of feet—) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its
origin—because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined
luxuriousness of Moorish life!... The crusaders later made war on
something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have
grovelled in the dust—a civilization beside which even that of our
nineteenth century seems very poor and very “senile.”—What they wanted,
of course, was booty: the orient was rich.... Let us put aside our prejudices!
The crusades were a higher form of piracy, nothing more! The German
nobility, which is fundamentally a Viking nobility, was in its element there:
the church knew only too well how the German nobility was to be won....
The German noble, always the “Swiss guard” of the church, always in the
service of every bad instinct of the church—but well paid.... Consider the
fact that it is precisely the aid of German swords and German blood and
valour that has enabled the church to carry through its war to the death upon
everything noble on earth! At this point a host of painful questions suggest
themselves. The German nobility stands outside the history of the higher
civilization: the reason is obvious.... Christianity, alcohol—the two great
means of corruption.... Intrinsically there should be no more choice between
Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The
decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here.
Either a man is a Chandala or he is not.... “War to the knife with Rome!
Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of
that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II.
What! must a German first be a genius, a free spirit, before he can feel
decently? I can’t make out how a German could ever feel Christian....

61.

Here it becomes necessary to call up a memory that must be a hundred

times more painful to Germans. The Germans have destroyed for Europe
the last great harvest of civilization that Europe was ever to reap—the
Renaissance. Is it understood at last, will it ever be understood, what the
Renaissance was? The transvaluation of Christian values,—an attempt with
all available means, all instincts and all the resources of genius to bring
about a triumph of the opposite values, the more noble values.... This has
been the one great war of the past; there has never been a more critical
question than that of the Renaissance—it is my question too—; there has
never been a form of attack more fundamental, more direct, or more
violently delivered by a whole front upon the center of the enemy! To attack
at the critical place, at the very seat of Christianity, and there enthrone the
more noble values—that is to say, to insinuate them into the instincts, into
the most fundamental needs and appetites of those sitting there.... I see
before me the possibility of a perfectly heavenly enchantment and
spectacle:—it seems to me to scintillate with all the vibrations of a fine and
delicate beauty, and within it there is an art so divine, so infernally divine,
that one might search in vain for thousands of years for another such
possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in significance and at the same time so
wonderfully full of paradox that it should arouse all the gods on Olympus to
immortal laughter—Cæsar Borgia as pope!... Am I understood?... Well
then, that would have been the sort of triumph that I alone am longing for
today—: by it Christianity would have been swept away!—What happened?
A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vengeful
instincts of an unsuccessful priest in him, raised a rebellion against the
Renaissance in Rome.... Instead of grasping, with profound thanksgiving,
the miracle that had taken place: the conquest of Christianity at its capital—
instead of this, his hatred was stimulated by the spectacle. A religious man
thinks only of himself.—Luther saw only the depravity of the papacy at the
very moment when the opposite was becoming apparent: the old corruption,
the peccatum originale, Christianity itself, no longer occupied the papal
chair! Instead there was life! Instead there was the triumph of life! Instead
there was a great yea to all lofty, beautiful and daring things!... And Luther
restored the church: he attacked it.... The Renaissance—an event without
meaning, a great futility!—Ah, these Germans, what they have not cost us!
Futility—that has always been the work of the Germans.—The
Reformation; Leibnitz; Kant and so-called German philosophy; the war of
“liberation”; the empire—every time a futile substitute for something that
once existed, for something irrecoverable.... These Germans, I confess, are
my enemies: I despise all their uncleanliness in concept and valuation, their
cowardice before every honest yea and nay. For nearly a thousand years
they have tangled and confused everything their fingers have touched; they
have on their conscience all the half-way measures, all the three-eighths-
way measures, that Europe is sick of,—they also have on their conscience
the uncleanest variety of Christianity that exists, and the most incurable and
indestructible—Protestantism.... If mankind never manages to get rid of
Christianity the Germans will be to blame....

62.

—With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I

condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible
of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me,
the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate
corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left
nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into
worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness
of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its “humanitarian” blessings! Its
deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by
distress; it creates distress to make itself immortal.... For example, the
worm of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this misery!
—The “equality of souls before God”—this fraud, this pretext for the
rancunes of all the base-minded—this explosive concept, ending in
revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing the whole
social order—this is Christian dynamite.... The “humanitarian” blessings of
Christianity forsooth! To breed out of humanitas a self-contradiction, an art
of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all
good and honest instincts! All this, to me, is the “humanitarianism” of
Christianity!—Parasitism as the only practice of the church; with its
anæmic and “holy” ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope
out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the
distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,—
against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul—against life
itself....
This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls,
wherever walls are to be found—I have letters that even the blind will be
able to see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic
depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are
venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small enough,—I call it the
one immortal blemish upon the human race....
And mankind reckons time from the dies nefastus when this fatality
befell—from the first day of Christianity!—Why not rather from its last?—
From today?—The transvaluation of all values!...

THE END


End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Antichrist, by F. W. Nietzsche

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANTICHRIST ***

***** This file should be named 19322-h.htm or 19322-h.zip *****

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:

http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/3/2/19322/

Produced by Laura Wisewell and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions

will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no

one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation

(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without

permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,

set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to

copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to

protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project

Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you

charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you

do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the

rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose

such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and

research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do

practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is

subject to the trademark license, especially commercial

redistribution.

*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free

distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work

(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project

Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project

Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at

http://gutenberg.org/license).

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to

and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property

(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all

the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy

all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.

If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the

terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or

entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be

used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who

agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few

things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works

even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See

paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement

and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"

or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the

collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an

individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are

located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from

copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative

works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg

are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project

Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by

freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of

this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with

the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by

keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project

Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern

what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in

a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check

the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement

before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or

creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project

Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning

the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United

States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate

access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently

whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the

phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project

Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,

copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived

from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is

posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied

and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees

or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work

with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the

work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1

through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the

Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or

1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted

with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution

must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional

terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked

to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the

permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this

work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without

prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with

active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project

Gutenberg-tm License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,

compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any

word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or

distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than

"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version

posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),

you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a

copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon

request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other

form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works

unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided

that

- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from

the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method

you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is

owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he

has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments

must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you

prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax

returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and

sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the

address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to

the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies

you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he

does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License. You must require such a user to return or

destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium

and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of

Project Gutenberg-tm works.

- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any

money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the

electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days

of receipt of the work.

- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free

distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set

forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from

both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael

Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the

Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable

effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread

public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm

collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain

"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or

corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual

property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a

computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by

your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right

of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project

Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all

liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal

fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT

LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE

PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE

TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE

LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR

INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH

DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a

defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can

receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a

written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you

received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with

your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with

the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a

refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity

providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to

receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy

is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further

opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth

in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER

WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO

WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.

If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the

law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be

interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by

the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any

provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the

trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone

providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance

with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,

promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,

harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,

that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do

or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm

work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any

Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of

electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers

including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists

because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from

people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's

goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will

remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure

and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.

To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4

and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive

Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit

501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the

state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal

Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification

number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at

http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg

Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent

permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.

Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered

throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at

809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email

[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact

information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official

page at http://pglaf.org

For additional contact information:

Dr. Gregory B. Newby

Chief Executive and Director

[email protected]

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg

Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide

spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of

increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be

freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest

array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations

($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt

status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United

States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a

considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up

with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations

where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To

SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any

particular state visit http://pglaf.org

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we

have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition

against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who

approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from

outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation

methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other

ways including checks, online payments and credit card

donations. To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works.

Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm

concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared

with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project

Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed

editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.

unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily

keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

http://www.gutenberg.org

This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary

Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to

subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

*** END: FULL LICENSE ***