The Portable Nietzsche (69 page)

 

17

Wherever the will to power declines in any form, there is invariably also a physiological retrogression, decadence. The deity of decadence, gelded in his most virile virtues and instincts, becomes of necessity the god of the physiologically retrograde, of the weak. Of course, they do not
call
themselves the weak; they call themselves “the good.”

No further hint is required to indicate the moments in history at which the dualistic fiction of a good and an evil god first became possible. The same instinct which prompts the subjugated to reduce their god to the “good-in-itself” also prompts them to eliminate all the good qualities from the god of their conquerors; they take revenge on their masters by turning their god into the
devil
. The
good
god and the devil—both abortions of decadence.

How can anyone today still submit to the simplicity of Christian theologians to the point of insisting with them that the development of the conception of God from the “God of Israel,” the god of a people, to the Christian God, the quintessence of everything good, represents
progress?
Yet even Renan does this. As if Renan had the right to be simple-minded! After all, the opposite stares you in the face. When the presuppositions of
ascending
life, when everything strong, brave, masterful, and proud is eliminated from the conception of God; when he degenerates step by step into a mere symbol, a staff for the weary, a sheet-anchor for the drowning; when he becomes the god of the poor, the sinners, and the sick par excellence, and the attribute “Savior” or “Redeemer” remains in the end as the one essential attribute of divinity—just
what
does such a transformation signify? what, such a
reduction
of the divine?

To be sure, “the kingdom of God” has thus been enlarged. Formerly he had only his people, his “chosen” people. Then he, like his people, became a wanderer and went into foreign lands; and ever since, he has not settled down anywhere—until he finally came to feel at home anywhere, this great cosmopolitan—until “the great numbers” and half the earth were on his side. Nevertheless, the god of “the great numbers,” the democrat among the gods, did not become a proud pagan god: he remained a Jew, he remained a god of nooks, the god of all the dark corners and places, of all the unhealthy quarters the world over!

His world-wide kingdom is, as ever, an underworld kingdom, a hospital, a
souterrain
⁴⁶
kingdom, a ghetto kingdom. And he himself: so pale, so weak, so decadent. Even the palest of the pale were able to master him: our honorable metaphysicians, those concept-albinos. They spun their webs around him until, hypnotized by their motions, he himself became a spider, another metaphysician. Now he, in turn, spun the world out of himself—
sub specie Spinozae.
Now he transfigured himself into something ever thinner and paler; he became an “ideal,” he became “pure spirit,” the “Absolute,” the “thing-in-itself.” The deterioration of a god: God became the “thing-in-itself.”

 

18

The Christian conception of God—God as god of the sick, God as a spider, God as spirit—is one of the most corrupt conceptions of the divine ever attained on earth. It may even represent the low-water mark in the descending development of divine types. God degenerated into the
contradiction
of life, instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yes! God as the declaration of war against life, against nature, against the will to live! God—the formula for every slander against “this world,” for every lie about the “beyond”! God—the deification of nothingness, the will to nothingness pronounced holy!

 

19

That the strong races of northern Europe did not reject the Christian God certainly does no credit to their religious genius—not to speak of their taste. There is no excuse whatever for their failure to dispose of such a sickly and senile product of decadence. But a curse lies upon them for this failure: they have absorbed sickness, old age, and contradiction into all their instincts—and since then they have not
created
another god. Almost two thousand years—and not a single new god! But still, as if his existence were justified, as if he represented the ultimate and the maximum of the god-creating power, of the
creator spiritus
in man, this pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid product of decay, this mixture of zero, concept, and contradiction, in which all the instincts of decadence, all cowardices and wearinesses of the soul, find their sanction!

 

20

I hope that my condemnation of Christianity has not involved me in any injustice to a related religion with an even larger number of adherents:
Buddhism
. Both belong together as nihilistic religions—they are religions of decadence—but they differ most remarkably. For being in a position now to compare them, the critic of Christianity is profoundly grateful to the students of India.

Buddhism is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity: posing problems objectively and coolly is part of its inheritance, for Buddhism comes after a philosophic movement which spanned centuries. The concept of “God” had long been disposed of when it arrived. Buddhism is the only genuinely positivistic religion in history. This applies even to its theory of knowledge (a strict phenomenalism): it no longer says “struggle against
sin
” but, duly respectful of reality, “struggle against
suffering.
” Buddhism is profoundly distinguished from Christianity by the fact that the self-deception of the moral concepts lies far behind it. In my terms, it stands
beyond
good and evil.

The
two
physiological facts on which it is based and which it keeps in mind are:
first,
an excessive sensitivity, which manifests itself in a refined susceptibility to pain; and
second,
an overspiritualization, an all-too-long preoccupation with concepts and logical procedures, which has damaged the instinct of personality by subordinating it to the “impersonal” (both states which at least some of my readers, those who are “objective” like myself, will know from experience). These physiological conditions have led to a depression, and the Buddha proceeds against this with hygienic measures. Against it he recommends life in the open air, the wandering life; moderation in eating and a careful selection of foods; wariness of all intoxicants; wariness also of all emotions that activate the gall bladder or heat the blood; no
worry
either for oneself or for others. He prescribes ideas which are either soothing or cheering, and he invents means for weaning oneself from all the others. He understands goodness and graciousness as health-promoting.

Prayer
is ruled out, and so is
asceticism;
there is no categorical imperative, no
compulsion
whatever, not even in the monastic societies (one may leave again). All these things would merely increase the excessive sensitivity we mentioned. For the same reason, he does not ask his followers to fight those who think otherwise: there is nothing to which his doctrine is more opposed than the feeling of revenge, antipathy,
ressentiment
(“it is not by enmity that enmity is ended”—that is the stirring refrain of all Buddhism). And all this is quite right: these emotions would indeed be utterly
unhealthy
in view of the basic hygienic purpose.

Against the spiritual exhaustion he encounters, which manifests itself in an excessive “objectivity” (that is, in the individual's loss of interest in himself, in the loss of a center of gravity, of “egoism”), he fights with a rigorous attempt to lead back even the most spiritual interests to the
person.
In the Buddha's doctrine, egoism becomes a duty: the “one thing needful,” the question “how can
you
escape from suffering?” regulates and limits the whole spiritual diet. (Perhaps one may here recall that Athenian who also waged war against any pure “scientism”—Socrates, who elevated personal egoism to an ethic, even in the realm of problems.)

 

21

Buddhism presupposes a very mild climate, customs of great gentleness and liberality, and the absence of militarism; moreover, the movement had to originate among the higher, and even the scholarly, classes. Cheerfulness, calm, and freedom from desire are the highest goal, and the goal is
attained.
Buddhism is not a religion in which one merely aspires to perfection: perfection is the normal case.

In Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and oppressed come to the fore: here the lowest classes seek their salvation. The casuistry of sin, self-criticism, the inquisition of the conscience, are pursued as a
pastime,
as a remedy for boredom; the emotional reaction to one who has
power,
called “God,” is constantly sustained (by means of prayer); and what is highest is considered unattainable, a gift, “grace.” Public acts are precluded; the hiding-place, the darkened room, is Christian. The body is despised, hygiene repudiated as sensuality; the church even opposes cleanliness (the first Christian measure after the expulsion of the Moors was the closing of the public baths, of which there were two hundred and seventy in Cordova alone). Christian too is a certain sense of cruelty against oneself and against others; hatred of all who think differently; the will to persecute. Gloomy and exciting conceptions predominate; the most highly desired states, designated with the highest names, are epileptoid; the diet is so chosen as to favor morbid phenomena and overstimulate the nerves. Christian too is mortal enmity against the lords of the earth, against the “noble”—along with a sly, secret rivalry (one leaves them the “body,” one wants
only
the “soul”). Christian, finally, is the hatred of the
spirit
, of pride, courage, freedom, liberty of the spirit; Christian is the hatred of the
senses,
of joy in the senses, of joy itself.

 

22

When Christianity left its native soil, the lowest classes, the
underworld
of the ancient world, when it began to seek power among barbarian peoples, it was no longer confronted with
weary
men but with inwardly brutalized, cruel people—strong but bungled men. Here, dissatisfaction with oneself, suffering from oneself, are
not
due to an excessive sensitivity and susceptibility to pain, as among the Buddhists, but, on the contrary, to an overpowering desire to inflict pain and to find an outlet for inner tensions in hostile acts and ideas. Christianity needed
barbaric
concepts and values to become master over barbarians; for example, the sacrifice of the first-born, the drinking of blood in the Lord's Supper, the contempt for the spirit and for culture, torture in all its forms, both sensuous and not sensuous, and the great pomp of the cult.

Buddhism is a religion for
late
men, for gracious and gentle races who have become overspiritual and excessively susceptible to pain (Europe is far from ripe for it): it is a way of leading them back to peace and cheerfulness, to a diet for the spirit and a certain inuring of the body. Christianity would become master over
beasts of prey:
its method is to make them sick; enfeeblement is the Christian recipe for
taming,
for “civilizing.” Buddhism is a religion for the end and the weariness of civilization; Christianity finds no civilization as yet—under certain circumstances it might lay the foundation for one.

 

23

Buddhism, I repeat, is a hundred times colder, more truthful, more objective. It is no longer confronted with the need to make suffering and the susceptibility to pain
respectable
by interpreting them in terms of sin—it simply says what it thinks: “I suffer.” To the barbarian, however, suffering as such is not respectable: he requires an exegesis before he will admit to himself that he is suffering (his instinct would sooner direct him to deny his suffering and bear it in silence). Here the word “devil” was a blessing: man had an overpowering and terrible enemy—man need not be ashamed of suffering at the hands of such an enemy.

At the bottom of Christianity there are some subtleties that belong to the Orient. Above all, it knows that it is a matter of complete indifference whether something is true, while it is of the utmost importance whether it is believed to be true. Truth and the
faith
that something is true: two completely separate realms of interest—almost diametrically opposite realms—they are reached by utterly different paths. Having knowledge of this—that is almost the definition of the wise man in the Orient: the Brahmins understand this; Plato understands this; and so does every student of esoteric wisdom. If, for example, it makes men happy to believe that they have been redeemed from sin, it is not necessary, as a condition for this, that man is, in fact, sinful, but merely that he feels sinful. And if faith is quite generally needed above all, then reason, knowledge, and inquiry must be discredited: the way to truth becomes the
forbidden
way.

Strong
hope
is a far more powerful stimulant of life than any single realization of happiness could ever be. Those who suffer must be sustained by a hope that can never be contradicted by any reality or be disposed of by any fulfillment—a hope for the beyond. (Precisely because of its ability to keep the unfortunate in continual suspense, the Greeks considered hope the evil of evils, the truly insidious evil: it remained behind in the barrel of evils.
⁴⁷
)

To make
love
possible, God must be a person; to permit the lowest instincts to participate, God must be young. To excite the ardor of the females, a beautiful saint must be placed in the foreground, and to excite that of the men, a Mary—presupposing all along that Christianity wants to become master on soil where some aphrodisiac or Adonis cult has already established the general conception of a cult. The requirement of chastity strengthens the vehemence and inwardliness of the religious instinct: it makes the cult warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful.