Twilight of Idols and Anti-Christ

by Nietzsche, Friedrich

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  If one shifts the centre of gravity of life out of life into the ‘Beyond’ – into nothingness – one has deprived life as such of its centre of gravity. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all rationality, all naturalness of instinct – all that is salutary, all that is life-furthering, all that holds a guarantee of the future in the instincts henceforth excites mistrust. So to live that there is no longer any meaning in living: that now becomes the ‘meaning’ of life.… What is the point of public spirit, what is the point of gratitude for one’s descent and one’s forefathers, what is the point of co-operation, trust, of furthering and keeping in view the general welfare?… So many ‘temptations’, so many diversions from the ‘right road’ – ‘one thing is needful’.… That, as an ‘immortal soul’, everybody is equal to everybody else, that in the totality of beings the ‘salvation’ of every single one is permitted to claim to be of everlasting moment, that little bigots and three-quarters madmen are permitted to imagine that for their sakes the laws of nature are continually being broken – such a raising of every sort of egoism to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. And yet it is to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity that Christianity owes its victory – it is with this that it has persuaded over to its side everything ill-constituted, rebellious-minded, under-privileged, all the dross and refuse of mankind. ‘Salvation of the soul’ – in plain words: ‘The world revolves around me’… The poison of the doctrine ‘equal rights for all’ – this has been more thoroughly sowed by Christianity than by anything else; from the most secret recesses of base instincts, Christianity has waged a war to the death against every feeling of reverence and distance between man and man, against, that is, the precondition of every elevation, every increase in culture – it has forged out of the ressentiment of the masses its chief weapon against us, against everything noble, joyful, high-spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth.… ‘Immortality’ granted to every Peter and Paul has been the greatest and most malicious outrage on noble mankind ever committed. – And let us not underestimate the fatality that has crept out of Christianity even into politics! No one any longer possesses today the courage to claim special privileges or the right to rule, the courage to feel a sense of reverence towards himself and towards his equals – the courage for a pathos of distance…. Our politics is morbid from this lack of courage! – The aristocratic outlook has been undermined most deeply by the lie of equality of souls; and if the belief in the ‘prerogative of the majority’ makes revolutions and will continue to make them – it is Christianity, let there be no doubt about it, Christian value judgement which translates every revolution into mere blood and crime! Christianity is a revolt of everything that crawls along the ground directed against that which is elevated: the Gospel of the ‘lowly’ makes low…

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  – The Gospels are invaluable as evidence of the already irresistible corruption within the first community. What Paul later carried to its conclusion with the cynical logic of a rabbi was none the less merely the process of decay which commenced with the death of the redeemer. – One cannot read these Gospels too warily; there are difficulties behind every word. I hope I shall be pardoned for confessing that they are for that very reason a pleasure of the first rank to a psychologist – as the opposite of all kinds of naïve depravity, as refinement par excellence, as artistry in psychological depravity. The Gospels are in a class by themselves. The Bible in general admits of no comparison. One is among Jews: first consideration if one is not to lose the thread completely. This self-pretence of ‘holiness’, which here becomes downright genius and which has not since been even approximately equalled among books and men, this false-coinage of word and attitude as an art, is not the chance product of some individual talent, some exceptional nature. Race is required for it. In Christianity, as the art of holy lying, the whole of Judaism, a schooling and technique pursued with the utmost seriousness for hundreds of years, attains its ultimate perfection. The Christian, that ultima ratio of the lie, is the Jew once more – even thrice more.… The will to employ as a matter of principle only concepts, symbols, attitudes manifested in the practice of the priest, the instinctive rejection of every other practice, every other kind of perspective in the realm of values and practical application – that is not tradition, it is inheritance: only as inheritance does it have the effect of a natural quality. The whole of mankind, even the finest heads of the finest epochs (with one exception, who is perhaps merely a monster –) have allowed themselves to be deceived. The Gospel has been read as the Book of Innocence.… no small pointer to the degree of histrionic mastery displayed in it. – If we got to see them, to be sure, even if only in passing, all these singular bigots and artificial saints, it would be the end of them – and it is precisely because I never read a word without seeing an attitude that I make an end of them…. They have a way of raising their eyes to Heaven which I cannot endure. – Fortunately books are for most people merely literature. – One must not let oneself be misled: they say ‘Judge not!’ but they send to Hell everything that stands in their way. By allowing God to judge they themselves judge; by glorifying God they glorify themselves; by demanding precisely those virtues of which they themselves are capable – more, which they are in need of to stay on top at all – they present a great appearance of contending for virtue, of struggling for the triumph of virtue. ‘We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves for the good’ (– ‘truth’, ‘the light’, the ‘kingdom of God’): in reality they do what they cannot help doing. By making their way in a sneaking fashion, sitting in corners, living out shadowy lives in the shadows, they make a duty of it: their life of humility appears to be a duty, as humility it is one more proof of piety.… Ah this humble, chaste, compassionate mode of mendaciousness! ‘For us virtue itself shall bear witness’.… Read the Gospels as books of seduction by means of morality: these petty people have placed a distraint on morality – they know what use it can be put to! Mankind can best be led by the nose with morality! – The reality is that here the most conscious arrogance of the elect is posing as modesty: one has placed oneself, the ‘community’, the ‘good and just’, once and for all on one side, on the side of ‘truth’ – and the rest, ‘the world’, on the other.… That has been the most fateful kind of megalomania that has ever existed on earth: little abortions of bigots and liars began to lay claim to the concepts ‘God’, ‘truth’, ‘light’, ‘spirit’, ‘love’, ‘wisdom’, ‘life’, as if these were synonyms of themselves so as to divide themselves off from the ‘world’; little superlatives of Jews, ripe for every kind of madhouse, twisted values in general to suit themselves, as if only the ‘Christian’ were the meaning, the salt, the measure and also the ultimate tribunal of all the rest.… The whole fatality was possible only because there was already in the world a related, racially-related megalomania, the Jewish: once the chasm between Jews and Jewish Christians opened up, the latter were left with no alternative but to employ against the Jews the very self-preservative procedures counselled by the Jewish instinct, while the Jews had previously employed them only against everything non-Jewish. The Christian is only a Jew of a ‘freer’ confession. –

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  – I give a few examples of what these petty people have taken into their heads, what they have put into the mouth of their Master: confessions of ‘beautiful souls’ one and all. –

  ‘And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgement, than for that city.’ (Mark vi, 11) – How evangelic!…

  ‘And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.’ (Mark ix, 42) – How evangelic!…

  ‘And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better for thee to enter into the ki
ngdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm death not, and the fire is not quenched.’ (Mark ix, 47–8) – It is not precisely the eye that is meant…

  ‘Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.’ (Mark ix, 1) – Well lied, lion…

  ‘Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For…’ (Observation of a psychologist: Christian morality is refuted by its fors: its ‘reasons’ refute – thus is it Christian.) (Mark viii, 34–5).

  ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged.’ (Matthew vii, 1–2) – What a conception of justice, of a ‘just’ judge!…

  ‘For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans do the same? And if ye salute your brethren only what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?’ (Matthew v, 46–7) – Principle of ‘Christian love’: it wants to be well paid…

  ‘But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’ (Matthew vi, 15) – Very compromising for the said ‘Father’…

  ‘But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’ (Matthew vi, 33) – All these things: namely food, clothing, all the essentials of life. An error, to put it mildly…. A little earlier God appears as a tailor, at least under certain circumstances*…

  ‘Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.’ (Luke vi, 23) – Impudent rabble! It already compares itself with the prophets….

  ‘Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.’ (1 Corinthians iii, 16–17) – Such things as this cannot be sufficiently despised…

  ‘Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?’ (1 Corinthians vi, 2) – Unfortunately not merely the ravings of a lunatic…. This frightful impostor goes on to say: ‘Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?’…

  ‘Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe…; not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence.’ (1 Corinthians i, 20 ff.) – To understand this passage, a document of the very first rank for the psychology of every Chandala morality, one should read the first essay of my Genealogy of Morals, where the antithesis between a noble morality and a Chandala morality born of ressentiment and impotent revengefulness is first brought to light. Paul was the greatest of all apostles of revenge…

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  – What follows from all this? That one does well to put gloves on when reading the New Testament. The proximity of so much uncleanliness almost forces one to do so. One would no more choose to associate with ‘first Christians’ than one would with Polish Jews: not that one would need to prove so much as a single point against them…. Neither of them smell very pleasant. – I have looked in vain for so much as one sympathetic trait in the New Testament; there is nothing free, benevolent, open-hearted, honest in it. Humanity has not taken its first step here – the instincts of cleanliness are lacking…. There are only bad instincts in the New Testament, there is not even the courage for these bad instincts. Everything in it is cowardice, everything is self-deception and closing one’s eyes to oneself. Every book becomes clean if one has just read the New Testament: to give an example, immediately after reading Paul I read with delight that sweetest and most high-spirited of all mockers, Petronius, of whom one could say what Domenico Boccaccio wrote to the Duke of Parma of Cesare Borgia: ‘è tutto festo’ – immortally healthy, immortally cheerful and well-constituted…. For these little bigots miscalculate in the main thing. They attack, but everything attacked by them is thereby signalized. Whomever a ‘first Christian’ attacks is not besmirched by it…. Conversely: it is an honour to have ‘first Christians’ against one. It is impossible to read the New Testament without feeling a partiality for that which is ill-treated in it – to say nothing of the ‘wisdom of this world’ which an impudent humbug tried in vain to confound…. But even the Scribes and Pharisees gain advantage from having such an opponent: they must have been worth something to be hated in such an indecent fashion. Hypocrisy – that’s rich coming from ‘first Christians’! – The Scribes and Pharisees were the privileged: this sufficed, Chandala hatred requires no further reasons. The ‘first Christian’ – and, I fear, also the ‘last Christian’, whom I shall perhaps live to see – is a rebel in his lowest instincts against everything privileged – he always lives and struggles for ‘equal rights’…. More closely considered, he has no choice. If one wants to be, in one’s own person, ‘chosen of God’ – or a ‘temple of God’, or a ‘judge of angels’ – then every other principle of selection, for example on the basis of integrity, intellect, manliness and pride, beauty and liberality of heart, is simply ‘world’ – evil as such…. Moral: every word in the mouth of a ‘first Christian’ is a lie, every act he performs an instinctive falsehood – all his values, all his aims are harmful, but whomever he hates, whatever he hates, has value…. The Christian, the priestly Christian especially, is a criterion of values. – Do I still have to add that in the entire New Testament there is only one solitary figure one is obliged to respect? Pilate, the Roman governor. To take a Jewish affair seriously – he cannot persuade himself to do that. One Jew more or less – what does it matter?… The noble scorn of a Roman before whom an impudent misuse of the word ‘truth’ was carried on has enriched the New Testament with the only expression which possesses value –which is its criticism, its annihilation even: ‘What is truth?’…

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  – What sets us apart is not that we recognize no God, either in history or in nature or behind nature – but that we find that which has been reverenced as God not ‘godlike’ but pitiable, absurd, harmful, not merely an error but a crime against life…. We deny God as God…. If this God of the Christians were proved to us to exist, we should know even less how to believe in him. – In a formula: Deus, qualem Paulus creavit, dei negation.* – A religion like Christianity, which is at no point in contact with actuality, which crumbles away as soon as actuality comes into its own at any point whatever, must naturally be a mortal enemy of the ‘wisdom of the world’, that is to say of science – it will approve of all expedients by which disciplining of the intellect, clarity and severity in matters of intellectual conscience, noble coolness and freedom of intellect, can be poisoned and calumniated and brought into ill repute. ‘Faith’ as an imperative is a veto against science – in praxi the lie at any cost…. Paul understood the need for the lie, for ‘faith’; the Church subsequently understood Paul. – That God which Paul invented for himself, a God who ‘confounds the wisdom of the world’ (in a narrower sense the two great opponents of all superstition, philology and medicine), is in reality only the resolute determination of Paul himself to do so: to call one’s own will ‘God’ Torah† – that is quintessentially Jewish. Paul wants to confound the ‘wisdom of the world’: his enemies are the good philologists and physicians of the Alexandrian school – upon them he makes war. In fact, one is not philologist and physician without also being at the same time anti-Christian. For as philologist one sees behind the ‘sa
cred books’, as physician behind the physiological depravity of the typical Christian. The physician says ‘incurable’, the philologist ‘fraud’…