Sections 51–62

7 of 8 sections in The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche

Original German

51 Daß der Glaube unter Umständen selig macht, daß Seligkeit aus einer fixen Idee noch nicht eine wahre Idee macht, daß der Glaube keine Berge versetzt, wohl aber Berge hinsetzt, wo es keine gibt: ein flüchtiger Gang durch ein Irrenhaus klärt zur Genüge darüber auf. Nicht freilich einen Priester: denn der leugnet aus Instinkt, daß Krankheit Krankheit, daß Irrenhaus Irrenhaus ist. Das Christentum hat die Krankheit nötig, ungefähr wie das Griechentum einen Überschuß von Gesundheit nötig hat — krank-machen ist die eigentliche Hinterabsicht des ganzen Heilsprozeduren-Systems der Kirche. Und die Kirche selbst — ist sie nicht das katholische Irrenhaus als letztes Ideal? — Die Erde überhaupt als Irrenhaus? — Der religiöse Mensch, wie ihn die Kirche will, ist ein typischer décadent; der Zeitpunkt, wo eine religiöse Krisis über ein Volk Herr wird, ist jedesmal durch Nerven-Epidemien gekennzeichnet; die »innere Welt« des religiösen Menschen sieht der »inneren Welt« der Überreizten und Erschöpften zum Verwechseln ähnlich; die »höchsten« Zustände, welche das Christentum als Wert aller Werte über der Menschheit aufgehängt hat, sind epileptoide Formen — die Kirche hat nur Verrückte oder große Betrüger in majorem dei honorem heilig gesprochen… Ich habe mir einmal erlaubt, den ganzen christlichen Buß- und Erlösungs-training (den man heute am besten in England studiert) als eine methodisch erzeugte folie circulaire zu bezeichnen, wie billig, auf einem bereits dazu vorbereiteten, das heißt gründlich morbiden Boden. Es steht niemandem frei, Christ zu werden: man wird zum Christentum nicht »bekehrt« — man muß krank genug dazu sein… Wir anderen, die wir den Mut zur Gesundheit und auch zur Verachtung haben, wie dürfen wir eine Religion verachten, die den Leib mißverstehn lehrte! die den Seelen-Aberglauben nicht loswerden will! die aus der unzureichenden Ernährung ein »Verdienst« macht! die in der Gesundheit eine Art Feind, Teufel, Versuchung bekämpft! die sich einredete, man könne eine »vollkommne Seele« in einem Kadaver von Leib herumtragen, und dazu nötig hatte, einen neuen Begriff der »Vollkommenheit« sich zurechtzumachen, ein bleiches, krankhaftes, idiotisch-schwärmerisches Wesen, die sogenannte »Heiligkeit« — Heiligkeit, selbst bloß eine Symptomen-Reihe des verarmten, entnervten, unheilbar verdorbenen Leibes!… Die christliche Bewegung, als eine europäische Bewegung, ist von vornherein eine Gesamt-Bewegung der Ausschuß- und Abfalls-Elemente aller Art (— diese wollen mit dem Christentum zur Macht). Sie drückt nicht den Niedergang einer Rasse aus, sie ist eine Aggregat-Bildung sich zusammendrängender und sich suchender décadence-Formen von überall. Es ist nicht, wie man glaubt, die Korruption des Altertums selbst, des vornehmen Altertums, was das Christentum ermöglichte: man kann dem gelehrten Idiotismus, der auch heute noch so etwas aufrechterhält, nicht hart genug widersprechen. In der Zeit, wo die kranken, verdorbenen Tschandala-Schichten im ganzen imperium sich christianisierten, war gerade der Gegentypus, die Vornehmheit, in ihrer schönsten und reifsten Gestalt vorhanden. Die große Zahl wurde Herr; der Demokratismus der christlichen Instinkte siegte… Das Christentum war nicht »national«, nicht rassebedingt — es wendete sich an jede Art von Enterbten des Lebens, es hatte seine Verbündeten überall. Das Christentum hat die Ranküne der Kranken auf dem Grunde, den Instinkt gegen die Gesunden, gegen die Gesundheit gerichtet. Alles Wohlgeratene, Stolze, Übermütige, die Schönheit vor allem tut ihm in Ohren und Augen weh. Nochmals erinnre ich an das unschätzbare Wort des Paulus: »Was schwach ist vor der Welt, was töricht ist vor der Welt, das Unedle und Verachtete vor der Welt hat Gott erwählet«: das war die Formel, in hoc signo siegte die décadence. — Gott am Kreuze — versteht man immer noch die furchtbare Hintergedanklichkeit dieses Symbols nicht? — Alles was leidet, alles was am Kreuze hängt, ist göttlich… Wir alle hängen am Kreuze, folglich sind wir göttlich … Wir allein sind göttlich… Das Christentum war ein Sieg, eine vornehmere Gesinnung ging an ihm zugrunde — das Christentum war bisher das größte Unglück der Menschheit. — —

52 Das Christentum steht auch im Gegensatz zu aller geistigen Wohlgeratenheit — es kann nur die kranke Vernunft als christliche Vernunft brauchen, es nimmt die Partei alles Idiotischen, es spricht den Fluch aus gegen den »Geist«, gegen die superbia des gesunden Geistes. Weil die Krankheit zum Wesen des Christentums gehört, muß auch der typisch-christliche Zustand, »der Glaube«, eine Krankheitsform sein, müssen alle geraden, rechtschaffnen, wissenschaftlichen Wege zur Erkenntnis von der Kirche als verbotene Wege abgelehnt werden. Der Zweifel bereits ist eine Sünde… Der vollkommne Mangel an psychologischer Reinlichkeit beim Priester — im Blick sich verratend — ist eine Folgeerscheinung der décadence — man hat die hysterischen Frauenzimmer, andrerseits rachitisch angelegte Kinder darauf hin zu beobachten, wie regelmäßig Falschheit aus Instinkt, Lust zu lügen, um zu lügen, Unfähigkeit zu geraden Blicken und Schritten der Ausdruck von décadence ist. »Glaube« heißt Nicht-wissen-wollen, was wahr ist. Der Pietist, der Priester beiderlei Geschlechts, ist falsch, weil er krank ist: sein Instinkt verlangt, daß die Wahrheit an keinem Punkt zu Rechte kommt. »Was krank macht, ist gut; was aus der Fülle, aus dem Überfluß, aus der Macht kommt, ist böse«: so empfindet der Gläubige. Die Unfreiheit zur Lüge — daran errate ich jeden vorherbestimmten Theologen. — Ein andres Abzeichen des Theologen ist sein Unvermögen zur Philologie. Unter Philologie soll hier, in einem sehr allgemeinen Sinne, die Kunst, gut zu lesen, verstanden werden — Tatsachen ablesen können, ohne sie durch Interpretation zu fälschen, ohne im Verlangen nach Verständnis die Vorsicht, die Geduld, die Feinheit zu verlieren. Philologie als Ephexis in der Interpretation: handle es sich nun um Bücher, um Zeitungs-Neuigkeiten, um Schicksale oder Wetter-Tatsachen — nicht zu reden vom »Heil der Seele« … Die Art, wie ein Theolog, gleichgültig ob in Berlin oder in Rom, ein »Schriftwort« auslegt oder ein Erlebnis, einen Sieg des vaterländischen Heers zum Beispiel unter der höheren Beleuchtung der Psalmen Davids, ist immer dergestalt kühn, daß ein Philolog dabei an allen Wänden emporläuft. Und was soll er gar anfangen, wenn Pietisten und andre Kühe aus dem Schwabenlande den armseligen Alltag und Stubenrauch ihres Daseins mit dem »Finger Gottes« zu einem Wunder von »Gnade«, von »Vorsehung«, von »Heilserfahrungen« zurecht machen! Der bescheidenste Aufwand von Geist, um nicht zu sagen von Anstand, müßte diese Interpreten doch dazu bringen, sich des vollkommen Kindischen und Unwürdigen eines solchen Mißbrauchs der göttlichen Fingerfertigkeit zu überführen. Mit einem noch so kleinen Maße von Frömmigkeit im Leibe sollte uns ein Gott, der zur rechten Zeit vom Schnupfen kuriert, oder der uns in einem Augenblick in die Kutsche steigen heißt, wo gerade ein großer Regen losbricht, ein so absurder Gott sein, daß man ihn abschaffen müßte, selbst wenn er existierte. Ein Gott als Dienstbote, als Briefträger, als Kalendermann — im Grunde ein Wort für die dümmste Art aller Zufälle… Die »göttliche Vorsehung«, wie sie heute noch ungefähr jeder dritte Mensch im »gebildeten Deutschland« glaubt, wäre ein Einwand gegen Gott, wie er stärker gar nicht gedacht werden könnte. Und in jedem Fall ist er ein Einwand gegen Deutsche! …

53 — Daß Märtyrer etwas für die Wahrheit einer Sache beweisen, ist so wenig wahr, daß ich leugnen möchte, es habe je ein Märtyrer überhaupt etwas mit der Wahrheit zu tun gehabt. In dem Tone, mit dem ein Märtyrer sein Für-wahr-halten der Welt an den Kopf wirft, drückt sich bereits ein so niedriger Grad intellektueller Rechtschaffenheit, eine solche Stumpfheit für die Frage »Wahrheit« aus, daß man einen Märtyrer nie zu widerlegen braucht. Die Wahrheit ist nichts, was einer hätte und ein andrer nicht hätte: so können höchstens Bauern oder Bauern-Apostel nach Art Luthers über die Wahrheit denken. Man darf sicher sein, daß je nach dem Grade der Gewissenhaftigkeit in Dingen des Geistes die Bescheidenheit, die Bescheidung in diesem Punkte immer größer wird. In fünf Sachen wissen, und mit zarter Hand es ablehnen, sonst zu wissen… »Wahrheit«, wie das Wort jeder Prophet, jeder Sektierer, jeder Freigeist, jeder Sozialist, jeder Kirchenmann versteht, ist ein vollkommner Beweis dafür, daß auch noch nicht einmal der Anfang mit jener Zucht des Geistes und Selbstüberwindung gemacht ist, die zum Finden irgendeiner kleinen, noch so kleinen Wahrheit not tut. — Die Märtyrer-Tode, anbei gesagt, sind ein großes Unglück in der Geschichte gewesen: sie verführten… Der Schluß aller Idioten, Weib und Volk eingerechnet, daß es mit einer Sache, für die jemand in den Tod geht (oder die gar, wie das erste Christentum, todsüchtige Epidemien erzeugt), etwas auf sich habe — dieser Schluß ist der Prüfung, dem Geist der Prüfung und Vorsicht unsäglich zum Hemmschuh geworden. Die Märtyrer schadeten der Wahrheit…

Auch heute noch bedarf es nur einer Krudität der Verfolgung, um einer an sich noch so gleichgültigen Sektiererei einen ehrenhaften Namen zu schaffen. — Wie? ändert es am Werte einer Sache etwas, daß jemand für sie sein Leben läßt? — Ein Irrtum, der ehrenhaft wird, ist ein Irrtum, der einen Verführungsreiz mehr besitzt: glaubt ihr, daß wir euch Anlaß geben würden, ihr Herrn Theologen, für eure Lüge die Märtyrer zu machen? — Man widerlegt eine Sache, indem man sie achtungsvoll aufs Eis legt — ebenso widerlegt man auch Theologen… Gerade das war die welthistorische Dummheit aller Verfolger, daß sie der gegnerischen Sache den Anschein des Ehrenhaften gaben — daß sie ihr die Faszination des Martyriums zum Geschenk machten … Das Weib liegt heute noch auf den Knien vor dem Irrtum, weil man ihm gesagt hat, daß jemand dafür am Kreuze starb. Ist denn das Kreuz ein Argument? — — Aber über alle diese Dinge hat einer allein das Wort gesagt, das man seit Jahrtausenden nötig gehabt hätte — Zarathustra.

Blutzeichen schrieben sie auf den Weg, den sie gingen, und ihreTorheit lehrte, daß man mit Blut Wahrheit beweise.Aber Blut ist der schlechteste Zeuge der Wahrheit; Blut vergiftetdie reinste Lehre noch zu Wahn und Haß der Herzen.Und wenn einer durchs Feuer ginge für seine Lehre — was beweist dies! Mehr ist’s wahrlich, daß aus eignem Brande die eigneLehre kommt.

54 Man lasse sich nicht irreführen: große Geister sind Skeptiker. Zarathustra ist ein Skeptiker. Die Stärke, die Freiheit aus der Kraft und Überkraft des Geistes beweist sich durch Skepsis. Menschen der Überzeugung kommen für alles Grundsätzliche von Wert und Unwert gar nicht in Betracht. Überzeugungen sind Gefängnisse. Das sieht nicht weit genug, das sieht nicht unter sich: aber um über Wert und Unwert mitreden zu dürfen, muß man fünfhundert Überzeugungen unter sich sehn — hinter sich sehn… Ein Geist, der Großes will, der auch die Mittel dazu will, ist mit Notwendigkeit Skeptiker. Die Freiheit von jeder Art Überzeugungen gehört zur Stärke, das Frei-Blicken-können… Die große Leidenschaft, der Grund und die Macht seines Seins, noch aufgeklärter, noch despotischer, als er selbst es ist, nimmt seinen ganzen Intellekt in Dienst; sie macht unbedenklich; sie gibt ihm Mut sogar zu unheiligen Mitteln; sie gönnt ihm unter Umständen Überzeugungen. Die Überzeugung als Mittel: vieles erreicht man nur mittelst einer Überzeugung. Die große Leidenschaft braucht, verbraucht Überzeugungen, sie unterwirft sich ihnen nicht — sie weiß sich souverän. — Umgekehrt: das Bedürfnis nach Glauben, nach irgend etwas Unbedingtem von Ja und Nein, der Carlylismus, wenn man mir dies Wort nachsehn will, ist ein Bedürfnis der Schwäche. Der Mensch des Glaubens, der »Gläubige« jeder Art ist notwendig ein abhängiger Mensch — ein solcher, der sich nicht als Zweck, der von sich aus überhaupt nicht Zwecke ansetzen kann. Der »Gläubige« gehört sich nicht, er kann nur Mittel sein, er muß verbraucht werden, er hat jemand nötig, der ihn verbraucht. Sein Instinkt gibt einer Moral der Entselbstung die höchste Ehre: zu ihr überredet ihn alles, seine Klugheit, seine Erfahrung, seine Eitelkeit. Jede Art Glaube ist selbst ein Ausdruck von Entselbstung, von Selbst-Entfremdung … Erwägt man, wie notwendig den allermeisten ein Regulativ ist, das sie von außen her bindet und fest macht, wie der Zwang, in einem höheren Sinn die Sklaverei, die einzige und letzte Bedingung ist, unter der der willensschwächere Mensch, zumal das Weib, gedeiht: so versteht man auch die Überzeugung, den »Glauben«. Der Mensch der Überzeugung hat in ihr sein Rückgrat. Viele Dinge nicht sehn, in keinem Punkte unbefangen sein, Partei sein durch und durch, eine strenge und notwendige Optik in allen Werten haben — das allein bedingt es, daß eine solche Art Mensch überhaupt besteht. Aber damit ist sie der Gegensatz, der Antagonist des Wahrhaftigen — der Wahrheit… Dem Gläubigen steht es nicht frei, für die Frage »wahr« und »unwahr« überhaupt ein Gewissen zu haben: rechtschaffen sein an dieser Stelle wäre sofort sein Untergang. Die pathologische Bedingtheit seiner Optik macht aus dem Überzeugten den Fanatiker — Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon —, den Gegensatz-Typus des starken, des freigewordnen Geistes. Aber die große Attitüde dieser kranken Geister, dieser Epileptiker des Begriffs, wirkt auf die große Masse — die Fanatiker sind pittoresk, die Menschheit sieht Gebärden lieber, als daß sie Gründe hört…

55 — Einen Schritt weiter in der Psychologie der Überzeugung, des »Glaubens«. Es ist schon lange von mir zur Erwägung anheimgegeben worden, ob nicht die Überzeugungen gefährlichere Feinde der Wahrheit sind als die Lügen (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I, Aphorismus 54 und 483). Diesmal möchte ich die entscheidende Frage tun: besteht zwischen Lüge und Überzeugung überhaupt ein Gegensatz? — Alle Welt glaubt es; aber was glaubt nicht alle Welt! — Eine jede Überzeugung hat ihre Geschichte, ihre Vorformen, ihre Tentativen und Fehlgriffe: sie wird Überzeugung, nachdem sie es lange nicht ist, nachdem sie es noch länger kaum ist. Wie? könnte unter diesen Embryonal-Formen der Überzeugung nicht auch die Lüge sein? — Mitunter bedarf es bloß eines Personen-Wechsels: im Sohn wird Überzeugung, was im Vater noch Lüge war. — Ich nenne Lüge: etwas nicht sehn wollen, das man sieht, etwas nicht so sehn wollen, wie man es sieht: ob die Lüge vor Zeugen oder ohne Zeugen statthat, kommt nicht in Betracht. Die gewöhnlichste Lüge ist die, mit der man sich selbst belügt; das Belügen andrer ist relativ der Ausnahmefall. — Nun ist dies Nicht-sehn-wollen, was man sieht, dies Nicht-so-sehn-wollen, wie man es sieht, beinahe die erste Bedingung für alle, die Partei sind, in irgendwelchem Sinne: der Parteimensch wird mit Notwendigkeit Lügner. Die deutsche Geschichtsschreibung zum Beispiel ist überzeugt, daß Rom der Despotismus war, daß die Germanen den Geist der Freiheit in die Welt gebracht haben: welcher Unterschied ist zwischen dieser Überzeugung und einer Lüge? Darf man sich noch darüber wundern, wenn, aus Instinkt, alle Parteien, auch die deutschen Historiker, die großen Worte der Moral im Munde haben — daß die Moral beinahe dadurch fortbesteht, daß der Parteimensch jeder Art jeden Augenblick sie nötig hat? — »Dies ist unsre Überzeugung: wir bekennen sie vor aller Welt, wir leben und sterben für sie — Respekt vor allem, was Überzeugungen hat!« — dergleichen habe ich sogar aus dem Mund von Antisemiten gehört. Im Gegenteil, meine Herrn! Ein Antisemit wird dadurch durchaus nicht anständiger, daß er aus Grundsatz lügt… Die Priester, die in solchen Dingen feiner sind und den Einwand sehr gut verstehn, der im Begriff einer Überzeugung, das heißt einer grundsätzlichen, weil zweckdienlichen Verlogenheit liegt, haben von den Juden her die Klugheit überkommen, an dieser Stelle den Begriff »Gott«, »Wille Gottes«, »Offenbarung Gottes« einzuschieben. Auch Kant, mit seinem kategorischen Imperativ, war auf dem gleichen Wege: seine Vernunft wurde hierin praktisch. — Es gibt Fragen, wo über Wahrheit und Unwahrheit dem Menschen die Entscheidung nicht zusteht; alle obersten Fragen, alle obersten Wert-Probleme sind jenseits der menschlichen Vernunft… Die Grenzen der Vernunft begreifen — das erst ist wahrhaft Philosophie … Wozu gab Gott dem Menschen die Offenbarung? Würde Gott etwas Überflüssiges getan haben? Der Mensch kann von sich nicht selber wissen, was gut und böse ist, darum lehrte ihn Gott seinen Willen… Moral: der Priester lügt nicht — die Frage »wahr« oder »unwahr« gibt es nicht in solchen Dingen, von denen Priester reden; diese Dinge erlauben gar nicht zu lügen. Denn um zu lügen, müßte man entscheiden können, was hier wahr ist. Aber das kann eben der Mensch nicht; der Priester ist damit nur das Mundstück Gottes. — Ein solcher Priester-Syllogismus ist durchaus nicht bloß jüdisch und christlich; das Recht zur Lüge und die Klugheit der »Offenbarung« gehört dem Typus Priester an, den décadence-Priestern so gut als den Heidentum-Priestern (— Heiden sind alle, die zum Leben ja sagen, denen »Gott« das Wort für das große Ja zu allen Dingen ist). — Das »Gesetz«, der »Wille Gottes«, das »heilige Buch«, die »Inspiration« — alles nur Worte für die Bedingungen, unter denen der Priester zur Macht kommt, mit denen er seine Macht aufrecht erhält — diese Begriffe finden sich auf dem Grunde aller Priester-Organisationen, aller priesterlichen oder philosophisch-priesterlichen Herrschaftsgebilde. Die »heilige Lüge« — dem Konfuzius, dem Gesetzbuch des Manu, dem Mohammed, der christlichen Kirche gemeinsam —: sie fehlt nicht bei Plato. »Die Wahrheit ist da«: dies bedeutet, wo nur es laut wird, der Priester lügt…

56 — Zuletzt kommt es darauf an, zu welchem Zweck gelogen wird. Daß im Christentum die »heiligen« Zwecke fehlen, ist mein Einwand gegen seine Mittel. Nur schlechte Zwecke: Vergiftung, Verleumdung, Verneinung des Lebens, die Verachtung des Leibes, die Herabwürdigung und Selbstschändung des Menschen durch den Begriff Sünde — folglich sind auch seine Mittel schlecht. — Ich lese mit einem entgegengesetzten Gefühle das Gesetzbuch des Manu, ein unvergleichlich geistiges und überlegenes Werk, das mit der Bibel auch nur in einem Atem nennen eine Sünde wider den Geist wäre. Man errät sofort: es hat eine wirkliche Philosophie hinter sich, in sich, nicht bloß ein übelriechendes Judain von Rabbinismus und Aberglauben — es gibt selbst dem verwöhntesten Psychologen etwas zu beißen. Nicht die Hauptsache zu vergessen, der Grundunterschied von jeder Art von Bibel: die vornehmen Stände, die Philosophen und die Krieger, halten mit ihm ihre Hand über der Menge; vornehme Werte überall, ein Vollkommenheits-Gefühl, ein Jasagen zum Leben, ein triumphierendes Wohlgefühl an sich und am Leben — die Sonne liegt auf dem ganzen Buch. — Alle die Dinge, an denen das Christentum seine unergründliche Gemeinheit ausläßt, die Zeugung zum Beispiel, das Weib, die Ehe, werden hier ernst, mit Ehrfurcht, mit Liebe und Zutrauen behandelt. Wie kann man eigentlich ein Buch in die Hände von Kindern und Frauen legen, das jenes niederträchtige Wort enthält: »Um der Hurerei willen habe ein jeglicher sein eignes Weib und eine jegliche ihren eignen Mann… es ist besser freien denn Brunst leiden«? Und darf man Christ sein, solange mit dem Begriff der immaculata conceptio die Entstehung des Menschen verchristlicht, das heißt beschmutzt ist?… Ich kenne kein Buch, wo dem Weibe so viele zarte und gütige Dinge gesagt würden, wie im Gesetzbuch des Manu; diese alten Graubärte und Heiligen haben eine Art, gegen Frauen artig zu sein, die vielleicht nicht übertroffen ist. »Der Mund einer Frau« — heißt es einmal —, »der Busen eines Mädchens, das Gebet eines Kindes, der Rauch des Opfers sind immer rein.« Eine andre Stelle: »es gibt gar nichts Reineres als das Licht der Sonne, den Schatten einer Kuh, die Luft, das Wasser, das Feuer und den Atem eines Mädchens.« Eine letzte Stelle — vielleicht auch eine heilige Lüge —: »alle Öffnungen des Leibes oberhalb des Nabels sind rein, alle unterhalb sind unrein. Nur beim Mädchen ist der ganze Körper rein.«

57 Man ertappt die Unheiligkeit der christlichen Mittel in flagranti, wenn man den christlichen Zweck einmal an dem Zweck des Manu-Gesetzbuches mißt — wenn man diesen größten Zweck-Gegensatz unter starkes Licht bringt. Es bleibt dem Kritiker des Christentums nicht erspart, das Christentum verächtlich zu machen. — Ein solches Gesetzbuch, wie das des Manu, entsteht wie jedes gute Gesetzbuch: es resümiert die Erfahrung, Klugheit und Experimental-Moral von langen Jahrhunderten, es schließt ab, es schafft nichts mehr. Die Voraussetzung zu einer Kodifikation seiner Art ist die Einsicht, daß die Mittel einer langsam und kostspielig erworbenen Wahrheit Autorität zu schaffen, grundverschieden von denen sind, mit denen man sie beweisen würde. Ein Gesetzbuch erzählt niemals den Nutzen, die Gründe, die Kasuistik in der Vorgeschichte eines Gesetzes: eben damit würde es den imperativischen Ton einbüßen, das »du sollst«, die Voraussetzung dafür, daß gehorcht wird. Das Problem liegt genau hierin. — An einem gewissen Punkte der Entwicklung eines Volks erklärt die einsichtigste, das heißt rück- und hinausblickendste Schicht desselben, die Erfahrung, nach der gelebt werden soll — das heißt kann —, für abgeschlossen. Ihr Ziel geht dahin, die Ernte möglichst reich und vollständig von den Zeiten des Experiments und der schlimmen Erfahrung heimzubringen. Was folglich vor allem jetzt zu verhüten ist, das ist das Noch-Fort-Experimentieren, die Fortdauer des flüssigen Zustands der Werte, das Prüfen, Wählen, Kritik-Üben der Werte in infinitum. Dem stellt man eine doppelte Mauer entgegen: einmal die Offenbarung, das ist die Behauptung, die Vernunft jener Gesetze sei nicht menschlicher Herkunft, nicht langsam und unter Fehlgriffen gesucht und gefunden, sondern, als göttlichen Ursprungs, ganz, vollkommen, ohne Geschichte, ein Geschenk, ein Wunder, bloß mitgeteilt… Sodann die Tradition, das ist die Behauptung, daß das Gesetz bereits seit uralten Zeiten bestanden habe, daß es pietätlos, ein Verbrechen an den Vorfahren sei, es in Zweifel zu ziehn. Die Autorität des Gesetzes begründet sich mit den Thesen: Gott gab es, die Vorfahren lebten es. — Die höhere Vernunft einer solchen Prozedur liegt in der Absicht, das Bewußtsein Schritt für Schritt von dem als richtig erkannten (das heißt durch eine ungeheure und scharf durchgesiebte Erfahrung bewiesenen) Leben zurückzudrängen: so daß der vollkommne Automatismus des Instinkts erreicht wird — diese Voraussetzung zu jeder Art Meisterschaft, zu jeder Art Vollkommenheit in der Kunst des Lebens. Ein Gesetzbuch nach Art des Manu aufstellen, heißt einem Volke fürderhin zugestehn, Meister zu werden, vollkommen zu werden — die höchste Kunst des Lebens zu ambitionieren. Dazu muß es unbewußt gemacht werden: dies der Zweck jeder heiligen Lüge. — Die Ordnung der Kasten, das oberste, das dominierende Gesetz, ist nur die Sanktion einer Natur-Ordnung, Natur-Gesetzlichkeit ersten Ranges, über die keine Willkür, keine »moderne Idee« Gewalt hat. Es treten in jeder gesunden Gesellschaft, sich gegenseitig bedingend, drei physiologisch verschieden-gravitierende Typen auseinander, von denen jeder seine eigne Hygiene, sein eignes Reich von Arbeit, seine eigne Art Vollkommenheits-Gefühl und Meisterschaft hat. Die Natur, nicht Manu, trennt die vorwiegend Geistigen, die vorwiegend Muskel- und Temperaments-Starken und die weder im einen, noch im andern ausgezeichneten dritten, die Mittelmäßigen, voneinander ab — die letzteren als die große Zahl, die ersteren als die Auswahl. Die oberste Kaste — ich nenne sie die Wenigsten — hat als die vollkommne auch die Vorrechte der wenigsten: dazu gehört es, das Glück, die Schönheit, die Güte auf Erden darzustellen. Nur die geistigsten Menschen haben die Erlaubnis zur Schönheit, zum Schönen: nur bei ihnen ist Güte nicht Schwäche. Pulchrum est paucorum hominum: das Gute ist ein Vorrecht. Nichts kann ihnen dagegen weniger zugestanden werden als häßliche Manieren oder ein pessimistischer Blick, ein Auge, das verhäßlicht —, oder gar eine Entrüstung über den Gesamt-Aspekt der Dinge. Die Entrüstung ist das Vorrecht der Tschandala; der Pessimismus desgleichen. »Die Welt ist vollkommen« — so redet der Instinkt der Geistigsten, der jasagende Instinkt —: »die Unvollkommenheit, das Unter-uns jeder Art, die Distanz, das Pathos der Distanz, der Tschandala selbst gehört noch zu dieser Vollkommenheit.« Die geistigsten Menschen, als die Stärksten, finden ihr Glück, worin andre ihren Untergang finden würden: im Labyrinth, in der Härte gegen sich und andre, im Versuch; ihre Lust ist die Selbstbezwingung: der Asketismus wird bei ihnen Natur, Bedürfnis, Instinkt. Die schwere Aufgabe gilt ihnen als Vorrecht; mit Lasten zu spielen, die andre erdrücken, eine Erholung … Erkenntnis — eine Form des Asketismus. — Sie sind die ehrwürdigste Art Mensch: das schließt nicht aus, daß sie die heiterste, die liebenswürdigste sind. Sie herrschen, nicht weil sie wollen, sondern weil sie sind; es steht ihnen nicht frei, die zweiten zu sein. — Die zweiten: das sind die Wächter des Rechts, die Pfleger der Ordnung und der Sicherheit, das sind die vornehmen Krieger, das ist der König vor allem als die höchste Formel von Krieger, Richter und Aufrechterhalter des Gesetzes. Die zweiten sind die Exekutive der Geistigsten, das Nächste, was zu ihnen gehört, das was ihnen alles Grobe in der Arbeit des Herrschens abnimmt — ihr Gefolge, ihre rechte Hand, ihre beste Schülerschaft. — In dem allem, nochmals gesagt, ist nichts von Willkür, nichts »gemacht«; was anders ist, ist gemacht — die Natur ist dann zuschanden gemacht… Die Ordnung der Kasten, die Rangordnung, formuliert nur das oberste Gesetz des Lebens selbst; die Abscheidung der drei Typen ist nötig zur Erhaltung der Gesellschaft, zur Ermöglichung höherer und höchster Typen — die Ungleichheit der Rechte ist erst die Bedingung dafür, daß es überhaupt Rechte gibt. — Ein Recht ist ein Vorrecht. In seiner Art Sein hat jeder auch sein Vorrecht. Unterschätzen wir die Vorrechte der Mittelmäßigen nicht. Das Leben nach der Höhe zu wird immer härter — die Kälte nimmt zu, die Verantwortlichkeit nimmt zu. Eine hohe Kultur ist eine Pyramide: sie kann nur auf einem breiten Boden stehn, sie hat zu allererst eine stark und gesund konsolidierte Mittelmäßigkeit zur Voraussetzung. Das Handwerk, der Handel, der Ackerbau, die Wissenschaft, der größte Teil der Kunst, der ganze Inbegriff der Berufstätigkeit mit einem Wort, verträgt sich durchaus nur mit einem Mittelmaß im Können und Begehren; dergleichen wäre deplaziert unter Ausnahmen, der dazugehörige Instinkt widerspräche sowohl dem Aristokratismus als dem Anarchismus. Daß man ein öffentlicher Nutzen ist, ein Rad, eine Funktion, dazu gibt es eine Naturbestimmung: nicht die Gesellschaft, die Art Glück, deren die allermeisten bloß fähig sind, macht aus ihnen intelligente Maschinen. Für den Mittelmäßigen ist mittelmäßig sein ein Glück; die Meisterschaft in einem, die Spezialität ein natürlicher Instinkt. Es würde eines tieferen Geistes vollkommen unwürdig sein, in der Mittelmäßigkeit an sich schon einen Einwand zu sehn. Sie ist selbst die erste Notwendigkeit dafür, daß es Ausnahmen geben darf: eine hohe Kultur ist durch sie bedingt. Wenn der Ausnahme-Mensch gerade die Mittelmäßigen mit zarteren Fingern handhabt, als sich und seinesgleichen, so ist dies nicht bloß Höflichkeit des Herzens — es ist einfach seine Pflicht… Wen hasse ich unter dem Gesindel von Heute am besten? Das Sozialisten-Gesindel, die Tschandala-Apostel, die den Instinkt, die Lust, das Genügsamkeits-Gefühl des Arbeiters mit seinem kleinen Sein untergraben — die ihn neidisch machen, die ihn Rache lehren… Das Unrecht liegt niemals in ungleichen Rechten, es liegt im Anspruch auf »gleiche« Rechte… Was ist schlecht? Aber ich sagte es schon: alles, was aus Schwäche, aus Neid, aus Rache stammt. — Der Anarchist und der Christ sind einer Herkunft…

58 In der Tat, es macht einen Unterschied, zu welchem Zweck man lügt: ob man damit erhält oder zerstört. Man darf zwischen Christ und Anarchist eine vollkommne Gleichung aufstellen: ihr Zweck, ihr Instinkt geht nur auf Zerstörung. Den Beweis für diesen Satz hat man aus der Geschichte nur abzulesen: sie enthält ihn in entsetzlicher Deutlichkeit. Lernten wir eben eine religiöse Gesetzgebung kennen, deren Zweck war, die oberste Bedingung dafür, daß das Leben gedeiht, eine große Organisation der Gesellschaft zu »verewigen« — das Christentum hat seine Mission darin gefunden, mit eben einer solchen Organisation, weil in ihr das Leben gedieh, ein Ende zu machen. Dort sollte der Vernunft-Ertrag von langen Zeiten des Experiments und der Unsicherheit zum fernsten Nutzen angelegt und die Ernte so groß, so reichlich, so vollständig wie möglich heimgebracht werden: hier wurde, umgekehrt, über Nacht die Ernte vergiftet… Das, was aere perennius dastand, das imperium Romanum, die großartigste Organisations-Form unter schwierigen Bedingungen, die bisher erreicht worden ist, im Vergleich zu der alles Vorher, alles Nachher Stückwerk, Stümperei, Dilettantismus ist — jene heiligen Anarchisten haben sich eine »Frömmigkeit« daraus gemacht, »die Welt« das heißt das imperium Romanum zu zerstören, bis kein Stein auf dem andern blieb — bis selbst Germanen und andre Rüpel darüber Herr werden konnten… Der Christ und der Anarchist: beide décadents beide unfähig, anders als auflösend, vergiftend, verkümmernd, blutaussaugend zu wirken, beide der Instinkt des Todhasses gegen alles, was steht, was groß dasteht, was Dauer hat, was dem Leben Zukunft verspricht… Das Christentum war der Vampyr des imperium Romanum — es hat die ungeheure Tat der Römer, den Boden für eine große Kultur zu gewinnen, die Zeit hat, über Nacht ungetan gemacht. — Versteht man es immer noch nicht? Das imperium Romanum, das wir kennen, das uns die Geschichte der römischen Provinz immer besser kennen lehrt, dies bewunderungswürdigste Kunstwerk des großen Stils, war ein Anfang, sein Bau war berechnet, sich mit Jahrtausenden zu beweisen — es ist bis heute nie so gebaut, nie auch nur geträumt worden, in gleichem Maße sub specie aeterni zu bauen! — Diese Organisation war fest genug, schlechte Kaiser auszuhalten: der Zufall von Personen darf nichts in solchen Dingen zu tun haben — erstes Prinzip aller großen Architektur. Aber sie war nicht fest genug gegen die korrupteste Art Korruption, gegen den Christen… Dies heimliche Gewürm, das sich in Nacht, Nebel und Zweideutigkeit an alle einzelnen heranschlich und jedem einzelnen den Ernst für wahre Dinge, den Instinkt überhaupt für Realitäten aussog, diese feige, femininische und zuckersüße Bande hat Schritt für Schritt die »Seelen« diesem ungeheuren Bau entfremdet — jene wertvollen, jene männlich-vornehmen Naturen, die in der Sache Roms ihre eigne Sache, ihren eignen Ernst, ihren eignen Stolz empfanden. Diese Mucker-Schleicherei, die Konventikel-Heimlichkeit, düstere Begriffe wie Hölle, wie Opfer des Unschuldigen, wie unio mystica im Bluttrinken, vor allem das langsam aufgeschürte Feuer der Rache, der Tschandala-Rache — das wurde Herr über Rom, dieselbe Art von Religion, der in ihrer Präexistenz-Form schon Epikur den Krieg gemacht hatte. Man lese Lukrez, um zu begreifen, was Epikur bekämpft hat, nicht das Heidentum, sondern »das Christentum«, will sagen die Verderbnis der Seelen durch den Schuld-, durch den Straf- und Unsterblichkeits-Begriff. — Er bekämpfte die unterirdischen Kulte, das ganze latente Christentum — die Unsterblichkeit zu leugnen war damals schon eine wirkliche Erlösung. — Und Epikur hätte gesiegt, jeder achtbare Geist im römischen Reich war Epikureer: da erschien Paulus… Paulus, der Fleisch-, der Genie-gewordne Tschandala-Haß gegen Rom, gegen »die Welt«, der Jude, der ewige Jude par excellence… Was er erriet, das war, wie man mit Hilfe der kleinen sektiererischen Christen-Bewegung abseits des Judentums einen »Weltbrand« entzünden könne, wie man mit dem Symbol »Gott am Kreuze« alles Unten-Liegende, alles Heimlich-Aufrührerische, die ganze Erbschaft anarchistischer Umtriebe im Reich, zu einer ungeheuren Macht aufsummieren könne. »Das Heil kommt von den Juden.« — Das Christentum als Formel, um die unterirdischen Kulte aller Art, die des Osiris, der großen Mutter, des Mithras zum Beispiel, zu überbieten — und zu summieren: in dieser Einsicht besteht das Genie des Paulus. Sein Instinkt war darin so sicher, daß er die Vorstellungen, mit denen jene Tschandala-Religionen faszinierten, mit schonungsloser Gewalttätigkeit an der Wahrheit dem »Heilande« seiner Erfindung in den Mund legte, und nicht nur in den Mund — daß er aus ihm etwas machte, das auch ein Mithras-Priester verstehn konnte… Dies war sein Augenblick von Damaskus: er begriff, daß er den Unsterblichkeits-Glauben nötig hatte, um »die Welt« zu entwerten, daß der Begriff »Hölle« über Rom noch Herr wird — daß man mit dem »Jenseits« das Leben tötet… Nihilist und Christ: das reimt sich, das reimt sich nicht bloß…

59 Die ganze Arbeit der antiken Welt umsonst: ich habe kein Wort dafür, das mein Gefühl über etwas so Ungeheures ausdrückt. — Und in Anbetracht, daß ihre Arbeit eine Vorarbeit war, daß eben erst der Unterbau zu einer Arbeit von Jahrtausenden mit granitnem Selbstbewußtsein gelegt war, der ganze Sinn der antiken Welt umsonst!… Wozu Griechen? wozu Römer? — Alle Voraussetzungen zu einer gelehrten Kultur, alle wissenschaftlichen Methoden waren bereits da, man hatte die große, die unvergleichliche Kunst, gut zu lesen, bereits festgestellt — diese Voraussetzung zur Tradition der Kultur, zur Einheit der Wissenschaft; die Naturwissenschaft, im Bunde mit Mathematik und Mechanik, war auf dem allerbesten Wege — der Tatsachen-Sinn, der letzte und wertvollste aller Sinne, hatte seine Schulen, seine bereits Jahrhunderte alte Tradition! Versteht man das? Alles Wesentliche war gefunden, um an die Arbeit gehn zu können — die Methoden, man muß es zehnmal sagen, sind das Wesentliche, auch das Schwierigste, auch das, was am längsten die Gewohnheiten und Faulheiten gegen sich hat. Was wir heute, mit unsäglicher Selbstbezwingung — denn wir haben alle die schlechten Instinkte, die christlichen, irgendwie noch im Leibe — uns zurückerobert haben, den freien Blick vor der Realität, die vorsichtige Hand, die Geduld und den Ernst im Kleinsten, die ganze Rechtschaffenheit der Erkenntnis — sie war bereits da! vor mehr als zwei Jahrtausenden bereits! Und, dazu gerechnet, der gute, der feine Takt und Geschmack! Nicht als Gehirn-Dressur! Nicht als »deutsche« Bildung mit Rüpel-Manieren! Sondern als Leib, als Gebärde, als Instinkt — als Realität mit einem Wort… Alles umsonst! Über Nacht bloß noch eine Erinnerung! — Griechen! Römer! die Vornehmheit des Instinkts, der Geschmack, die methodische Forschung, das Genie der Organisation und Verwaltung, der Glaube, der Wille zur Menschen-Zukunft, das große Ja zu allen Dingen als imperium Romanum sichtbar, für alle Sinne sichtbar, der große Stil nicht mehr bloß Kunst, sondern Realität, Wahrheit, Leben geworden … — Und nicht durch ein Natur-Ereignis über Nacht verschüttet! Nicht durch Germanen und andre Schwerfüßler niedergetreten! Sondern von listigen, heimlichen, unsichtbaren, blutarmen Vampyren zuschanden gemacht! Nicht besiegt — nur ausgesogen!… Die versteckte Rachsucht, der kleine Neid Herr geworden! Alles Erbärmliche, An-sich-Leidende, Von-schlechten-Gefühlen-Heimgesuchte, die ganze Ghetto-Welt der Seele mit einem Male obenauf! — — Man lese nur irgendeinen christlichen Agitator, den heiligen Augustin zum Beispiel, um zu begreifen, um zu riechen, was für unsaubere Gesellen damit obenauf gekommen sind. Man würde sich ganz und gar betrügen, wenn man irgendwelchen Mangel an Verstand bei den Führern der christlichen Bewegung voraussetzte — o sie sind klug, klug, bis zur Heiligkeit, diese Herren Kirchenväter! Was ihnen abgeht, ist etwas ganz anderes. Die Natur hat sie vernachlässigt — sie vergaß, ihnen eine bescheidne Mitgift von achtbaren, von anständigen, von reinlichen Instinkten mitzugeben … Unter uns, es sind nicht einmal Männer… Wenn der Islam das Christentum verachtet, so hat er tausendmal recht dazu: der Islam hat Männer zur Voraussetzung …

60 Das Christentum hat uns um die Ernte der antiken Kultur gebracht, es hat uns später wieder um die Ernte der Islam-Kultur gebracht. Die wunderbare maurische Kultur-Welt Spaniens, uns im Grunde verwandter, zu Sinn und Geschmack redender als Rom und Griechenland, wurde niedergetreten (— ich sage nicht von was für Füßen —), warum? weil sie vornehmen, weil sie Männer-Instinkten ihre Entstehung verdankte, weil sie zum Leben ja sagte auch noch mit den seltnen und raffinierten Kostbarkeiten des maurischen Lebens!… Die Kreuzritter bekämpften später etwas, vor dem sich in den Staub zu legen ihnen besser angestanden hätte — eine Kultur, gegen die sich selbst unser neunzehntes Jahrhundert sehr arm, sehr »spät« vorkommen dürfte. — Freilich, sie wollten Beute machen: der Orient war reich… Man sei doch unbefangen! Kreuzzüge — die höhere Seeräuberei, weiter nichts! Der deutsche Adel, Wikinger-Adel im Grunde, war damit in seinem Elemente: die Kirche wußte nur zu gut, womit man deutschen Adel hat… Der deutsche Adel, immer die »Schweizer« der Kirche, immer im Dienste aller schlechten Instinkte der Kirche — aber gut bezahlt… Daß die Kirche gerade mit Hilfe deutscher Schwerter, deutschen Blutes und Mutes ihren Todfeindschafts-Krieg gegen alles Vornehme auf Erden durchgeführt hat! Es gibt an dieser Stelle eine Menge schmerzlicher Fragen. Der deutsche Adel fehlt beinahe in der Geschichte der höheren Kultur: man errät den Grund… Christentum, Alkohol — die beiden großen Mittel der Korruption… An sich sollte es ja keine Wahl geben, angesichts von Islam und Christentum, so wenig als angesichts eines Arabers und eines Juden. Die Entscheidung ist gegeben; es steht niemandem frei, hier noch zu wählen. Entweder ist man ein Tschandala, oder man ist es nicht… »Krieg mit Rom aufs Messer! Friede, Freundschaft mit dem Islam«: so empfand, so tat jener große Freigeist, das Genie unter den deutschen Kaisern, Friedrich der Zweite. Wie? muß ein Deutscher erst Genie, erst Freigeist sein, um anständig zu empfinden? Ich begreife nicht, wie ein Deutscher je christlich empfinden konnte…

61 Hier tut es not, eine für Deutsche noch hundertmal peinlichere Erinnerung zu berühren. Die Deutschen haben Europa um die letzte große Kultur-Ernte gebracht, die es für Europa heimzubringen gab — um die der Renaissance. Versteht man endlich, will man verstehn, was die Renaissance war? Die Umwertung der christlichen Werte, der Versuch, mit allen Mitteln, mit allen Instinkten, mit allem Genie unternommen, die Gegen-Werte, die vornehmen Werte zum Sieg zu bringen… Es gab bisher nur diesen großen Krieg, es gab bisher keine entscheidendere Fragestellung als die der Renaissance — meine Frage ist ihre Frage —: es gab auch nie eine grundsätzlichere, eine geradere, eine strenger in ganzer Front und auf das Zentrum losgeführte Form des Angriffs! An der entscheidenden Stelle, im Sitz des Christentums selbst angreifen, hier die vornehmen Werte auf den Thron bringen, will sagen in die Instinkte, in die untersten Bedürfnisse und Begierden der daselbst Sitzenden hineinbringen … Ich sehe eine Möglichkeit vor mir von einem vollkommen überirdischen Zauber und Farbenreiz — es scheint mir, daß sie in allen Schaudern raffinierter Schönheit erglänzt, daß eine Kunst in ihr am Werke ist, so göttlich, so teufelsmäßig-göttlich, daß man Jahrtausende umsonst nach einer zweiten solchen Möglichkeit durchsucht; ich sehe ein Schauspiel, so sinnreich, so wunderbar paradox zugleich, daß alle Gottheiten des Olymps einen Anlaß zu einem unsterblichen Gelächter gehabt hätten — Cesare Borgia als Papst… Versteht man mich? … Wohlan, das wäre der Sieg gewesen, nach dem ich heute allein verlange —: damit war das Christentum abgeschafft! — Was geschah? Ein deutscher Mönch, Luther, kam nach Rom. Dieser Mönch, mit allen rachsüchtigen Instinkten eines verunglückten Priesters im Leibe, empörte sich in Rom gegen die Renaissance … Statt mit tiefster Dankbarkeit das Ungeheure zu verstehn, das geschehen war, die Überwindung des Christentums an seinem Sitz —, verstand sein Haß aus diesem Schauspiel nur seine Nahrung zu ziehn. Ein religiöser Mensch denkt nur an sich. — Luther sah die Verderbnis des Papsttums, während gerade das Gegenteil mit Händen zu greifen war: die alte Verderbnis, das peccatum originale, das Christentum saß nicht mehr auf dem Stuhl des Papstes! Sondern das Leben! Sondern der Triumph des Lebens! Sondern das große Ja zu allen hohen, schönen, verwegenen Dingen!… Und Luther stellte die Kirche wieder her: er griff sie an… Die Renaissance — ein Ereignis ohne Sinn, ein großes Umsonst! — Ah diese Deutschen, was sie uns schon gekostet haben! Umsonst — das war immer das Werk der Deutschen. — Die Reformation; Leibniz; Kant und die sogenannte deutsche Philosophie; die »Freiheits«-Kriege; das Reich — jedesmal ein Umsonst für etwas, das bereits da war, für etwas Unwiederbringliches … Es sind meine Feinde, ich bekenne es, diese Deutschen: ich verachte in ihnen jede Art von Begriffs- und Wert-Unsauberkeit, von Feigheit vor jedem rechtschaffnen Ja und Nein. Sie haben, seit einem Jahrtausend beinahe, alles verfilzt und verwirrt, woran sie mit ihren Fingern rührten, sie haben alle Halbheiten — Drei-Achtelsheiten! — auf dem Gewissen, an denen Europa krank ist — sie haben auch die unsauberste Art Christentum, die es gibt, die unheilbarste, die unwiderlegbarste, den Protestantismus auf dem Gewissen… Wenn man nicht fertig wird mit dem Christentum, die Deutschen werden daran schuld sein …

62 — Hiermit bin ich am Schluß und spreche mein Urteil. Ich verurteile das Christentum, ich erhebe gegen die christliche Kirche die furchtbarste aller Anklagen, die je ein Ankläger in den Mund genommen hat. Sie ist mir die höchste aller denkbaren Korruptionen, sie hat den Willen zur letzten auch nur möglichen Korruption gehabt. Die christliche Kirche ließ nichts mit ihrer Verderbnis unberührt, sie hat aus jedem Wert einen Unwert, aus jeder Wahrheit eine Lüge, aus jeder Rechtschaffenheit eine Seelen-Niedertracht gemacht. Man wage es noch, mir von ihren »humanitären« Segnungen zu reden! Irgendeinen Notstand abschaffen ging wider ihre tiefste Nützlichkeit: sie lebte von Notständen, sie schuf Notstände, um sich zu verewigen… Der Wurm der Sünde zum Beispiel: mit diesem Notstande hat erst die Kirche die Menschheit bereichert! — Die »Gleichheit der Seelen vor Gott«, diese Falschheit, dieser Vorwand für die rancunes aller Niedriggesinnten, dieser Sprengstoff von Begriff, der endlich Revolution, moderne Idee und Niedergangs-Prinzip der ganzen Gesellschafts-Ordnung geworden ist — ist christlicher Dynamit… »Humanitäre« Segnungen des Christentums! Aus der humanitas einen Selbst-Widerspruch, eine Kunst der Selbstschändung, einen Willen zur Lüge um jeden Preis, einen Widerwillen, eine Verachtung aller guten und rechtschaffnen Instinkte herauszuzüchten! Das wären mir Segnungen des Christentums! — Der Parasitismus als einzige Praxis der Kirche; mit ihrem Bleichsuchts-, ihrem »Heiligkeits«-Ideale jedes Blut, jede Liebe, jede Hoffnung zum Leben austrinkend; das Jenseits als Wille zur Verneinung jeder Realität; das Kreuz als Erkennungszeichen für die unterirdischste Verschwörung, die es je gegeben hat — gegen Gesundheit, Schönheit, Wohlgeratenheit, Tapferkeit, Geist, Güte der Seele, gegen das Leben selbst…

Diese ewige Anklage des Christentums will ich an alle Wände schreiben, wo es nur Wände gibt — ich habe Buchstaben, um auch Blinde sehend zu machen … Ich heiße das Christentum den einen großen Fluch, die eine große innerlichste Verdorbenheit, den einen großen Instinkt der Rache, dem kein Mittel giftig, heimlich, unterirdisch, klein genug ist — ich heiße es den einen unsterblichen Schandfleck der Menschheit…

Und man rechnet die Zeit nach dem dies nefastus, mit dem dies Verhängnis anhob — nach dem ersten Tag des Christentums! — Warum nicht lieber nach seinem letzten? — Nach heute? — Umwertung aller Werte!

Musean translation

Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the German of the preface, all sixty-two sections and the seven-article Law Against Christianity, for fidelity, the author’s force and cadence, and modern clarity. Nietzsche’s own emphasis is kept.

51 That faith can, under certain circumstances, bring bliss; that the bliss produced by a fixed idea does not yet make that idea true; that faith does not move mountains but does put mountains where there are none—a brief walk through a madhouse makes all this plain enough. Not, of course, to a priest: for his instinct is to deny that sickness is sickness, that a madhouse is a madhouse. Christianity needs sickness much as the Greek world needs a surplus of health—to make people sick is the real ulterior purpose of the Church's entire system of procedures for salvation. And the Church itself—is it not the Catholic madhouse as the ultimate ideal?—The whole earth as a madhouse?—The religious person, as the Church wants him, is a typical decadent; whenever a religious crisis masters a people, epidemics of nervous disorders mark the moment; the religious person's "inner world" is so like the "inner world" of the overstimulated and exhausted that one could mistake the two; the "highest" states, which Christianity has hung above humanity as the value of all values, are epileptoid forms—the Church has canonized only madmen or great swindlers for the greater glory of God… I once took the liberty of calling the whole Christian training in penance and redemption (best studied today in England) a methodically induced circular insanity, naturally on ground already prepared for it—that is, thoroughly diseased ground. No one is free to become a Christian: one is not "converted" to Christianity—one must be sick enough for it… We others, who have the courage for health and for contempt as well, how much reason we have to despise a religion that taught people to misunderstand the body! That refuses to rid itself of superstition about the soul! That makes a "merit" of inadequate nourishment! That fights health as a kind of enemy, devil, temptation! That persuaded itself one could carry a "perfect soul" about in the corpse of a body, and to do so had to fashion a new concept of "perfection" for itself, a pale, sickly, idiotically rapturous condition, so-called "holiness"—holiness, itself merely a series of symptoms of an impoverished, enervated, incurably ruined body!… The Christian movement, as a European movement, is from the outset a collective movement of reject and refuse elements of every kind (—these seek power through Christianity). It does not express the decline of a race; it is an aggregation of forms of decadence from everywhere, pressing together and seeking one another out. It is not, as people believe, the corruption of antiquity itself, of noble antiquity, that made Christianity possible: one cannot contradict too fiercely the learned idiocy that upholds such a thing even today. At the time when the sick, corrupted Chandala strata throughout the empire were becoming Christian, precisely the opposite type, nobility, existed in its most beautiful and mature form. The greater number became master; the democratism of Christian instincts triumphed… Christianity was not "national," not determined by race—it appealed to every kind of person disinherited by life; it had its allies everywhere. At Christianity's foundation lies the rancor of the sick, an instinct directed against the healthy, against health. Everything well constituted, proud, high-spirited, beauty above all, hurts its ears and eyes. Once again I recall Paul's priceless words: "What is weak before the world, what is foolish before the world, the base and despised before the world, God has chosen": that was the formula, under this sign decadence triumphed.—God on the cross—do people still not understand the terrible ulterior meaning of this symbol?—Everything that suffers, everything that hangs on the cross, is divine… We all hang on the cross, therefore we are divine… We alone are divine… Christianity was a victory; a nobler disposition perished through it—Christianity has so far been humanity's greatest misfortune.— —

52 Christianity also stands opposed to everything well constituted in the intellect—it can use only sick reason as Christian reason; it takes the side of everything idiotic; it pronounces a curse upon "the intellect," upon the pride of the healthy intellect. Because sickness belongs to the essence of Christianity, the typically Christian state, "faith," must also be a form of sickness; all straight, honest, scientific paths to knowledge must be rejected by the Church as forbidden paths. Doubt itself is already a sin… The priest's complete lack of psychological cleanliness—betrayed in his eyes—is a consequence of decadence—one need only observe hysterical females and, on the other hand, children predisposed to rickets to see how regularly instinctive falseness, a delight in lying for the sake of lying, an inability to look straight or walk straight, express decadence. "Faith" means not wanting to know what is true. The Pietist, the priest of either sex, is false because he is sick: his instinct demands that truth be denied its due at every point. "What makes people sick is good; what comes from fullness, from abundance, from power, is evil": this is how the believer feels. Compulsion to lie—by this I recognize every predestined theologian.—Another mark of the theologian is his incapacity for philology. Philology is to be understood here, in a very general sense, as the art of reading well—of being able to read facts without falsifying them by interpretation, without losing caution, patience, subtlety in the desire to understand. Philology as restraint in interpretation: whether it concerns books, newspaper reports, destinies, or facts about the weather—not to mention the "salvation of the soul"… The way a theologian, whether in Berlin or Rome, interprets a "passage of scripture" or an experience, a victory of the fatherland's army, for example, in the higher illumination of the Psalms of David, is always so bold that it drives a philologist up the wall. And what is he to do when Pietists and other cows from Swabia use the "finger of God" to turn the wretched everyday life and indoor smoke of their existence into a miracle of "grace," of "providence," of "experiences of salvation"! The most modest expenditure of intellect, not to say of decency, ought surely to bring these interpreters to convict themselves of the utter childishness and unworthiness of such an abuse of divine dexterity. With even the slightest measure of piety in us, a God who cures a cold at just the right time, or tells us to step into a carriage at the very moment a heavy rain breaks out, ought to seem so absurd a God that we would have to abolish him even if he existed. A God as domestic servant, as mail carrier, as almanac maker—at bottom a word for the stupidest kind of chance occurrences… "Divine providence," as roughly one person in three in "educated Germany" still believes in it today, would be an objection to God more powerful than any one could possibly conceive. And in any case it is an objection to Germans!…

53 —It is so far from true that martyrs prove anything about the truth of a cause that I would deny any martyr has ever had anything at all to do with truth. The very tone in which a martyr flings his conviction in the world's face expresses so low a degree of intellectual honesty, such insensibility to the question of "truth," that one never needs to refute a martyr. Truth is not something one person possesses and another does not: at most, peasants or apostles to peasants in the manner of Luther can think of truth that way. One may be certain that the greater one's conscientiousness in matters of the intellect, the greater one's modesty, one's self-restraint on this point. To know in five matters, and with a delicate hand decline to know in any others… "Truth," as every prophet, every sectarian, every freethinker, every socialist, every churchman understands the word, is perfect proof that not even a beginning has been made in that discipline of the intellect and self-overcoming needed to discover any little truth, however little.—The deaths of martyrs, incidentally, have been a great misfortune in history: they seduced… The inference drawn by all idiots, women and the common people included, that a cause for which someone goes to his death (or which, like early Christianity, even produces epidemics of the lust for death) must have something to it—this inference has been an unspeakable hindrance to inquiry, to the spirit of inquiry and caution. The martyrs harmed truth…

Even today, a single act of crude persecution is enough to give the most inherently insignificant sectarianism an honorable name.—What? Does it change the value of a cause that someone lays down his life for it?—An error that becomes honorable is an error with one more seductive charm: do you believe, gentlemen theologians, that we would give you the occasion to play the martyrs for your lie?—One refutes a cause by respectfully putting it on ice—one refutes theologians in the same way… Precisely this was the world-historical stupidity of all persecutors: they gave the opposing cause the appearance of honor—they made it a present of the fascination of martyrdom… Woman still kneels before error today because she has been told that someone died for it on the cross. Is the cross an argument, then?— —But on all these matters one man alone has spoken the word that was needed for millennia—Zarathustra.

They wrote signs of blood along the road they traveled, and theirfolly taught that truth is proved with blood.But blood is the worst witness to truth; blood poisonseven the purest teaching into delusion and hatred in the heart.And if someone went through fire for his teaching—what does that prove! Truly, it means far more for one's own burning to give rise to one's ownteaching.

54 Let no one be misled: great minds are skeptics. Zarathustra is a skeptic. Strength, the freedom that comes from the force and superabundance of the intellect, proves itself through skepticism. People of conviction do not even enter into consideration on any fundamental question of value and worthlessness. Convictions are prisons. Such people do not see far enough; they do not see beneath themselves: but to have a say about value and worthlessness, one must see five hundred convictions beneath oneself—behind oneself… A mind that wills great things, that also wills the means to them, is necessarily skeptical. Freedom from convictions of every kind belongs to strength, the ability to look freely… The great passion, the ground and power of the mind's being, still more enlightened, still more despotic than the mind itself, takes its entire intellect into service; it makes it unscrupulous; it gives it courage even for unholy means; it allows it convictions under certain circumstances. Conviction as a means: much can be achieved only by means of a conviction. The great passion uses convictions, uses them up; it does not submit to them—it knows itself sovereign.—Conversely: the need for faith, for something unconditional in Yes and No, Carlylism, if I may be forgiven the word, is a need born of weakness. The person of faith, the "believer" of every kind, is necessarily a dependent person—someone who cannot set himself as an end, who cannot set ends at all on his own. The "believer" does not belong to himself; he can only be a means; he must be used up; he needs someone to use him up. His instinct pays the highest honor to a morality of self-abnegation: everything persuades him toward it, his shrewdness, his experience, his vanity. Every kind of faith is itself an expression of self-abnegation, of self-alienation… When one considers how necessary it is for the vast majority to have a regulating authority that binds and fixes them from outside, how constraint, in a higher sense slavery, is the sole and ultimate condition under which the person of weaker will, especially woman, flourishes, then one also understands conviction, "faith." The person of conviction has his backbone in it. Not to see many things, to be unprejudiced on no point, to be partisan through and through, to have a strict and necessary perspective on all values—this alone makes it possible for such a kind of person to exist at all. But this makes him the opposite, the antagonist of the truthful person—of truth… The believer is not free to have a conscience at all on the question of "true" and "untrue": to be honest at this point would instantly be his undoing. The pathological conditioning of his perspective makes the person of conviction a fanatic—Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon—the opposite type to the strong, liberated mind. But the grand pose of these sick minds, these epileptics of the concept, affects the great mass—the fanatics are picturesque; humanity would rather watch gestures than hear reasons…

55 —A step further in the psychology of conviction, of "faith." Long ago I offered for consideration the question whether convictions are not more dangerous enemies of truth than lies (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I, Aphorismus 54 und 483). This time I would like to ask the decisive question: is there any opposition at all between a lie and a conviction?—Everyone believes there is; but what doesn't everyone believe!—Every conviction has its history, its preliminary forms, its tentative efforts and blunders: it becomes a conviction after a long time of not being one, after a still longer time of scarcely being one. What? Could a lie not also be among these embryonic forms of conviction?—Sometimes all that is needed is a change of persons: in the son, what was still a lie in the father becomes conviction.—I call it a lie to refuse to see something one sees, to refuse to see something as one sees it: whether the lie occurs before witnesses or without witnesses is of no account. The most common lie is the one with which one lies to oneself; lying to others is relatively exceptional.—Now this refusal to see what one sees, this refusal to see it as one sees it, is almost the first condition for everyone who is partisan in any sense: the partisan necessarily becomes a liar. German historiography, for example, is convinced that Rome was despotism, that the Germanic peoples brought the spirit of freedom into the world: what difference is there between this conviction and a lie? Can one still be surprised if, by instinct, all parties, German historians included, have the grand words of morality on their lips—if morality virtually continues to exist because partisans of every kind need it at every moment?—"This is our conviction: we profess it before all the world, we live and die for it—respect for everyone who has convictions!"—I have heard such things even from the mouths of antisemites. On the contrary, gentlemen! An antisemite becomes not the least bit more decent by lying on principle… Priests, who are subtler in such matters and understand very well the objection inherent in the concept of a conviction—that is, of a mendacity practiced on principle because it serves a purpose—have inherited from the Jews the shrewdness to insert at this point the concepts "God," "God's will," "God's revelation." Kant, too, with his categorical imperative, was on the same path: here his reason became practical.—There are questions on which human beings have no right to decide about truth and untruth; all the highest questions, all the highest problems of value, lie beyond human reason… To grasp the limits of reason—that alone is truly philosophy… Why did God give human beings revelation? Would God have done something superfluous? Human beings cannot know for themselves what is good and evil; therefore God taught them his will… Moral: the priest does not lie—the question of "true" or "untrue" does not exist in such matters as priests discuss; these matters do not permit lying at all. For to lie one would have to be able to decide what is true here. But that is precisely what human beings cannot do; the priest is thus merely God's mouthpiece.—Such a priestly syllogism is by no means merely Jewish and Christian; the right to lie and the shrewdness of "revelation" belong to the priestly type, to priests of decadence as much as to priests of paganism (—pagans are all those who say Yes to life, for whom "God" is the word for the great Yes to all things).—The "law," the "will of God," the "holy book," "inspiration"—all merely words for the conditions under which the priest comes to power, with which he maintains his power—these concepts lie at the foundation of all priestly organizations, all priestly or philosophical-priestly structures of domination. The "holy lie"—common to Confucius, the lawbook of Manu, Muhammad, the Christian Church—is not absent in Plato. "The truth is here": wherever this is proclaimed, it means the priest is lying…

56 —In the end, what matters is the purpose for which one lies. That Christianity lacks "holy" ends is my objection to its means. Only bad ends: poisoning, slandering, negating life, contempt for the body, the degradation and self-defilement of human beings through the concept of sin—consequently its means are bad as well.—I read the lawbook of Manu with the opposite feeling, an incomparably intellectual and superior work that it would be a sin against the intellect even to mention in the same breath as the Bible. One immediately senses that it has a real philosophy behind it, within it, not merely a foul-smelling Judaic brew of rabbinism and superstition—it gives even the most spoiled psychologist something to sink his teeth into. Not to forget the main thing, the fundamental distinction from every kind of Bible: with this book the noble estates, the philosophers and the warriors, hold their hand over the multitude; noble values everywhere, a feeling of perfection, a Yes to life, a triumphant sense of well-being in oneself and in life—the sun rests on the whole book.—All the things on which Christianity vents its unfathomable baseness—procreation, for example, woman, marriage—are treated here seriously, with reverence, with love and trust. How can anyone put a book into the hands of children and women that contains those vile words: "Because of fornication, let every man have his own wife and every woman her own husband… it is better to marry than to burn with lust"? And may one be a Christian as long as the origin of human beings is Christianized—that is, befouled—by the concept of the immaculate conception?… I know no book that says so many tender and kindly things to woman as the lawbook of Manu; these old graybeards and saints have a way of being gracious to women that has perhaps never been surpassed. "A woman's mouth," it says in one place, "a girl's bosom, a child's prayer, the smoke of sacrifice are always pure." Another passage: "There is nothing purer than the light of the sun, the shadow of a cow, the air, water, fire, and a girl's breath." One final passage—perhaps also a holy lie—: "All openings of the body above the navel are pure, all below it are impure. Only in the girl is the whole body pure."

57 One catches the unholiness of Christian means in the act when one measures the Christian end against the end of Manu's lawbook—when one brings this greatest opposition of ends into a strong light. The critic of Christianity cannot be spared the task of making Christianity contemptible.—A lawbook such as Manu's arises like every good lawbook: it sums up the experience, shrewdness, and experimental morality of long centuries; it brings things to a close; it no longer creates. The prerequisite for a codification of its kind is the insight that the means of giving authority to a truth acquired slowly and at great cost are fundamentally different from those by which one would prove it. A lawbook never recounts the utility, the reasons, the case-by-case deliberations in a law's prehistory: to do so would cost it its imperative tone, its "you shall," the prerequisite for obedience. This is precisely where the problem lies.—At a certain point in a people's development, its most discerning stratum—that is, the one that looks furthest backward and ahead—declares the experience by which people are to live—that is, can live—complete. Its aim is to bring home the richest and fullest possible harvest from the ages of experiment and bitter experience. What must now be prevented above all, consequently, is further experimentation, the continued fluidity of values, the testing, choosing, criticizing of values without end. Against this one erects a double wall: first, revelation, that is, the assertion that the reason embodied in those laws is not of human origin, not sought and found slowly and through blunders, but, being of divine origin, whole, perfect, without a history, a gift, a miracle, simply communicated… Then tradition, that is, the assertion that the law has existed since ancient times, that to call it into question is impious, a crime against the ancestors. The law's authority is founded on these propositions: God gave it, the ancestors lived it.—The higher reason behind such a procedure lies in the intention of pushing consciousness back, step by step, from the life recognized as right (that is, proved by an immense and rigorously sifted body of experience), so that the perfect automatism of instinct is achieved—the prerequisite for every kind of mastery, every kind of perfection in the art of life. To establish a lawbook in the manner of Manu means granting a people the right henceforth to become masters, to become perfect—to aspire to the highest art of life. For this, it must be made unconscious: this is the purpose of every holy lie.—The order of castes, the highest, the dominant law, is merely the sanction of an order of nature, a natural law of the first rank over which no arbitrary will, no "modern idea" has any power. In every healthy society three types separate out, conditioning one another, with physiologically different centers of gravity; each has its own regimen of health, its own sphere of work, its own kind of feeling of perfection and mastery. Nature, not Manu, separates the predominantly intellectual, those predominantly strong in muscle and temperament, and the third group, distinguished in neither, the mediocre—the last as the great number, the first as the select. The highest caste—I call them the fewest—being the perfect one, also has the privileges of the fewest: among them, to embody happiness, beauty, goodness on earth. Only the most intellectual human beings are permitted beauty, permitted the beautiful: only in them is goodness not weakness. The beautiful belongs to few people: the good is a privilege. On the other hand, nothing can be less permissible for them than ugly manners or a pessimistic outlook, an eye that makes things ugly—or even indignation at the overall aspect of things. Indignation is the privilege of the Chandala; pessimism likewise. "The world is perfect"—so speaks the instinct of the most intellectual, the Yes-saying instinct—: "Imperfection, every kind of thing beneath us, distance, the pathos of distance, even the Chandala himself belongs to this perfection." The most intellectual human beings, as the strongest, find their happiness where others would find their destruction: in the labyrinth, in severity toward themselves and others, in experiment; their delight is self-mastery: asceticism becomes nature, need, instinct in them. A difficult task counts as a privilege to them; playing with burdens that crush others, a recreation… Knowledge—a form of asceticism.—They are the most venerable kind of human being: this does not prevent them from being the most cheerful, the most lovable. They rule not because they want to, but because they are; they are not free to be second.—The second: these are the guardians of justice, the keepers of order and security, the noble warriors, above all the king as the highest formulation of warrior, judge, and upholder of the law. Those who rank second are the executive arm of the most intellectual, those closest to them, those who take all the coarse work of ruling off their hands—their retinue, their right hand, their best pupils.—In all this, let me say again, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing "contrived"; whatever is otherwise is contrived—then nature has been ruined… The order of castes, the order of rank, merely formulates the highest law of life itself; the separation of the three types is necessary to preserve society, to make higher and highest types possible—inequality of rights is the very condition for there being rights at all.—A right is a privilege. In his kind of being, everyone also has his privilege. Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. Life grows ever harder toward the heights—the cold increases, responsibility increases. A high culture is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its very first prerequisite is a strongly and healthily consolidated mediocrity. Crafts, commerce, agriculture, science, most of art, in a word the whole domain of professional activity, are compatible only with a middling measure of ability and desire; such things would be out of place among exceptions, and the corresponding instinct would contradict both aristocratism and anarchism. To be of public use, a wheel, a function, is a natural vocation: it is not society, but the kind of happiness of which the vast majority are alone capable, that makes intelligent machines of them. For the mediocre, being mediocre is happiness; mastery of one thing, specialization, is a natural instinct. It would be utterly unworthy of a deeper mind to see an objection in mediocrity as such. It is itself the first necessity if exceptions are to be possible: a high culture depends on it. When the exceptional person handles precisely the mediocre with gentler fingers than he uses for himself and his peers, this is not merely courtesy of the heart—it is simply his duty… Whom do I hate most among today's rabble? The socialist rabble, the Chandala apostles, who undermine the worker's instinct, his pleasure, his feeling of contentment with his little existence—who make him envious, who teach him revenge… Injustice never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the claim to "equal" rights… What is bad? But I have already said it: everything that comes from weakness, from envy, from revenge.—The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry…

58 Indeed, it makes a difference for what purpose one lies: whether one preserves or destroys by doing so. One may put a perfect equal sign between Christian and anarchist: their purpose, their instinct, aims only at destruction. The proof of this proposition need only be read from history: it contains that proof with terrifying clarity. We have just come to know a religious legislation whose purpose was to "eternalize" the highest condition for life to flourish, a great organization of society—Christianity found its mission in putting an end to just such an organization, because life flourished within it. There, the yield of reason from long ages of experiment and uncertainty was to be invested for the benefit of the most distant future, and the harvest brought home as great, as abundant, as complete as possible: here, on the contrary, the harvest was poisoned overnight… What stood more enduring than bronze, the Roman Empire, the grandest form of organization under difficult conditions that has yet been achieved, compared with which everything before and everything after is patchwork, bungling, amateurism—those holy anarchists made it an act of "piety" to destroy "the world," that is, the Roman Empire, until not one stone remained on another—until even Germanic peoples and other louts could become its masters… The Christian and the anarchist: both decadents, both incapable of acting otherwise than by dissolving, poisoning, withering, sucking blood, both the instinct of mortal hatred against everything that stands, that stands in greatness, that endures, that promises life a future… Christianity was the vampire of the Roman Empire—overnight it undid the Romans' immense achievement of winning the ground for a great culture that has time.—Is this still not understood? The Roman Empire we know, which the history of the Roman provinces teaches us to know ever better, this most admirable work of art in the grand style, was a beginning; its construction was designed to prove itself over millennia—to this day no one has built like this, or even dreamed of building to the same degree with eternity in view!—This organization was firm enough to withstand bad emperors: the accident of persons must have no bearing on such things—the first principle of all great architecture. But it was not firm enough against the most corrupt kind of corruption, against the Christian… These secretive vermin, creeping up to every individual in darkness, fog, and ambiguity, sucking out of every individual his seriousness about true things, his instinct for realities altogether, this cowardly, effeminate, sickly-sweet gang, step by step estranged "souls" from that immense structure—those valuable, those manly and noble natures who felt their own cause, their own seriousness, their own pride in the cause of Rome. This sanctimonious creeping about, the secrecy of conventicles, gloomy concepts such as hell, such as the sacrifice of the innocent, such as mystical union in the drinking of blood, above all the slowly stoked fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge—this became master over Rome, the same kind of religion against which Epicurus had already waged war in its preexistent form. Read Lucretius to understand what Epicurus fought, not paganism, but "Christianity," that is to say, the corruption of souls through the concepts of guilt, punishment, and immortality.—He fought the underground cults, the whole of latent Christianity—to deny immortality was already a genuine redemption then.—And Epicurus would have triumphed; every respectable mind in the Roman Empire was Epicurean: then Paul appeared… Paul, the Chandala hatred of Rome, of "the world," become flesh, become genius, the Jew, the eternal Jew in the fullest sense… What he divined was how, with the help of the little sectarian Christian movement apart from Judaism, one could kindle a "world conflagration," how, with the symbol "God on the cross," one could add up everything lying at the bottom, everything secretly rebellious, the whole inheritance of anarchistic agitation in the Empire, into an immense power. "Salvation comes from the Jews."—Christianity as a formula for outbidding the underground cults of every kind—those of Osiris, of the Great Mother, of Mithras, for example—and combining them: in this insight lies Paul's genius. His instinct was so sure in this that, with ruthless violence against the truth, he put the ideas with which those Chandala religions fascinated people into the mouth of the "Savior" he invented, and not only into his mouth—that he made him into something even a priest of Mithras could understand… This was his moment at Damascus: he understood that he needed the belief in immortality to devalue "the world," that the concept of "hell" would yet become master over Rome—that with the "beyond" one kills life… Nihilist and Christian: they rhyme, and they do more than rhyme…

59 All the labor of the ancient world in vain: I have no word to express my feeling about something so monstrous.—And considering that its labor was preparatory, that only just then, with a self-confidence of granite, the foundations had been laid for the work of millennia, the whole meaning of the ancient world in vain!… What were the Greeks for? What were the Romans for?—All the prerequisites for a scholarly culture, all the scientific methods were already there; the great, incomparable art of reading well had already been established—this prerequisite for the transmission of culture, for the unity of science; natural science, allied with mathematics and mechanics, was on the best possible path—the sense for facts, the last and most valuable of all the senses, had its schools, its tradition already centuries old! Is this understood? Everything essential had been found for work to begin—the methods, one must say it ten times, are the essential thing, also the most difficult thing, also what habits and laziness resist the longest. What we have won back for ourselves today, with unspeakable self-mastery—for we all still have the bad instincts, the Christian ones, in our bodies somehow—the free gaze before reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest matters, the whole honesty of knowledge—it was already there! Already more than two millennia ago! And, added to this, good, refined tact and taste! Not as brain-training! Not as "German" education with a lout's manners! But as body, as gesture, as instinct—in a word, as reality… All in vain! Overnight, nothing but a memory!—Greeks! Romans! Nobility of instinct, taste, methodical research, genius for organization and administration, faith, the will to humanity's future, the great Yes to all things made visible as the Roman Empire, visible to every sense, the grand style no longer merely art but become reality, truth, life…—And not buried overnight by a natural event! Not trampled down by Germanic peoples and other heavy-footed creatures! But ruined by cunning, secretive, invisible, anemic vampires! Not conquered—only sucked dry!… Hidden vindictiveness, petty envy become master! Everything wretched, suffering from itself, plagued by bad feelings, the whole ghetto-world of the soul suddenly on top!— —One need only read any Christian agitator, Saint Augustine for example, to understand, to smell, what unclean fellows came out on top with this. One would be wholly mistaken to suppose any lack of intelligence in the leaders of the Christian movement—oh, they are clever, clever to the point of holiness, these gentlemen Church Fathers! What they lack is something quite different. Nature neglected them—it forgot to give them a modest endowment of respectable, decent, clean instincts… Between ourselves, they are not even men… When Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam presupposes men…

60 Christianity robbed us of the harvest of ancient culture; later it robbed us again of the harvest of Islamic culture. The marvelous Moorish cultural world of Spain, fundamentally more akin to us, speaking more to our senses and taste than Rome and Greece, was trampled down (—I do not say by what sort of feet—), why? Because it owed its origin to noble instincts, to the instincts of men, because it said Yes to life even with the rare and exquisite treasures of Moorish life!… Later the Crusaders fought something before which it would have better become them to prostrate themselves in the dust—a culture beside which even our nineteenth century might well seem very poor, very "late."—Of course, they wanted booty: the Orient was rich… Let us be unprejudiced! Crusades—piracy on a higher plane, nothing more! The German nobility, Viking nobility at bottom, was in its element here: the Church knew only too well how to get the German nobility… The German nobility, always the Church's "Swiss," always in the service of all the Church's bad instincts—but well paid… That the Church waged its war of mortal enmity against everything noble on earth precisely with the help of German swords, German blood and courage! There are many painful questions at this point. The German nobility is almost absent from the history of higher culture: one can guess the reason… Christianity, alcohol—the two great means of corruption… In itself there should be no choice at all between Islam and Christianity, any more than between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is given; no one is free to choose here any longer. Either one is a Chandala or one is not… "War to the knife with Rome! Peace, friendship with Islam": so felt, so acted that great freethinker, the genius among German emperors, Frederick the Second. What? Must a German first be a genius, first a freethinker, to feel decently? I cannot understand how a German could ever feel Christian…

61 Here we must touch on a memory a hundred times more painful for Germans. The Germans robbed Europe of the last great cultural harvest that remained for Europe to bring home—the harvest of the Renaissance. Is it finally understood, does anyone want to understand, what the Renaissance was? The revaluation of Christian values, the attempt, undertaken with every means, every instinct, every power of genius, to bring the opposite values, the noble values, to victory… There has so far been only this great war; there has so far been no more decisive posing of the question than that of the Renaissance—my question is its question—: there has also never been a more fundamental, a more direct form of attack, one more rigorously driven forward along the whole front and toward the center! To attack at the decisive point, at the very seat of Christianity, to enthrone the noble values here—that is to say, to bring them into the instincts, into the deepest needs and desires of those seated there… I see before me a possibility of utterly unearthly magic and splendor of color—it seems to me to shine with every shudder of exquisite beauty, to have at work within it an art so divine, so devilishly divine, that one searches millennia in vain for a second such possibility; I see a spectacle so rich in meaning, so wonderfully paradoxical at the same time, that all the deities of Olympus would have had cause for immortal laughter—Cesare Borgia as pope… Am I understood?… Well, that would have been the victory for which I alone long today—with that, Christianity would have been abolished!—What happened? A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, with all the vengeful instincts of a failed priest in his body, rebelled in Rome against the Renaissance… Instead of understanding with the deepest gratitude the tremendous thing that had happened, the overcoming of Christianity at its seat, his hatred knew only how to draw nourishment from this spectacle. A religious person thinks only of himself.—Luther saw the corruption of the papacy, while precisely the opposite was palpable: the old corruption, original sin, Christianity, was no longer sitting on the papal throne! But life was! The triumph of life was! The great Yes to all lofty, beautiful, daring things was!… And Luther restored the Church: he attacked it… The Renaissance—an event without meaning, a great In Vain!—Ah, these Germans, what they have already cost us! In vain—that was always the Germans' work.—The Reformation; Leibniz; Kant and so-called German philosophy; the wars of "liberation"; the German Empire—each time an In Vain for something that was already there, for something irretrievable… They are my enemies, I confess it, these Germans: in them I despise every kind of uncleanliness in concepts and values, every kind of cowardice before every honest Yes and No. For nearly a millennium they have tangled and confused everything they have laid their fingers on; they have on their conscience all the half-measures—three-eighths-measures!—that make Europe sick—they also have on their conscience the most unclean kind of Christianity there is, the most incurable, the most irrefutable, Protestantism… If Christianity is not finished off, the Germans will be to blame…

62 —With this I come to the end and pronounce my judgment. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that any accuser has ever uttered. To me it is the highest of all conceivable corruptions; it has willed the ultimate corruption that could possibly exist. The Christian Church left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, every truth into a lie, all honesty into baseness of soul. Let anyone still dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! To abolish any distress ran counter to its deepest advantage: it lived on distress, it created distress to perpetuate itself… The worm of sin, for example: it was the Church that first enriched humanity with this distress!—The "equality of souls before God," this falsehood, this pretext for the resentments of all the base-minded, this explosive concept that has finally become revolution, modern idea, and the principle of decline of the entire social order—is Christian dynamite… The "humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To breed out of humanity a self-contradiction, an art of self-defilement, a will to lie at any price, an aversion to, a contempt for all good and honest instincts! Those are what I would call the blessings of Christianity!—Parasitism as the sole practice of the Church; with its ideal of anemia, of "holiness," drinking dry all blood, all love, all hope for life; the beyond as the will to negate every reality; the cross as the identifying sign of the most subterranean conspiracy that has ever existed—against health, beauty, sound constitution, courage, intellect, goodness of soul, against life itself…

I want to write this eternal accusation against Christianity on every wall, wherever there are walls—I have letters that will make even the blind see… I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct of revenge for which no means is poisonous, secretive, subterranean, petty enough—I call it the one immortal blot of shame on humanity…

And time is reckoned from the accursed day on which this calamity began—from the first day of Christianity!—Why not rather from its last?—From today?—Revaluation of all values!

Plain English translation

Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the same German text of the preface, all sixty-two sections and the Law Against Christianity. Nietzsche’s own emphasis is kept.

51 Faith can make people feel blessed in some circumstances. But the happiness a fixed idea brings does not make it a true idea. And faith does not move mountains: it puts mountains where there are none. A quick walk through a mental hospital makes all this clear enough. Not to a priest, of course: his instinct is to deny that sickness is sickness and a mental hospital is a mental hospital. Christianity needs sickness, much as Greek culture needs an excess of health—making people sick is the real hidden purpose behind the Church’s whole system of procedures for salvation. And the Church itself—isn’t its ultimate ideal the Catholic mental hospital?—The whole earth as a mental hospital?—The religious person as the Church wants him is a typical decadent. Whenever a religious crisis takes control of a people, epidemics of nervous illness mark the occasion. The religious person’s “inner world” is indistinguishably like the “inner world” of the overstimulated and exhausted. The “highest” states that Christianity has held up over humanity as the value of all values are epilepsy-like states—the Church has canonized only madmen or great frauds for the greater glory of God… I once took the liberty of describing the whole Christian training in repentance and redemption—which is best studied in England today—as a methodically induced cyclical insanity, naturally on ground already prepared for it, that is, thoroughly diseased ground. No one is free to become a Christian: people are not “converted” to Christianity—they have to be sick enough for it… We others, who have the courage to be healthy and to despise, how fully we are entitled to despise a religion that taught people to misunderstand the body! That refuses to give up the superstition of the soul! That makes inadequate nutrition a “merit”! That fights health as a kind of enemy, devil, temptation! That persuaded itself one could carry a “perfect soul” around in a corpse of a body, and for that purpose had to invent a new idea of “perfection”: a pale, sickly, idiotically rapturous condition, so-called “holiness”—holiness that is itself merely a set of symptoms of an impoverished, enervated, incurably ruined body!… The Christian movement, as a European movement, is from the start a collective movement of every kind of reject and waste product (—they want to use Christianity to gain power). It does not express the decline of a race; it is a mass formed from kinds of decadence everywhere, crowding together and seeking one another out. It is not, as people believe, the corruption of the ancient world itself, the noble ancient world, that made Christianity possible. We cannot contradict forcefully enough the scholarly idiocy that still upholds such a claim today. At the time when the sick, corrupted Chandala classes throughout the empire were becoming Christian, the very opposite type, nobility, existed in its most beautiful and mature form. The great majority took control; the democratic tendency of Christian instincts won… Christianity was not “national,” not determined by race—it appealed to every kind of person disinherited by life; it had allies everywhere. At Christianity’s root lies the rancor of the sick, an instinct directed against the healthy, against health. Everything that has turned out well, everything proud and high-spirited, and beauty above all, hurts its ears and eyes. Let me recall once again Paul’s priceless words: “What is weak in the world’s eyes, what is foolish in the world’s eyes, the lowborn and despised in the world’s eyes, God has chosen.” That was the formula; under this sign decadence won.—God on the cross—do people still not understand the terrible hidden thought behind this symbol?—Everything that suffers, everything that hangs on the cross, is divine… We all hang on the cross, so we are divine… We alone are divine… Christianity was a victory; a nobler way of thinking was destroyed by it—Christianity has been humanity’s greatest misfortune so far.— —

52 Christianity also opposes every healthy development of the mind—the only reason it can use as Christian reason is sick reason. It sides with everything idiotic; it curses “the intellect,” the pride of a healthy mind. Since sickness belongs to Christianity’s nature, the typically Christian state, “faith,” must also be a form of sickness. The Church must reject all straight, honest, scientific paths to knowledge as forbidden paths. Even doubt is a sin… The priest’s complete lack of psychological cleanliness—which gives itself away in his eyes—is a consequence of decadence. We need only observe hysterical women and children prone to rickets to see how regularly instinctive dishonesty, pleasure in lying for its own sake, and an inability to look or walk straight express decadence. “Faith” means not wanting to know what is true. The Pietist, the priest of either sex, is dishonest because he is sick: his instinct demands that truth should never get its due. “Whatever makes people sick is good; whatever comes from fullness, abundance, power, is evil”: that is how the believer feels. The compulsion to lie—that is how I recognize every born theologian.—Another mark of the theologian is his inability to practice philology. Here, in a very general sense, philology means the art of reading well—being able to read the facts without falsifying them through interpretation, without losing caution, patience, and subtlety in the desire to understand. Philology as restraint in interpretation: whether we are dealing with books, newspaper reports, destinies, or facts about the weather—not to mention the “salvation of the soul”… The way a theologian, in Berlin or Rome alike, interprets a “passage of scripture” or an experience—for instance, a victory by his country’s army in the higher light of the Psalms of David—is always so bold that it drives a philologist up the wall. And what is the philologist supposed to do when Pietists and other cows from Swabia use the “finger of God” to turn the miserable daily routine and smoky rooms of their existence into a miracle of “grace,” “providence,” and “experiences of salvation”! The smallest effort of intelligence, not to say decency, should make these interpreters recognize how completely childish and unworthy it is to misuse divine dexterity like this. With even the slightest amount of piety in us, a God who cures a cold at the right moment, or tells us to get into a carriage just as heavy rain starts, should strike us as so absurd that we would have to abolish him even if he existed. A God as servant, mail carrier, almanac maker—basically a word for the stupidest kind of coincidence… “Divine providence,” as roughly one person in three still believes in it in “educated Germany,” would be the strongest imaginable argument against God. And in any case it is an argument against the Germans!…

53 —It is so far from true that martyrs prove a cause is true that I would deny any martyr has ever had anything at all to do with truth. The very tone in which a martyr flings his belief in something at the world’s head reveals such a low level of intellectual honesty, such insensitivity to the question of “truth,” that there is never any need to refute a martyr. Truth is not something one person has and another does not: only peasants, or apostles to peasants like Luther, could think of truth that way. We can be sure that the more conscientious people are in matters of the mind, the greater their modesty, their self-restraint, on this point becomes. To know about five things, and gently refuse to know about anything else… “Truth,” as every prophet, every sectarian, every freethinker, every socialist, and every churchman understands the word, is complete proof that they have not even begun the mental discipline and self-overcoming needed to find any small truth, however small.—The deaths of martyrs, incidentally, have been a great misfortune in history: they led people astray… All idiots, women and the common people included, conclude that there must be something to a cause someone dies for—or that, like early Christianity, actually produces epidemics of a craving for death. That conclusion has been an unspeakable obstacle to examination, to the spirit of examination and caution. Martyrs harmed truth…

Even today, a single crude act of persecution is enough to give the most insignificant sectarian movement an honorable name.—What? Does someone’s giving up his life for a cause change its value?—An error that becomes honorable is an error with one more seductive attraction: do you think, gentlemen of theology, that we would give you a chance to play the martyr for your lie?—You refute a cause by respectfully putting it on ice—and that is also how you refute theologians… This was precisely the world-historical stupidity of all persecutors: they gave their opponents’ cause the appearance of honor—they made it a gift of the fascination of martyrdom… Woman still kneels before error today because she has been told that someone died on the cross for it. Is the cross an argument, then?— —But on all these matters, one man alone has said the words people have needed for thousands of years—Zarathustra.

They wrote signs of blood on the path they walked, and theirfoolishness taught that blood proves truth.But blood is the worst witness to truth; blood poisonseven the purest teaching, turning it into delusion and hatred in people’s hearts.And if someone went through fire for his teaching—what does that prove! It means more, truly, when his ownteaching comes from his own burning.

54 Do not be misled: great minds are skeptics. Zarathustra is a skeptic. The strength, the freedom that comes from the mind’s power and surplus of power, proves itself through skepticism. People with convictions do not count at all when it comes to fundamental questions of value and worthlessness. Convictions are prisons. Their vision does not reach far enough; they cannot see below themselves. But to have a say about value and worthlessness, you must see five hundred convictions below you—behind you… A mind that wants great things, and also wants the means to achieve them, is necessarily skeptical. Freedom from every kind of conviction belongs to strength: being able to look freely… The great passion, the foundation and power of such a mind’s existence, is even more enlightened, even more despotic, than that mind itself. It puts the whole intellect to work; it removes scruples; it gives the mind courage to use even unholy means; under certain circumstances it allows the mind convictions. Conviction as a means: many things can be achieved only through a conviction. The great passion uses convictions, uses them up; it does not submit to them—it knows it is sovereign.—Conversely, the need for faith, for some unconditional Yes or No—Carlylism, if I may be forgiven the word—is a need born of weakness. The person of faith, the “believer” of every kind, is necessarily a dependent person—someone who cannot set himself up as an end, who cannot set any ends at all on his own. The “believer” does not belong to himself. He can only be a means; he must be used up; he needs someone to use him up. His instinct gives the highest honor to a morality of self-renunciation. Everything persuades him toward it: his cleverness, his experience, his vanity. Every kind of faith is itself an expression of self-renunciation, of self-alienation… Consider how much most people need a regulating force that binds and steadies them from outside; how compulsion, slavery in a higher sense, is the only and ultimate condition under which a person with a weaker will, especially a woman, can thrive. Then you also understand conviction, “faith.” The person with convictions has his backbone in them. Not seeing many things, being impartial about nothing, being partisan through and through, having a rigid and compulsory perspective on all values—this alone makes it possible for that kind of person to exist at all. But that makes him the opposite, the antagonist, of the truthful person—of truth… The believer is not free to have any conscience at all about the question of “true” and “untrue”: being honest on this point would immediately destroy him. The diseased conditioning of his perspective turns the man of conviction into a fanatic—Savonarola, Luther, Rousseau, Robespierre, Saint-Simon—the opposite type to the strong mind, the mind that has become free. But the grand pose of these sick minds, these epileptics of the concept, affects the great mass of people—fanatics are picturesque; humanity would rather watch gestures than listen to reasons…

55 —One step further in the psychology of conviction, of “faith.” Long ago I suggested considering whether convictions might be more dangerous enemies of truth than lies (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I, Aphorismus 54 und 483). This time I want to ask the decisive question: is there any opposition at all between a lie and a conviction?—Everyone believes there is; but what doesn’t everyone believe!—Every conviction has its history, its preliminary forms, its experiments and mistakes. It becomes a conviction after a long time of not being one, and an even longer time of barely being one. What? Couldn’t a lie be among these embryonic forms of conviction?—Sometimes all it takes is a change of person: what was still a lie in the father becomes a conviction in the son.—By lying I mean not wanting to see something you see, not wanting to see it as you see it. Whether the lie takes place with or without witnesses makes no difference. The most common lie is the one you tell yourself; lying to other people is relatively exceptional.—Now this desire not to see what you see, not to see it as you see it, is almost the first requirement for everyone who is partisan in any sense. The partisan necessarily becomes a liar. German history writing, for example, is convinced that Rome was despotism and that the Germanic peoples brought the spirit of freedom into the world. What is the difference between that conviction and a lie? Can we still be surprised that all parties, including German historians, instinctively have morality’s grand words on their lips—that morality almost survives because every kind of partisan needs it at every moment?—“This is our conviction: we profess it before the whole world; we live and die for it—respect for everyone with convictions!”—I have even heard things like that from antisemites. Quite the contrary, gentlemen! An antisemite does not become any more decent by lying on principle… Priests are more subtle in these matters. They understand very well the objection contained in the concept of a conviction—that is, dishonesty adopted as a principle because it serves a purpose. From the Jews they inherited the cleverness to insert the concepts “God,” “God’s will,” and “God’s revelation” at this point. Kant, too, with his categorical imperative, was on the same path: his reason became practical here.—There are questions where deciding between truth and falsehood is not for human beings. All the highest questions, all the highest problems of value, lie beyond human reason… To grasp the limits of reason—only that is truly philosophy… Why did God give humanity revelation? Would God have done something unnecessary? Human beings cannot know on their own what is good and evil, so God taught them his will… The moral: the priest does not lie—the question “true” or “untrue” does not exist in the things priests talk about. These things do not even allow lying. To lie, you would have to be able to decide what is true here. But that is just what human beings cannot do; the priest is therefore merely God’s mouthpiece.—This priestly syllogism is by no means merely Jewish and Christian. The right to lie and the cleverness of “revelation” belong to the priestly type, to priests of decadence just as much as to pagan priests (—pagans are all those who say Yes to life, for whom “God” is the word for the great Yes to all things).—The “law,” the “will of God,” the “holy book,” “inspiration”—all just words for the conditions under which the priest gains power, with which he maintains his power. These concepts lie at the foundation of all priestly organizations, all systems of priestly or philosophical-priestly rule. The “holy lie”—shared by Confucius, Manu’s law code, Muhammad, and the Christian Church—is not absent from Plato. “The truth is here”: wherever that is proclaimed, it means the priest is lying…

56 —In the end, what matters is the purpose of the lie. That Christianity lacks “holy” purposes is my objection to its methods. Its purposes are only bad: poisoning, slandering, denying life, despising the body, degrading human beings and making them defile themselves through the concept of sin—therefore its methods are bad too.—I read the law code of Manu with the opposite feeling. It is an incomparably intellectual and superior work; even to mention it in the same breath as the Bible would be a sin against the intellect. You can tell at once: it has a real philosophy behind it, within it, not just a foul-smelling Jewish brew of rabbinism and superstition—it gives even the most spoiled psychologist something to chew on. Not to forget the main point, the fundamental difference from every kind of Bible: the noble classes, the philosophers and warriors, use it to watch over the masses. Noble values everywhere, a feeling of perfection, a Yes to life, a triumphant satisfaction in oneself and in life—the sun shines over the whole book.—All the things on which Christianity vents its bottomless vulgarity—procreation, for example, women, marriage—are treated here seriously, with reverence, love, and trust. How can anyone actually put a book into the hands of children and women that contains these base words: “Because of fornication, let every man have his own wife and every woman her own husband… it is better to marry than to burn with lust”? And may anyone be a Christian as long as the concept of the Immaculate Conception Christianizes the origin of human beings—that is, dirties it?… I know no book that says so many tender and kind things to women as Manu’s law code. These old graybeards and saints have a way of being courteous to women that may never have been surpassed. “A woman’s mouth,” it says in one place, “a girl’s breast, a child’s prayer, the smoke of a sacrifice are always pure.” Another passage: “There is nothing purer than sunlight, a cow’s shadow, the air, water, fire, and a girl’s breath.” One last passage—perhaps a holy lie as well—“All the body’s openings above the navel are pure; all those below are impure. Only in a girl is the whole body pure.”

57 You catch the unholiness of Christian methods in the act when you compare the Christian purpose with the purpose of Manu’s law code—when you put this greatest opposition of purposes in a strong light. A critic of Christianity cannot avoid making Christianity contemptible.—A law code like Manu’s comes into being as every good law code does: it sums up the experience, practical wisdom, and morality developed through trial over long centuries; it brings that process to a close; it creates nothing more. A codification of this kind presupposes an insight: the means of giving authority to a truth acquired slowly and at great cost are fundamentally different from the means of proving it. A law code never tells the benefits, reasons, and particular cases in a law’s prehistory. Doing so would cost it its commanding tone, its “you shall,” the precondition for obedience. That is precisely where the problem lies.—At a certain point in a people’s development, its most insightful class—that is, the one that looks furthest backward and ahead—declares that the experience by which people are to live—that is, can live—is complete. Its aim is to bring in the richest and most complete harvest possible from the ages of experiment and bad experience. So what must now be prevented above all is continued experimentation, the continued fluidity of values, the testing, choosing, and criticizing of values without end. A double wall is set against this. First, revelation: the claim that the reason behind these laws is not human in origin, not something sought and found slowly and through mistakes. Instead, it is divine in origin, whole, perfect, without a history, a gift, a miracle, merely communicated… Then, tradition: the claim that the law has existed since the most ancient times, that to question it is irreverent, a crime against the ancestors. The law’s authority rests on these propositions: God gave it; the ancestors lived it.—The higher reason for such a procedure lies in the intention to push consciousness back, step by step, out of the life recognized as right—that is, proved by an enormous and rigorously sifted body of experience. In this way, the perfect automatic functioning of instinct is achieved—the precondition for every kind of mastery, every kind of perfection in the art of living. To establish a law code like Manu’s means giving a people the chance from then on to achieve mastery, to become perfect—to aspire to the highest art of living. For this, it must be made unconscious: that is the purpose of every holy lie.—The caste system, the supreme, dominant law, only sanctions an order of nature, a natural law of the first rank over which no arbitrary will, no “modern idea,” has power. In every healthy society, three types with different physiological centers of gravity separate out, each depending on the others. Each has its own rules of health, its own field of work, its own kind of feeling of perfection and mastery. Nature, not Manu, separates those who are mainly intellectual, those who are mainly strong in muscle and temperament, and a third group distinguished in neither way, the mediocre—the last as the great majority, the first as the select few. The highest caste—I call them the very few—as the perfect caste also has the privileges of the fewest: these include embodying happiness, beauty, and goodness on earth. Only the most intellectual people are permitted beauty, beautiful things: only in them is goodness not weakness. Beauty belongs to few people: goodness is a privilege. On the other hand, nothing is less permissible for them than ugly manners or a pessimistic outlook, an eye that makes things ugly—or even indignation at the overall appearance of things. Indignation is the privilege of the Chandala; pessimism likewise. “The world is perfect”—so speaks the instinct of the most intellectual, the instinct that says Yes—“imperfection, everything below us, distance, the feeling of distance, even the Chandala belongs to this perfection.” The most intellectual people, as the strongest, find happiness where others would find their ruin: in the labyrinth, in harshness toward themselves and others, in experiment. Their pleasure is in conquering themselves: asceticism becomes their nature, their need, their instinct. They see a difficult task as a privilege; playing with burdens that crush others is recreation… Knowledge—a form of asceticism.—They are the most worthy of respect of all human types: that does not rule out their being the most cheerful and lovable. They rule not because they want to, but because they are; they are not free to take second place.—Those in second place: they are the guardians of justice, the keepers of order and security, the noble warriors, and above all the king as the highest embodiment of warrior, judge, and upholder of the law. Those in second place are the executive arm of the most intellectual, their closest associates, those who take all the coarse work of ruling off their hands—their followers, their right hand, their best pupils.—In all of this, to repeat, there is nothing arbitrary, nothing “made up”; anything different is made up—in that case nature has been ruined… The caste system, the order of rank, merely formulates the supreme law of life itself. Separating the three types is necessary to preserve society, to make higher and highest types possible—the inequality of rights is the very condition for any rights to exist at all.—A right is a privilege. Each person also has his privilege in his own way of being. Let us not underestimate the privileges of the mediocre. Life gets harder the higher you go—the cold increases, the responsibility increases. A high culture is a pyramid: it can stand only on a broad base; its very first requirement is a firmly and healthily consolidated mediocrity. Crafts, trade, agriculture, science, most art—in a word, the whole range of professional activity—are entirely compatible only with a middling level of ability and desire. Such things would be out of place among exceptional people; the instinct involved would contradict an aristocratic outlook as much as an anarchist one. Being publicly useful, a cog, a function, is a natural calling: it is not society that turns them into intelligent machines, but the only kind of happiness the vast majority are capable of. For the mediocre person, being mediocre is happiness; mastery in one field, specialization, is a natural instinct. It would be completely unworthy of a deeper mind to see mediocrity itself as an objection. It is itself the first necessity if exceptions are to be possible: a high culture depends on it. When an exceptional person handles the mediocre with gentler fingers than he uses on himself and his equals, this is not just courtesy of the heart—it is simply his duty… Whom among today’s rabble do I hate most? The socialist rabble, the Chandala apostles who undermine the worker’s instinct, his pleasure, his sense of satisfaction with his small existence—who make him envious, who teach him revenge… Injustice never lies in unequal rights; it lies in the demand for “equal” rights… What is bad? But I have said it already: everything that comes from weakness, from envy, from revenge.—The anarchist and the Christian have the same origin…

58 In fact, the purpose of a lie makes a difference: whether you use it to preserve or to destroy. You can put a perfect equals sign between Christian and anarchist: their purpose, their instinct, aims only at destruction. To prove this statement, you need only read history: it contains the proof with terrifying clarity. We have just come to know a religious system of law whose purpose was to make the supreme condition for life to thrive “last forever”: a great organization of society. Christianity found its mission in putting an end to just such an organization, because life thrived in it. In the one case, the rational gains of long periods of experiment and uncertainty were to be invested for benefit in the most distant future, and the harvest brought in as fully, richly, and completely as possible. In the other, the reverse happened: overnight the harvest was poisoned… What stood there more enduring than bronze, the Roman Empire, the grandest form of organization under difficult conditions ever achieved—compared with which everything before and after is patchwork, bungling, amateurism—those holy anarchists made it an act of “piety” to destroy “the world,” that is, the Roman Empire, until not one stone remained on another—until even Germanic peoples and other louts could take control of it… The Christian and the anarchist: both decadents, both incapable of doing anything but dissolving, poisoning, stunting, sucking blood, both the instinct of deadly hatred against everything that stands, that stands great, that endures, that promises life a future… Christianity was the vampire of the Roman Empire—overnight it undid the Romans’ enormous achievement of gaining the ground for a great culture that has time.—Do people still not understand? The Roman Empire we know, which the history of the Roman provinces teaches us to know better and better, this most admirable work of art in the grand style, was a beginning. Its structure was designed to prove itself over thousands of years—to this day, no one has ever built like that, or even dreamed of building to the same extent from the standpoint of eternity!—This organization was strong enough to withstand bad emperors: the accident of who holds office must have no effect in such matters—the first principle of all great architecture. But it was not strong enough to withstand the most corrupt kind of corruption, the Christian… These secret vermin, creeping up to each individual in night, fog, and ambiguity, sucking out of each individual his seriousness about true things, his instinct for realities at all—this cowardly, effeminate, sickly-sweet gang gradually alienated “souls” from that enormous structure. Those valuable souls, those manly and noble natures, had felt their own cause, their own seriousness, their own pride in Rome’s cause. This sanctimonious sneaking, this secrecy of little religious gatherings, gloomy concepts like hell, like the sacrifice of the innocent, like mystical union in drinking blood, and above all the slowly stoked fire of revenge, of Chandala revenge—that gained control over Rome: the same kind of religion on which Epicurus had already made war in its earlier form. Read Lucretius to understand what Epicurus fought: not paganism, but “Christianity,” meaning the corruption of souls through the concepts of guilt, punishment, and immortality.—He fought the underground cults, the whole of latent Christianity—denying immortality was already a real redemption then.—And Epicurus would have won; every respectable mind in the Roman Empire was Epicurean: then Paul appeared… Paul, Chandala hatred of Rome, of “the world,” made flesh, made genius; the Jew, the eternal Jew above all others… What he figured out was how to use the little sectarian Christian movement on the margins of Judaism to ignite a “world fire”; how to use the symbol “God on the cross” to add up everything downtrodden, everything secretly rebellious, the whole inheritance of anarchist agitation in the empire, into an enormous power. “Salvation comes from the Jews.”—Christianity as a formula for outdoing—and adding together—underground cults of every kind, those of Osiris, the Great Mother, Mithras, for example: Paul’s genius consists in this insight. His instinct was so sure in this that he put the ideas with which those Chandala religions fascinated people into the mouth of the “Savior” he invented, doing ruthless violence to the truth—and not only into his mouth: he made him into something even a priest of Mithras could understand… This was his moment at Damascus: he understood that he needed the belief in immortality to devalue “the world,” that the concept of “hell” would yet gain control over Rome—that with the “beyond” you kill life… Nihilist and Christian: they rhyme, and not just in sound…

59 All the work of the ancient world for nothing: I have no words to express what I feel about something so enormous.—And considering that its work was preparation, that the foundation for thousands of years of work had only just been laid with granite-hard self-confidence, the whole meaning of the ancient world was for nothing!… What were the Greeks for? What were the Romans for?—All the requirements for a learned culture, all the scientific methods, were already there. People had already established the great, incomparable art of reading well—the precondition for passing culture down, for the unity of science. Natural science, allied with mathematics and mechanics, was on the best possible course—the sense for facts, the last and most valuable of all the senses, had its schools, its tradition already hundreds of years old! Do people understand this? Everything essential had been found so work could begin—the methods, it must be said ten times, are what is essential, also what is hardest, also what habits and laziness resist the longest. What we have won back for ourselves today through unspeakable self-conquest—for we all still carry the bad instincts, the Christian ones, in our bodies somehow—the unobstructed view of reality, the cautious hand, patience and seriousness in the smallest things, the whole honesty of knowledge—all of it was already there! Already more than two thousand years ago! And, on top of that, good and refined tact and taste! Not as brain training! Not as “German” education with loutish manners! But as body, gesture, instinct—in a word, as reality… All for nothing! Overnight, nothing but a memory!—Greeks! Romans! Nobility of instinct, taste, methodical research, genius for organization and administration, faith, the will for humanity’s future, the great Yes to all things made visible as the Roman Empire, visible to all the senses, the grand style no longer just art but now reality, truth, life…—And not buried overnight by a natural event! Not trampled down by Germanic peoples and other heavy-footed creatures! But ruined by cunning, secret, invisible, anemic vampires! Not defeated—only sucked dry!… Hidden vindictiveness, petty envy had become master! Everything wretched, suffering from itself, haunted by bad feelings, the whole ghetto world of the soul suddenly on top!— —Just read any Christian agitator, Saint Augustine for example, to grasp, to smell, what unclean fellows rose to the top in this way. It would be a complete mistake to suppose the leaders of the Christian movement lacked intelligence in any way—oh, they are clever, clever to the point of holiness, these gentlemen Church Fathers! What they lack is something quite different. Nature neglected them—it forgot to give them a modest endowment of respectable, decent, clean instincts… Between ourselves, they are not even men… If Islam despises Christianity, it has a thousandfold right to do so: Islam presupposes men…

60 Christianity robbed us of the harvest of ancient culture; later it robbed us again of the harvest of Islamic culture. Spain’s wonderful Moorish cultural world, fundamentally more closely related to us, speaking more to our senses and taste than Rome and Greece, was trampled down (—I will not say by what kind of feet—). Why? Because it owed its origin to noble instincts, to men’s instincts; because it said Yes to life even through the rare and refined treasures of Moorish life!… Later the Crusaders fought something before which it would have suited them better to lie in the dust—a culture compared with which even our nineteenth century might well feel very poor, very “late.”—Of course, they wanted loot: the East was rich… Let’s be impartial! Crusades—piracy on a higher level, nothing more! The German nobility, essentially Viking nobility, was in its element here: the Church knew only too well how to get hold of the German nobility… The German nobility, always the Church’s “Swiss mercenaries,” always serving all the Church’s bad instincts—but well paid… To think that the Church waged its war of deadly hatred against everything noble on earth with the very help of German swords, German blood, and German courage! There are many painful questions here. The German nobility is almost absent from the history of higher culture: you can guess why… Christianity, alcohol—the two great means of corruption… In itself, there ought to be no choice between Islam and Christianity, any more than between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is given; no one is free to choose here anymore. Either you are a Chandala, or you are not… “War to the knife against Rome! Peace, friendship with Islam”: that was how that great free spirit, the genius among German emperors, Frederick the Second, felt; that was how he acted. What? Must a German first be a genius, a free spirit, in order to feel decently? I cannot understand how a German could ever feel Christian…

61 Here we need to touch on a memory a hundred times more embarrassing for Germans. The Germans robbed Europe of the last great cultural harvest there was to bring home for Europe—the harvest of the Renaissance. Do people finally understand, do they want to understand, what the Renaissance was? The revaluation of Christian values, the attempt undertaken with every means, every instinct, every bit of genius, to bring the opposite values, the noble values, to victory… So far there has been only this great war; so far no question has been posed more decisively than the Renaissance’s question—my question is its question. Nor has there ever been a more fundamental, more direct form of attack, more rigorously conducted along the whole front and against the center! To attack at the decisive point, at the very seat of Christianity; to put noble values on the throne here, meaning to bring them into the instincts, into the deepest needs and desires of those sitting there… I see a possibility before me of utterly unearthly enchantment and richness of color—it seems to me to shine with all the shivers of refined beauty, with an art at work in it so divine, so devilishly divine, that you could search thousands of years in vain for another such possibility. I see a spectacle so meaningful and at the same time so wonderfully paradoxical that all the gods of Olympus would have had reason for immortal laughter—Cesare Borgia as pope… Do you understand me?… Well, that would have been the victory that I alone demand today—with that, Christianity would have been abolished!—What happened? A German monk, Luther, came to Rome. This monk, carrying all the vengeful instincts of a failed priest in his body, rebelled in Rome against the Renaissance… Instead of understanding with the deepest gratitude the enormous thing that had happened—the overcoming of Christianity at its seat—his hatred understood only how to feed on this spectacle. A religious person thinks only of himself.—Luther saw the corruption of the papacy, when precisely the opposite was obvious enough to touch: the old corruption, original sin, Christianity, was no longer sitting on the papal throne! But life was! The triumph of life was! The great Yes to all high, beautiful, daring things was!… And Luther restored the Church: he attacked it… The Renaissance—an event without meaning, a great waste!—Ah, these Germans, what they have already cost us! For nothing—that has always been the Germans’ work.—The Reformation; Leibniz; Kant and so-called German philosophy; the Wars of “Liberation”; the German Empire—each time something already there, something irretrievable, was made to have been for nothing… They are my enemies, I admit it, these Germans: in them I despise every kind of uncleanliness in concepts and values, every kind of cowardice before any honest Yes and No. For almost a thousand years, they have tangled and confused everything their fingers touched; they have all the half measures—three-eighths measures!—that make Europe sick on their conscience. They also have on their conscience the most unclean kind of Christianity there is, the most incurable, the most impossible to refute: Protestantism… If we cannot finish off Christianity, the Germans will be to blame…

62 —With this I come to the end and deliver my verdict. I condemn Christianity; I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all charges any accuser has ever spoken. To me it is the highest of all imaginable corruptions; it has willed the utmost corruption that is even possible. The Christian Church left nothing untouched by its corruption. It made every value worthless, every truth a lie, every kind of honesty a baseness of soul. Just let anyone dare talk to me again about its “humanitarian” blessings! To abolish any distress went against its deepest self-interest: it lived on distress; it created distress to make itself eternal… The worm of sin, for example: it was the Church that first enriched humanity with this distress!—The “equality of souls before God,” this falsehood, this pretext for the rancor of all the base-minded, this explosive concept that finally became revolution, modern idea, and the principle of decline of the whole social order—is Christian dynamite… The “humanitarian” blessings of Christianity! To breed into humanity a contradiction of itself, an art of self-defilement, a will to lie at any price, an aversion to and contempt for all good and honest instincts! Those, to my mind, are Christianity’s blessings!—Parasitism as the Church’s only practice; with its ideal of anemia, its ideal of “holiness,” draining away all blood, all love, all hope for life; the beyond as the will to deny every reality; the cross as the identifying mark of the deepest underground conspiracy there has ever been—against health, beauty, successful growth, courage, intellect, goodness of soul, against life itself…

I want to write this eternal indictment of Christianity on every wall, wherever there are walls—I have letters that can make even the blind see… I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great innermost corruption, the one great instinct for revenge for which no means is poisonous, secret, underground, or petty enough—I call it the one immortal stain of shame on humanity…

And people count time from the ill-fated day when this disaster began—from the first day of Christianity!—Why not from its last day instead?—From today?—Revaluation of all values!

About this section

Sections 51–62 is part of The Antichrist by Friedrich Nietzsche. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is section 7 of 8 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.

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