Part 9

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

59.

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

60.

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

61.

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

62.

--With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I _condemn_ Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is, to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish distress; it lives by distress; it _creates_ distress to make _itself_ immortal.... For example, the worm of sin: it was the church that first enriched mankind with this misery!--The "equality of souls before God"--this fraud, this _pretext_ for the _rancunes_ of all the base-minded--this explosive concept, ending in revolution, the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing the whole social order--this is _Christian_ dynamite.... The "humanitarian" blessings of Christianity forsooth! To breed out of _humanitas_ a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price, an aversion and contempt for all good and honest instincts! All this, to me, is the "humanitarianism" of Christianity!--Parasitism as the _only_ practice of the church; with its anæmic and "holy" ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life; the beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the distinguishing mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,--against health, beauty, well-being, intellect, _kindness_ of soul--_against life itself_....

This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all walls, wherever walls are to be found--I have letters that even the blind will be able to see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and _small_ enough,--I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race....

And mankind reckons _time_ from the _dies nefastus_ when this fatality befell--from the _first_ day of Christianity!--_Why not rather from its last?_--_From today?_--The transvaluation of all values!...

THE END