July 29, 2025 • 43 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter three, The religious mood forty five. The human soul
and its limits, The range of a man's inner experiences
hitherto attained, the heights, depths, and distances of these experiences,
the entire history of the soul up to the present time,
(00:20):
and its still unexhausted possibilities. This is the preordained hunting
domain for born psychologist and lover of a big hunt.
But how often must he say despairingly to himself, a
single individual, alas only a single individual, and this great forest,
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this virgin forest. So he would like to have some
hundreds of hunting assistants and fine trained hounds that he
could send into the history of the human soul to
drive his game together in vain. Again and again he
experiences profoundly and bitterly how difficult it is to find
(01:08):
assistance and dogs for all the things that directly excite
his curiosity. The evil of sending scholars into new and
dangerous hunting domains where courage, sagacity, and subtlety in every
sense are required, is that there are no longer serviceable.
(01:29):
Just when the big hunt and also the great danger commences.
It is precisely then that they lose their keen eye
and nose, in order, for instance, to divine and determine
what sort of history the problem of knowledge and conscience
has hitherto had in the souls of Homonez RELIGOUSI. A
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person would perhaps himself have to possess a profound, as bruised,
as immense in experience as the intellectual conscience of Pascal.
And then he would still require that widespread heaven of clear,
wicked spirituality, which from above would be able to oversee, arrange,
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and effectively formulize this mass of dangerous and painful experiences.
But who would do me this service? And who would
have time to wait for such servants? They evidently appear
too rarely. They are so improbable at all times. Eventually,
one must do everything oneself in order to know something,
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which means that one has much to do. But a
curiosity like mine is once for all the most agreeable advices.
Pardon me, I mean to say that the love of
truth has its reward and heaven and already upon earth
forty six. Faith such as early Christianity, desired and not
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infrequently achieved in the midst of a skeptical and southernly
free spirited world, which had centuries of struggle between philosophical
schools behind it and in it, counting besides the education
in tolerance which the Imperium Romanum gave. This faith is
not that sincere austere slave faith by which perhaps a
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Luther or a Cromwell or some other northern barbarian of
the spirit remained attached to his God and Christianity. It
is much rather the faith of Pascal, which resembles, in
a terrible manner, a continuous suicide of reason, a tough,
long lived wormlike reason, which is not to be slain
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at once and with a single blow. The Christian faith
from the beginning is sacrificed, the sacrifice of all freedom,
all pride, all self confidence of spirit. It is the
same time subjection, self derision, and self mutilation. There is
cruelty and religious phoenicianism in this faith, which has adapted
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to a tender, many sided and very fastidious conscience. It
takes for granted that the subjection of the spirit is
indescribably painful, that all the past and all the habits
of such a spirit resist the absurdism in the form
of which faith comes to it. Modern men, with their
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obtuseness as regards all Christian nomenclature, have no longer the
sense for the terribly superlative conception which was implied to
an antique taste by the paradox of the formula God
on the Cross. Hitherto there had never and nowhere been
such bold in inversion, nor anything at once so dreadful,
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questioning and questionable as this formula. It promised a transvaluation
of all ancient values. It was the Orient, the profound Orient.
It was the Oriental slave who thus took revenge on
Rome and its noble, light minded toleration, on the Roman
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Catholicism of non faith. And it was always not the faith,
but the freedom from the faith, the half stoical and
smiling indifference to the seriousness of the faith, which made
the slaves indignant at their masters and revolt against them.
Enlightenment causes revolt, for the slave desires the unconditioned. He
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understands nothing but the tyrannus. Even in morals, he loves
as he hates without nuance, to the very depths, to
the point of pain, to the point of sickness. His
many hidden sufferings make him revolt against the noble taste,
which seems to deny suffering. The skepticism with regard to
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suffering fundamentally only an attitude of aristocratic morality was not
the least of the causes also of the last great
slave insurrection, which began with the French Revolution forty seven.
Whenever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth, so
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far we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as
to regimen solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence, but without its
being possible to determine with certainty which is cause and
which is effect, or if any relation at all of
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cause and effect exists. There is justified by the fact
that one of the most regular symptoms amongst savage as
well as among civilized peoples, is the most sudden and
excessive sensuality, which then, with equal suddenness, transforms into penitential paroxysms,
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world renunciation and will renunciation, both symptoms perhaps explainable as
disguised epilepsy. But nowhere is it more obligatory to put
aside explanations around No other type has there grown such
a massive absurdity in superstition, No other type seems to
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have been more interesting to men, and even to philosophers
perhaps it is time to become just a little indifferent
here to learn caution, or better still, to look away,
to go away. Yet in the background of the most
recent philosophy, that of Schopenhauer, we find most as the
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problem in itself, this terrible note of interrogation of the
religious crisis and awakening. How is the negation of will possible?
How is the saint possible? That seems to have been
the very question with which Schopenhauer made a start and
became a philosopher. And thus it was genuine Schopenhauerian consequence
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that his most convinced adherent, perhaps also his last, as
far as Germany is concerned, namely Richard Wagner, should bring
his own life work to an end just here, and
should finally put that terrible and eternal type upon the
stage as country type Veku and it is loved and lived.
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At the very time that the mad doctors in almost
all European countries had an opportunity to study the type
close at hand, wherever the religious neurosis, or as I
call it, the religious mood, made its latest epidemical outbreak
and display as the salvation army. If it be in question, However,
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as to what has been so extremely interesting to men
of all sorts, in all ages, and even to philosophers
in the whole phenomenon of the saint, it is undoubtedly
the appearance of the miraculous therein, namely, the immediate succession
of opposites of states of the soul regarded as morally antithical.
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It was believed here to be self evident that the
bad man was all at once turned into a saint,
a good man. The hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at
this point? Is it not possible? It may have happened
principally because psychology had placed itself under the dominion of morals,
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because it believed in oppositions of moral values, and saw, read,
and interpreted these oppositions into the text and facts of
the case. What miracle only an era of interpretation, a
lack of philology. Forty eight. It seems that the Latin
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races are far more deeply attached to their Catholicism than
we Northerners are to Christianity generally, and that consequently unbelief
in Catholic countries means something quite different from what it
does among Protestants, namely, a sort of revolt against the
spirit of the race, while with us it is rather
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a return to the spirit or non spirit of the race.
We Northerners undoubtedly derive our origin from barbarous races. Even
as regards our talents for religion, we have poor talents
for it. One may make an exception in the case
of the Celts, who have theretofore furnish also the best
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soil for Christian infection in the North. The Christian ideal
blossomed forth in France as much as ever the pale
sun of the North would allow it. How strangely pious
for our taste are still these later French skeptics wherever
there is any Celtic blood in their origin. How Catholic,
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how un German? Does Auguste Kumpt's sociology seem to us
with the Roman logic of its instincts, How jesuitical, that
amiable and shrewd cicerone of Port, Royal Saint beauve in
spite of all his hostility to Jesuits, and even earnest Rennin.
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How inaccessible to us Northerners, does the language of such
a Wrenin appear in whom every instant, the merest touch
of religious thrill throws his refined, voluptuous and comfortable couching
soul off its balance. Let us repeat after him these
fine sentences, and what weakness and haughtiness is immediately aroused
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by way of answer in our probably less beautiful but
harder souls, that is to say, in our more German souls.
De songs don't corriman quela relugeon estnpurdut de la normal
quelemes les plus duns levra quanti leste les plus religiux
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ele plus au dun testifini sesquandi les bonquil quila vertu
correspondaord eternal se quondil contempla les chose dun manniere deestressi
courtrouv la mont revelote et absurd command nepas suppose questes
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dan se monts la cuela le mieux. These sentences are
so extremely antipoital to my ears and habits of thought,
that in my first impulse of rage on finding them,
I wrote on the margin lea nacire religious par excellence,
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until in my later rage I even took a fancy
to them. These sentences, with their truth absolutely inverted. It
is so nice and such a distinction to have one's
own antipities. Forty Nine. That which is so astonishing in
the religious life of the ancient Greeks is the irrestrainable
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stream of gratitude which it pours forth. It is a
very superior kind of man who takes such an attitude
towards nature and life. Later on, when the populace got
the upper hand in Greece, fear became so rampant also
in religion, and christiananity was preparing itself fifty the passion
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for God. There are turlish, honest, hearted, and importune kinds
of it, like that of Luther. The whole of Protestantism
lacks the Southern delicatesa. There is an oriental exaltation of
the mind in it, like that of an undeservedly favored
or elevated slave, as in the case of Saint Augustine.
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For incidents, who lacks in an offensive manner all nobility
in bearing and desires, there is a feminine tenderness and
sensuality in it which modestly and unconsciously longs for an
uniomystica at phisica, as in the case of Madame de Guine.
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In many cases, it appears curiously enough as the disguise
of a girl's or a youth's puberty, here and there
even in the hysteria of an old maid, also as
her last ambition. The Church has frequently canonized the woman
in such a case. Fifty one. The mightiest men have
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hitherto always bowed reverently before the Saint as the ennigma
of self subjugation and utter voluntary privation. Why did they
thus bow, They divined in him, and, as it were,
behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance, the
superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation,
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the strength of will in which they recognized their own
strength and love of power, and knew how to honor it.
They honored something in themselves when they honored the Saint.
In addition to this, the contemplation of the Saint suggested
to them a suspicion. Such an enormity of self negation
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and anti naturalness will not have been coveted from nothing,
they have said inquiringly, There is perhaps a reason for it,
some very great danger about which the Ecsthetic might wish
to be more accurately informed through his secret into locutors
and visitors. In a word, the mighty ones of the
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world learn to have a new fear before him. They
divined a new power, a strange, still unconquered enemy. It
was the will to power which obliged them to halp
before the Saint. They had to question him fifty two.
In the Jewish Old Testament, the Book of Divine Justice,
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there are men, things and sayings on such an immense
scale that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare
with it. One stands with fear and reverence before those
stupendous remains of what man was formerly, and one has
sad thoughts about old Asia and its little outpushed peninsula Europe,
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which would like by all means to figure before Asia
as the progress of mankind. To be sure, he who
himself only a slender, tame house animal and knows only
the wants of a house animal, like our cultured people
of today, including the Christians of cultured Christianity, need neither
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be amazed nor even sad amid those ruins. The taste
for the Old Testament is a touchstone with respect to
great and small. Perhaps he will find that the New Testament,
the Book of grace still appeals more to his heart.
There's much of the odor of the genuine, tender, stupid
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beadsman and petty soul in it. To have bound up
this New Testament a kind of Rococo of taste. In
ever respect, along with the Old Testament, into one book
as the Bible, as the book in itself, is perhaps
the greatest audacity and sin against the spirit which literary
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Europe has upon its conscience. Fifty three why atheism nowadays?
The Father in God is thoroughly refuted, equally so the judge,
the rewarder also his free will. He does not hear,
and even if he did, he would not know how
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to help. The worst is that he seems incapable of
communicating himself. Clearly is he uncertain? This is what I
have made out, by questioning and listening at a variety
of conversations, to be the cause of the decline of
European theism. It appears to me that though the religious
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instinct is in vigorous growth, it rejects the theistic satisfaction
with profound distrust. Fifty four What does all modern philosophy
do since descart and indeed more in defiance of him
than on the basis of his procedure. An attentat has
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been made on the part of all philosophers on the
old conception of the soul, under the guise of a
criticism of the subject and predicate conception. That it is,
to say, an intentat on the fundamental presupposition of Christian doctrine.
Modern philosophy, as an epistemological skepticism is secretly or openly
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anti Christian, although for keener years be it said by
no means anti religious. Formerly, in effect, one believed in
the soul as one believed in grammar, and the grammatical subject.
One said, I is the condition think is the predicate,
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and is conditioned to think is an activity for which
one must suppose a subject as cause. The attempt was
then made, with marvelous tenacity and subtlety, to see if
one could not get out of this net, to see
if the opposite was not perhaps true think the condition
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an I the conditioned I therefore only a synthesis which
has been made by thinking itself. Kant really wish to
prove that, starting from the subject, the subject could not
be proved, nor the object either. The possibility of an
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apparent existence of the subject, and therefore of the soul,
may not always have been strange to him the thought
that once an immense power on earth. As the Vendetta
Philosophy fifty five, there is a great ladder of religious cruelty,
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with many rounds, but three of these are the most important.
Once on a time men sacrificed human beings to their God,
and perhaps just those they love the best. To this
category belong the first thing sacrifices of all primitive religions,
and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the
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Mithra Grotto on the island of Capri, that most terrible
of all Roman anacronisms. Then, during the immoral epoch of mankind,
they sacrifice their God, the strongest instincts they possessed their nature.
This festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics
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and anti natural fanatics finding what still remained to be sacrific.
Was it not necessary in the end for men to
sacrifice everything comforting, holy healing, all hope, all faith in
hidden harmonies in future blessedness and justice? Was it not
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necessary to sacrifice God himself and, out of cruelty to
themselves to worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness. To sacrifice
God for nothingness, this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty
has been reserved for the rising generation. We all know
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something therefore already fifty six. Whoever, like myself, prompted by
some enigmatical desire, has long endeavored to go to the
bottom of the question of pessimism and free it from
the half Christian, half German narrowness and stupidity in which
it has finally presented itself to this century, namely in
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the form of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Whoever, with an asiatic and
super asiatic eye has actually looked inside and into the
most world, renouncing of all possible modes of thought beyond
good and evil, and no longer like Buddha and Schopenhauer
under the dominion and delusion of morality. Whoever has done this,
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has perhaps just thereby, without really desiring it, opened his
eyes to behold the opposite ideal, the ideal of the
most world, approving, exuberant and vivacious man who has not
only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was
and is, but wishes to have it again as it
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was and is for all eternity, insatiably calling out to Cappo,
not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play,
and not only the play, but actually to him who
requires the play and makes it necessary, because he always
requires himself anew and makes himself necessary. What and this
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would not be circulus vitious dais fifty seven The distance
and as it were, the space around man grows with
the strength of his intellectual vision and insight, His world
become profounder, new stars, new ignogmas, and notions are ever
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coming into view. Perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye
has exercised his acuteness and profundity has just been an
occasion for its exercise, something of a game, something for
children and childish minds. Perhaps the most solemn conceptions have
caused the most fighting and suffering. The conceptions God and
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sin will one day seem to us of no more
importance than a child's plaything or child's pain seems to
an old man, And perhaps another plaything and another pain
will be then necessary once more for the old man,
always childish enough and eternal child d Eight. Has it
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been observed to what extent outward idleness or semi idleness
is necessary to a religious life alike for its favorite
microscopic labor of self examination, and for its soft placidity
called prayer, the state of perpetual readiness for the coming
of God. I mean the idleness with a good conscience,
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the idleness of olden times and of blood, to which
the aristocratic sentiment that work is dishonoring that it vulgarizes
the body and soul, is it not quite unfamiliar, and
that consequently the modern noisy time engrossing conceited foolishly proud
laboriousness educates and prepares for unbelief more than anything else.
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Among these, for instance, who are at present living apart
from a religion. In Germany, I find freethinkers of diversified
species in origin, but above all a majority of those
in whom laboriousness, from generation to generation was dissolved the
religious instincts, so that they no longer know what purpose
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religions serve, and only note their existence in the world
with a kind of dull astonishment. They feel themselves already
fully occupied. These good people, be it by their business
or by their pleasures, not to mention the fatherland and
the newspapers, and their family duties. It seems that they
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have no time whatever left for religion. And above all,
it is not obvious to them whether it is a
question of a new business or a new pleasure, For
it is impossible. They say to them themselves that people
should go to church merely to spoil their tempers. They
are by no means enemies of religious customs. Should certain circumstances,
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state affairs, perhaps require their participation in such customs, they
do what is required, as so many things are done
with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without much curiosity
or discomfort. They live too much apart and outside to
feel even the necessity for a fore or against in
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such matters among those in different persons may be reckoned. Nowadays,
the majority of German Protestants, of the middle classes, especially
in the great laborious centers of trade and commerce. Also
the majority of laborious scholars and the entire university personnel,
with the exception of the theologians, whose existence and possibility
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there always gives psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve.
On the part of pious or merely churchgoing people, there
seldom any idea of how much good will, one might
say arbitrary will, is now necessary for a German scholar
to take the problem of religion seriously. His whole profession, and,
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as I have said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness to which
he is compelled by his modern conscience, inclines him to
a lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards to religion,
with which is occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the
uncleanliness of spirit, which he takes for granted. Wherever any
one still professes to belong to the church, it is
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only with the help of history, not through his own
personal experience. Therefore, that the scholar succeeds in bringing himself
to a respectful seriousness and to a certain timid difference
in presence of religions. But even when his sentiments have
reached the stage of gratitude towards them, he has not
personally advanced once step nearer to that which still maintains
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itself as church or as piety. Perhaps even the contrary
the practical indifference to religious matters in the midst of
which he has been born and brought up, usually supplements itself,
in his case into circumspension and cleanliness which shuns contact
with religious men and things. And it may just be
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the depth of his tolerance and humanity which prompts him
to avoid the delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings with it.
Every age has its own divine type of navite for
the discovery of which other ages may envy it. And
how much naivete adorable, childlike, and boundlessly foolish naivite is
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involved in this belief of the scholar, in his superiority,
in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting,
simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man
as a lower and less valuable type beyond before and
above which he himself has developed. He the little arrogant
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dwarf and mobman, the sedulously alert head and hand drudge
of ideas of modern ideas. Fifty nine. Whoever has seen
deeply into the world has doubtless divined what wisdom there
is in the fact that men are superficial. It is
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their preservative instinct that teaches them to be flighty, lightsome,
and false. Here and there one finds a passionate and
exaggerated adoration of pure forms in philosophers as well as
in artists. It is not to be doubted that whoever
has need of the cult of the superficial to that extent,
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has at one time or another made an unlucky dive
beneath it. Perhaps there is even an order of rank
with respect to those burt children, the born artists, who
find the enjoyment of life only in to falsify its image,
as if taking wearisome revenge on it. One might guess
to what degree life has disgusted them, by the extent
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to which they wish to see its image falsified, attenuated, ultrified,
and deified. One might reckon that homineus relogicy among the
artists as their highest rank. It is the profound, suspicious
fear of an incurable pessimism which compels whole centuries to
fasten their teeth into a religious interpretation of existence, the
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fear of the instinct which divines a truth might be
attained too soon before man has become strong enough, hard enough,
artists enough higheti. The life in God, regarded in this light,
would appear as the most elaborate and ultimate product of
the fear of truth, as artist's adoration and artist intoxication
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in presence of the most logical of all falsifications, as
the will to the inversion of truth to untruth at
any price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective
means of beautifying man than piety. By means of it,
man can become so artful, so superficial, so iridescent, and
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so good that his appearance no longer offends paragraph sixty
To love mankind for God's sake, this has so far
been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained.
That love to mankind, without any redeeming intention to the background,
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is only an additional folly and britishness that the inclination
to this love has first to get its proportion, its delicacy,
its gram assault, and sprinkling of aberges from an higher inclination.
Whoever first perceived and experienced this, however his tongue may
have stammered as it attempted to express such a delicate matter,
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Let him for all time be wholly and respected as
the man who has so far flown highest and gone
astray in the finest fashion paragraph sixty one. The philosopher,
as we free spirits understand him as the man of
the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general
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development of mankind, will use religion for his disciplining and
educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political
and economic conditions. The selecting and disciplining influence destructive as
well as creative and fashioning, which can be exercised by
means of religion, is manifold and varied according to the
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sort of people placed under its spell and protection. For
those who are strong and independent, destined and trained to command,
in whom the judgment and skill of a ruling race
is incorporated, religion is an additional means for overcoming resistance
in the exercise of authority, as a bond which binds
rulers and subjects in common betraying and surrendering to the
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former the conscience of the latter their innermost heart, which
would faiginn escape obedience, and in the case of the
unique natures of noble origin, if by virtue of superior spirituality,
they should incline to a more retired and contemplative life,
reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of government.
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Over chosen disciples or members of an order. Religion itself
may be used as a means for obtaining peace from
the noise and trouble of managing grosser affairs, and for
securing immunity from the unavoidable filth of all political agitation.
The Brahmins, for instance, understood this fact. With the help
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of a religious organization. They secured to themselves the power
of nominating kings for the people, while their sentiments prompted
them to keep apart and outside as men with a
higher and super regal mission. At the same time, religion
gives inducement and opportunity to some of the subjects to
qualify themselves for future ruling and commanding the slowly ascending
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ranks and classes in which, through fortunate marriage, customs, volitional power,
and delight in self control are on the increase. To them,
religion offers sufficient incentives and temptations to aspire to hire
intellectuality and to experience the sentiments of authoritative self control,
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of silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost
indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which cease
to rise above its heredity baseness and work itself upwards
to future supremacy, and finally, to ordinary men, to the
majority of the people who exist for service and general utility,
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and are only so far entitled to exist, Religion gives
invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart,
ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with something
of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification of all commonplaceness,
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all the meanness, all the semi annual poverty of their souls. Religion,
together with the religious significance of life, sheds sunshine over
such perpetually harassed men, and makes even their own aspect
endurable to them. It operates upon them as the Epicurean
philosophy usually operates upon sufferers of a higher order, in
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a refreshing and refining manner, almost turning suffering to account,
and in an end even hollowing and vindicating it. There
is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as
their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves
by piety to seemingly higher order of things, and thereby
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to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which
they find it difficult enough to live. This very difficult
being necessary paragraph sixty two to be sure to make
also the bad counter reckoning against such religions, and to
bring to light their secret dangers. The cause is always
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excessive and terrible when religions do not operate as an
educational and disciplinary medium in the hands of the philosopher,
but rule voluntarily and paramountly when they wish to be
the final end and not a means along with other means.
Among men, as among all other animals, there is a
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surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals.
The successful cases among men also are always the exception, and,
in view of the fact that man is the animal
not yet properly adapted to his environment, the rare exception.
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But worse still, the higher the type of man represents,
the greater is the improbability that he will succeed the accidental.
The law of rationality in the general constitution of mankind
manifests itself most terribly in its destructive effect on the
higher orders of men, the conditions of whose lives are delicate, diverse,
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and difficult to determine. What then, is the attitude of
the two greatest religions above mentioned to the surplus of
failures in life. They endeavor to preserve and keep alive
whatever can be preserved. In fact, as the religions for sufferers,
they take the part of these. Upon principle they are
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always in favor of those who suffer from life as
from a disease, and they would faint treat every other
experience of life as false and impossible. However highly we
may esteem this indulgent and preservative care inasmuch as in
applying to others, it has supplied and applies also to
(39:28):
the highest and usually the most suffering type of man.
The hitherto paramount religions, to give a general appreciation of them,
are among the principal causes which have kept the type
of man upon a lower level. They have preserved too
much that which should have perished. One has to thank
them for invaluable services. And who is sufficiently rich in
(39:51):
gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation of all
that the spiritual men of Christianity have done for Europe. Hitherto,
But when they had given comfort to the sufferers, courage
to be oppressed and despairing, a staff and support to
the helpless, And when they had allured from society into
covenants and spiritual penitentiaries. The broken, heartened and distracted. What
(40:16):
else had they to do in order to work systematically
in that fashion and with a good conscience, for the
preservation of all the sick and suffering, which means, indeed,
in truth, to work for the deterioration of the European race,
to reverse all estimates of value, that is what they
had to do, And to shatter the strong, to spoil
(40:39):
great hopes, to cast suspicion on the delight in beauty,
to break down everything autonomous, manly, conquering and imperious, all
instincts which are natural to the highest and most successful
type of man, into uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self destruction. Forsooth,
(41:03):
to invert all love of the earth and of supremacy
over the earth into hatred of the earth and earthly things.
That is the task the Church imposed on itself and
was obliged to impose, until according to its standard of value, unworldliness, unsensuousness,
and higher man fused into one sentiment. If one could
(41:28):
observe the strangely painful, equally coarse and refined comedy of
European Christianity with the derisive and impartial eye of an
epicurean god, I should think one would never cease marveling
and laughing. Does it not actually seem that some single
(41:48):
will has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in order
to make a sublime abortion of man? He, however, who,
with opposite requirements, no longer Epicurean, and with some divine
hammer in his hand, could approach this almost voluntary degeneration
(42:08):
and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in the European Christian Pascal,
for instance? Would he not have to cry aloud with rage,
pity and horror, Oh, you bunglers, presumptuous, pitiful bunglers, What
have you done? Was that a work for your hands?
(42:30):
How you have hacked and botched my finest stone? What
have you presumed to do? I should say that Christianity
has hitherto been the most portentous of presumptions. Men not
great enough nor hard enough to be entitled as artist
to take part in fashioning man, Men not sufficiently strong
(42:53):
and far sighted to allow, with sublime self constraint the
obvious law of the thou thousandfold failures and perishings, to prevail.
Men not sufficiently noble to see the radically different grades
of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man.
Such men, with their quality before God, have hitherto swayed
(43:16):
the destiny of Europe, until at last a dwarfed, almost
ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obligingly
sickly mediocre, the European of the present day. End of
Chapter three
Chapter three, The religious mood forty five. The human soul
and its limits, The range of a man's inner experiences
hitherto attained, the heights, depths, and distances of these experiences,
the entire history of the soul up to the present time,
(00:20):
and its still unexhausted possibilities. This is the preordained hunting
domain for born psychologist and lover of a big hunt.
But how often must he say despairingly to himself, a
single individual, alas only a single individual, and this great forest,
(00:43):
this virgin forest. So he would like to have some
hundreds of hunting assistants and fine trained hounds that he
could send into the history of the human soul to
drive his game together in vain. Again and again he
experiences profoundly and bitterly how difficult it is to find
(01:08):
assistance and dogs for all the things that directly excite
his curiosity. The evil of sending scholars into new and
dangerous hunting domains where courage, sagacity, and subtlety in every
sense are required, is that there are no longer serviceable.
(01:29):
Just when the big hunt and also the great danger commences.
It is precisely then that they lose their keen eye
and nose, in order, for instance, to divine and determine
what sort of history the problem of knowledge and conscience
has hitherto had in the souls of Homonez RELIGOUSI. A
(01:52):
person would perhaps himself have to possess a profound, as bruised,
as immense in experience as the intellectual conscience of Pascal.
And then he would still require that widespread heaven of clear,
wicked spirituality, which from above would be able to oversee, arrange,
(02:14):
and effectively formulize this mass of dangerous and painful experiences.
But who would do me this service? And who would
have time to wait for such servants? They evidently appear
too rarely. They are so improbable at all times. Eventually,
one must do everything oneself in order to know something,
(02:38):
which means that one has much to do. But a
curiosity like mine is once for all the most agreeable advices.
Pardon me, I mean to say that the love of
truth has its reward and heaven and already upon earth
forty six. Faith such as early Christianity, desired and not
(03:04):
infrequently achieved in the midst of a skeptical and southernly
free spirited world, which had centuries of struggle between philosophical
schools behind it and in it, counting besides the education
in tolerance which the Imperium Romanum gave. This faith is
not that sincere austere slave faith by which perhaps a
(03:29):
Luther or a Cromwell or some other northern barbarian of
the spirit remained attached to his God and Christianity. It
is much rather the faith of Pascal, which resembles, in
a terrible manner, a continuous suicide of reason, a tough,
long lived wormlike reason, which is not to be slain
(03:52):
at once and with a single blow. The Christian faith
from the beginning is sacrificed, the sacrifice of all freedom,
all pride, all self confidence of spirit. It is the
same time subjection, self derision, and self mutilation. There is
cruelty and religious phoenicianism in this faith, which has adapted
(04:17):
to a tender, many sided and very fastidious conscience. It
takes for granted that the subjection of the spirit is
indescribably painful, that all the past and all the habits
of such a spirit resist the absurdism in the form
of which faith comes to it. Modern men, with their
(04:40):
obtuseness as regards all Christian nomenclature, have no longer the
sense for the terribly superlative conception which was implied to
an antique taste by the paradox of the formula God
on the Cross. Hitherto there had never and nowhere been
such bold in inversion, nor anything at once so dreadful,
(05:04):
questioning and questionable as this formula. It promised a transvaluation
of all ancient values. It was the Orient, the profound Orient.
It was the Oriental slave who thus took revenge on
Rome and its noble, light minded toleration, on the Roman
(05:25):
Catholicism of non faith. And it was always not the faith,
but the freedom from the faith, the half stoical and
smiling indifference to the seriousness of the faith, which made
the slaves indignant at their masters and revolt against them.
Enlightenment causes revolt, for the slave desires the unconditioned. He
(05:48):
understands nothing but the tyrannus. Even in morals, he loves
as he hates without nuance, to the very depths, to
the point of pain, to the point of sickness. His
many hidden sufferings make him revolt against the noble taste,
which seems to deny suffering. The skepticism with regard to
(06:13):
suffering fundamentally only an attitude of aristocratic morality was not
the least of the causes also of the last great
slave insurrection, which began with the French Revolution forty seven.
Whenever the religious neurosis has appeared on the earth, so
(06:35):
far we find it connected with three dangerous prescriptions as
to regimen solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence, but without its
being possible to determine with certainty which is cause and
which is effect, or if any relation at all of
(06:56):
cause and effect exists. There is justified by the fact
that one of the most regular symptoms amongst savage as
well as among civilized peoples, is the most sudden and
excessive sensuality, which then, with equal suddenness, transforms into penitential paroxysms,
(07:18):
world renunciation and will renunciation, both symptoms perhaps explainable as
disguised epilepsy. But nowhere is it more obligatory to put
aside explanations around No other type has there grown such
a massive absurdity in superstition, No other type seems to
(07:39):
have been more interesting to men, and even to philosophers
perhaps it is time to become just a little indifferent
here to learn caution, or better still, to look away,
to go away. Yet in the background of the most
recent philosophy, that of Schopenhauer, we find most as the
(08:01):
problem in itself, this terrible note of interrogation of the
religious crisis and awakening. How is the negation of will possible?
How is the saint possible? That seems to have been
the very question with which Schopenhauer made a start and
became a philosopher. And thus it was genuine Schopenhauerian consequence
(08:24):
that his most convinced adherent, perhaps also his last, as
far as Germany is concerned, namely Richard Wagner, should bring
his own life work to an end just here, and
should finally put that terrible and eternal type upon the
stage as country type Veku and it is loved and lived.
(08:47):
At the very time that the mad doctors in almost
all European countries had an opportunity to study the type
close at hand, wherever the religious neurosis, or as I
call it, the religious mood, made its latest epidemical outbreak
and display as the salvation army. If it be in question, However,
(09:09):
as to what has been so extremely interesting to men
of all sorts, in all ages, and even to philosophers
in the whole phenomenon of the saint, it is undoubtedly
the appearance of the miraculous therein, namely, the immediate succession
of opposites of states of the soul regarded as morally antithical.
(09:31):
It was believed here to be self evident that the
bad man was all at once turned into a saint,
a good man. The hitherto existing psychology was wrecked at
this point? Is it not possible? It may have happened
principally because psychology had placed itself under the dominion of morals,
(09:52):
because it believed in oppositions of moral values, and saw, read,
and interpreted these oppositions into the text and facts of
the case. What miracle only an era of interpretation, a
lack of philology. Forty eight. It seems that the Latin
(10:16):
races are far more deeply attached to their Catholicism than
we Northerners are to Christianity generally, and that consequently unbelief
in Catholic countries means something quite different from what it
does among Protestants, namely, a sort of revolt against the
spirit of the race, while with us it is rather
(10:37):
a return to the spirit or non spirit of the race.
We Northerners undoubtedly derive our origin from barbarous races. Even
as regards our talents for religion, we have poor talents
for it. One may make an exception in the case
of the Celts, who have theretofore furnish also the best
(11:01):
soil for Christian infection in the North. The Christian ideal
blossomed forth in France as much as ever the pale
sun of the North would allow it. How strangely pious
for our taste are still these later French skeptics wherever
there is any Celtic blood in their origin. How Catholic,
(11:23):
how un German? Does Auguste Kumpt's sociology seem to us
with the Roman logic of its instincts, How jesuitical, that
amiable and shrewd cicerone of Port, Royal Saint beauve in
spite of all his hostility to Jesuits, and even earnest Rennin.
(11:44):
How inaccessible to us Northerners, does the language of such
a Wrenin appear in whom every instant, the merest touch
of religious thrill throws his refined, voluptuous and comfortable couching
soul off its balance. Let us repeat after him these
fine sentences, and what weakness and haughtiness is immediately aroused
(12:05):
by way of answer in our probably less beautiful but
harder souls, that is to say, in our more German souls.
De songs don't corriman quela relugeon estnpurdut de la normal
quelemes les plus duns levra quanti leste les plus religiux
(12:31):
ele plus au dun testifini sesquandi les bonquil quila vertu
correspondaord eternal se quondil contempla les chose dun manniere deestressi
courtrouv la mont revelote et absurd command nepas suppose questes
(12:57):
dan se monts la cuela le mieux. These sentences are
so extremely antipoital to my ears and habits of thought,
that in my first impulse of rage on finding them,
I wrote on the margin lea nacire religious par excellence,
(13:17):
until in my later rage I even took a fancy
to them. These sentences, with their truth absolutely inverted. It
is so nice and such a distinction to have one's
own antipities. Forty Nine. That which is so astonishing in
the religious life of the ancient Greeks is the irrestrainable
(13:40):
stream of gratitude which it pours forth. It is a
very superior kind of man who takes such an attitude
towards nature and life. Later on, when the populace got
the upper hand in Greece, fear became so rampant also
in religion, and christiananity was preparing itself fifty the passion
(14:08):
for God. There are turlish, honest, hearted, and importune kinds
of it, like that of Luther. The whole of Protestantism
lacks the Southern delicatesa. There is an oriental exaltation of
the mind in it, like that of an undeservedly favored
or elevated slave, as in the case of Saint Augustine.
(14:30):
For incidents, who lacks in an offensive manner all nobility
in bearing and desires, there is a feminine tenderness and
sensuality in it which modestly and unconsciously longs for an
uniomystica at phisica, as in the case of Madame de Guine.
(14:51):
In many cases, it appears curiously enough as the disguise
of a girl's or a youth's puberty, here and there
even in the hysteria of an old maid, also as
her last ambition. The Church has frequently canonized the woman
in such a case. Fifty one. The mightiest men have
(15:12):
hitherto always bowed reverently before the Saint as the ennigma
of self subjugation and utter voluntary privation. Why did they
thus bow, They divined in him, and, as it were,
behind the questionableness of his frail and wretched appearance, the
superior force which wished to test itself by such a subjugation,
(15:39):
the strength of will in which they recognized their own
strength and love of power, and knew how to honor it.
They honored something in themselves when they honored the Saint.
In addition to this, the contemplation of the Saint suggested
to them a suspicion. Such an enormity of self negation
(16:00):
and anti naturalness will not have been coveted from nothing,
they have said inquiringly, There is perhaps a reason for it,
some very great danger about which the Ecsthetic might wish
to be more accurately informed through his secret into locutors
and visitors. In a word, the mighty ones of the
(16:21):
world learn to have a new fear before him. They
divined a new power, a strange, still unconquered enemy. It
was the will to power which obliged them to halp
before the Saint. They had to question him fifty two.
In the Jewish Old Testament, the Book of Divine Justice,
(16:44):
there are men, things and sayings on such an immense
scale that Greek and Indian literature has nothing to compare
with it. One stands with fear and reverence before those
stupendous remains of what man was formerly, and one has
sad thoughts about old Asia and its little outpushed peninsula Europe,
(17:08):
which would like by all means to figure before Asia
as the progress of mankind. To be sure, he who
himself only a slender, tame house animal and knows only
the wants of a house animal, like our cultured people
of today, including the Christians of cultured Christianity, need neither
(17:32):
be amazed nor even sad amid those ruins. The taste
for the Old Testament is a touchstone with respect to
great and small. Perhaps he will find that the New Testament,
the Book of grace still appeals more to his heart.
There's much of the odor of the genuine, tender, stupid
(17:56):
beadsman and petty soul in it. To have bound up
this New Testament a kind of Rococo of taste. In
ever respect, along with the Old Testament, into one book
as the Bible, as the book in itself, is perhaps
the greatest audacity and sin against the spirit which literary
(18:18):
Europe has upon its conscience. Fifty three why atheism nowadays?
The Father in God is thoroughly refuted, equally so the judge,
the rewarder also his free will. He does not hear,
and even if he did, he would not know how
(18:41):
to help. The worst is that he seems incapable of
communicating himself. Clearly is he uncertain? This is what I
have made out, by questioning and listening at a variety
of conversations, to be the cause of the decline of
European theism. It appears to me that though the religious
(19:02):
instinct is in vigorous growth, it rejects the theistic satisfaction
with profound distrust. Fifty four What does all modern philosophy
do since descart and indeed more in defiance of him
than on the basis of his procedure. An attentat has
(19:22):
been made on the part of all philosophers on the
old conception of the soul, under the guise of a
criticism of the subject and predicate conception. That it is,
to say, an intentat on the fundamental presupposition of Christian doctrine.
Modern philosophy, as an epistemological skepticism is secretly or openly
(19:46):
anti Christian, although for keener years be it said by
no means anti religious. Formerly, in effect, one believed in
the soul as one believed in grammar, and the grammatical subject.
One said, I is the condition think is the predicate,
(20:07):
and is conditioned to think is an activity for which
one must suppose a subject as cause. The attempt was
then made, with marvelous tenacity and subtlety, to see if
one could not get out of this net, to see
if the opposite was not perhaps true think the condition
(20:30):
an I the conditioned I therefore only a synthesis which
has been made by thinking itself. Kant really wish to
prove that, starting from the subject, the subject could not
be proved, nor the object either. The possibility of an
(20:50):
apparent existence of the subject, and therefore of the soul,
may not always have been strange to him the thought
that once an immense power on earth. As the Vendetta
Philosophy fifty five, there is a great ladder of religious cruelty,
(21:11):
with many rounds, but three of these are the most important.
Once on a time men sacrificed human beings to their God,
and perhaps just those they love the best. To this
category belong the first thing sacrifices of all primitive religions,
and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the
(21:33):
Mithra Grotto on the island of Capri, that most terrible
of all Roman anacronisms. Then, during the immoral epoch of mankind,
they sacrifice their God, the strongest instincts they possessed their nature.
This festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics
(21:54):
and anti natural fanatics finding what still remained to be sacrific.
Was it not necessary in the end for men to
sacrifice everything comforting, holy healing, all hope, all faith in
hidden harmonies in future blessedness and justice? Was it not
(22:16):
necessary to sacrifice God himself and, out of cruelty to
themselves to worship stone, stupidity, gravity, fate, nothingness. To sacrifice
God for nothingness, this paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty
has been reserved for the rising generation. We all know
(22:37):
something therefore already fifty six. Whoever, like myself, prompted by
some enigmatical desire, has long endeavored to go to the
bottom of the question of pessimism and free it from
the half Christian, half German narrowness and stupidity in which
it has finally presented itself to this century, namely in
(23:01):
the form of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Whoever, with an asiatic and
super asiatic eye has actually looked inside and into the
most world, renouncing of all possible modes of thought beyond
good and evil, and no longer like Buddha and Schopenhauer
under the dominion and delusion of morality. Whoever has done this,
(23:23):
has perhaps just thereby, without really desiring it, opened his
eyes to behold the opposite ideal, the ideal of the
most world, approving, exuberant and vivacious man who has not
only learnt to compromise and arrange with that which was
and is, but wishes to have it again as it
(23:44):
was and is for all eternity, insatiably calling out to Cappo,
not only to himself, but to the whole piece and play,
and not only the play, but actually to him who
requires the play and makes it necessary, because he always
requires himself anew and makes himself necessary. What and this
(24:09):
would not be circulus vitious dais fifty seven The distance
and as it were, the space around man grows with
the strength of his intellectual vision and insight, His world
become profounder, new stars, new ignogmas, and notions are ever
(24:31):
coming into view. Perhaps everything on which the intellectual eye
has exercised his acuteness and profundity has just been an
occasion for its exercise, something of a game, something for
children and childish minds. Perhaps the most solemn conceptions have
caused the most fighting and suffering. The conceptions God and
(24:54):
sin will one day seem to us of no more
importance than a child's plaything or child's pain seems to
an old man, And perhaps another plaything and another pain
will be then necessary once more for the old man,
always childish enough and eternal child d Eight. Has it
(25:16):
been observed to what extent outward idleness or semi idleness
is necessary to a religious life alike for its favorite
microscopic labor of self examination, and for its soft placidity
called prayer, the state of perpetual readiness for the coming
of God. I mean the idleness with a good conscience,
(25:39):
the idleness of olden times and of blood, to which
the aristocratic sentiment that work is dishonoring that it vulgarizes
the body and soul, is it not quite unfamiliar, and
that consequently the modern noisy time engrossing conceited foolishly proud
laboriousness educates and prepares for unbelief more than anything else.
(26:06):
Among these, for instance, who are at present living apart
from a religion. In Germany, I find freethinkers of diversified
species in origin, but above all a majority of those
in whom laboriousness, from generation to generation was dissolved the
religious instincts, so that they no longer know what purpose
(26:27):
religions serve, and only note their existence in the world
with a kind of dull astonishment. They feel themselves already
fully occupied. These good people, be it by their business
or by their pleasures, not to mention the fatherland and
the newspapers, and their family duties. It seems that they
(26:47):
have no time whatever left for religion. And above all,
it is not obvious to them whether it is a
question of a new business or a new pleasure, For
it is impossible. They say to them themselves that people
should go to church merely to spoil their tempers. They
are by no means enemies of religious customs. Should certain circumstances,
(27:10):
state affairs, perhaps require their participation in such customs, they
do what is required, as so many things are done
with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without much curiosity
or discomfort. They live too much apart and outside to
feel even the necessity for a fore or against in
(27:31):
such matters among those in different persons may be reckoned. Nowadays,
the majority of German Protestants, of the middle classes, especially
in the great laborious centers of trade and commerce. Also
the majority of laborious scholars and the entire university personnel,
with the exception of the theologians, whose existence and possibility
(27:54):
there always gives psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve.
On the part of pious or merely churchgoing people, there
seldom any idea of how much good will, one might
say arbitrary will, is now necessary for a German scholar
to take the problem of religion seriously. His whole profession, and,
(28:16):
as I have said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness to which
he is compelled by his modern conscience, inclines him to
a lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards to religion,
with which is occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the
uncleanliness of spirit, which he takes for granted. Wherever any
one still professes to belong to the church, it is
(28:39):
only with the help of history, not through his own
personal experience. Therefore, that the scholar succeeds in bringing himself
to a respectful seriousness and to a certain timid difference
in presence of religions. But even when his sentiments have
reached the stage of gratitude towards them, he has not
personally advanced once step nearer to that which still maintains
(29:02):
itself as church or as piety. Perhaps even the contrary
the practical indifference to religious matters in the midst of
which he has been born and brought up, usually supplements itself,
in his case into circumspension and cleanliness which shuns contact
with religious men and things. And it may just be
(29:23):
the depth of his tolerance and humanity which prompts him
to avoid the delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings with it.
Every age has its own divine type of navite for
the discovery of which other ages may envy it. And
how much naivete adorable, childlike, and boundlessly foolish naivite is
(29:44):
involved in this belief of the scholar, in his superiority,
in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting,
simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man
as a lower and less valuable type beyond before and
above which he himself has developed. He the little arrogant
(30:05):
dwarf and mobman, the sedulously alert head and hand drudge
of ideas of modern ideas. Fifty nine. Whoever has seen
deeply into the world has doubtless divined what wisdom there
is in the fact that men are superficial. It is
(30:25):
their preservative instinct that teaches them to be flighty, lightsome,
and false. Here and there one finds a passionate and
exaggerated adoration of pure forms in philosophers as well as
in artists. It is not to be doubted that whoever
has need of the cult of the superficial to that extent,
(30:47):
has at one time or another made an unlucky dive
beneath it. Perhaps there is even an order of rank
with respect to those burt children, the born artists, who
find the enjoyment of life only in to falsify its image,
as if taking wearisome revenge on it. One might guess
to what degree life has disgusted them, by the extent
(31:09):
to which they wish to see its image falsified, attenuated, ultrified,
and deified. One might reckon that homineus relogicy among the
artists as their highest rank. It is the profound, suspicious
fear of an incurable pessimism which compels whole centuries to
fasten their teeth into a religious interpretation of existence, the
(31:33):
fear of the instinct which divines a truth might be
attained too soon before man has become strong enough, hard enough,
artists enough higheti. The life in God, regarded in this light,
would appear as the most elaborate and ultimate product of
the fear of truth, as artist's adoration and artist intoxication
(31:57):
in presence of the most logical of all falsifications, as
the will to the inversion of truth to untruth at
any price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective
means of beautifying man than piety. By means of it,
man can become so artful, so superficial, so iridescent, and
(32:20):
so good that his appearance no longer offends paragraph sixty
To love mankind for God's sake, this has so far
been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained.
That love to mankind, without any redeeming intention to the background,
(32:43):
is only an additional folly and britishness that the inclination
to this love has first to get its proportion, its delicacy,
its gram assault, and sprinkling of aberges from an higher inclination.
Whoever first perceived and experienced this, however his tongue may
have stammered as it attempted to express such a delicate matter,
(33:08):
Let him for all time be wholly and respected as
the man who has so far flown highest and gone
astray in the finest fashion paragraph sixty one. The philosopher,
as we free spirits understand him as the man of
the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general
(33:29):
development of mankind, will use religion for his disciplining and
educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political
and economic conditions. The selecting and disciplining influence destructive as
well as creative and fashioning, which can be exercised by
means of religion, is manifold and varied according to the
(33:52):
sort of people placed under its spell and protection. For
those who are strong and independent, destined and trained to command,
in whom the judgment and skill of a ruling race
is incorporated, religion is an additional means for overcoming resistance
in the exercise of authority, as a bond which binds
rulers and subjects in common betraying and surrendering to the
(34:15):
former the conscience of the latter their innermost heart, which
would faiginn escape obedience, and in the case of the
unique natures of noble origin, if by virtue of superior spirituality,
they should incline to a more retired and contemplative life,
reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of government.
(34:39):
Over chosen disciples or members of an order. Religion itself
may be used as a means for obtaining peace from
the noise and trouble of managing grosser affairs, and for
securing immunity from the unavoidable filth of all political agitation.
The Brahmins, for instance, understood this fact. With the help
(35:01):
of a religious organization. They secured to themselves the power
of nominating kings for the people, while their sentiments prompted
them to keep apart and outside as men with a
higher and super regal mission. At the same time, religion
gives inducement and opportunity to some of the subjects to
qualify themselves for future ruling and commanding the slowly ascending
(35:25):
ranks and classes in which, through fortunate marriage, customs, volitional power,
and delight in self control are on the increase. To them,
religion offers sufficient incentives and temptations to aspire to hire
intellectuality and to experience the sentiments of authoritative self control,
(35:46):
of silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost
indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which cease
to rise above its heredity baseness and work itself upwards
to future supremacy, and finally, to ordinary men, to the
majority of the people who exist for service and general utility,
(36:10):
and are only so far entitled to exist, Religion gives
invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart,
ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with something
of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification of all commonplaceness,
(36:33):
all the meanness, all the semi annual poverty of their souls. Religion,
together with the religious significance of life, sheds sunshine over
such perpetually harassed men, and makes even their own aspect
endurable to them. It operates upon them as the Epicurean
philosophy usually operates upon sufferers of a higher order, in
(36:56):
a refreshing and refining manner, almost turning suffering to account,
and in an end even hollowing and vindicating it. There
is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as
their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves
by piety to seemingly higher order of things, and thereby
(37:17):
to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which
they find it difficult enough to live. This very difficult
being necessary paragraph sixty two to be sure to make
also the bad counter reckoning against such religions, and to
bring to light their secret dangers. The cause is always
(37:38):
excessive and terrible when religions do not operate as an
educational and disciplinary medium in the hands of the philosopher,
but rule voluntarily and paramountly when they wish to be
the final end and not a means along with other means.
Among men, as among all other animals, there is a
(37:59):
surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily suffering individuals.
The successful cases among men also are always the exception, and,
in view of the fact that man is the animal
not yet properly adapted to his environment, the rare exception.
(38:21):
But worse still, the higher the type of man represents,
the greater is the improbability that he will succeed the accidental.
The law of rationality in the general constitution of mankind
manifests itself most terribly in its destructive effect on the
higher orders of men, the conditions of whose lives are delicate, diverse,
(38:45):
and difficult to determine. What then, is the attitude of
the two greatest religions above mentioned to the surplus of
failures in life. They endeavor to preserve and keep alive
whatever can be preserved. In fact, as the religions for sufferers,
they take the part of these. Upon principle they are
(39:07):
always in favor of those who suffer from life as
from a disease, and they would faint treat every other
experience of life as false and impossible. However highly we
may esteem this indulgent and preservative care inasmuch as in
applying to others, it has supplied and applies also to
(39:28):
the highest and usually the most suffering type of man.
The hitherto paramount religions, to give a general appreciation of them,
are among the principal causes which have kept the type
of man upon a lower level. They have preserved too
much that which should have perished. One has to thank
them for invaluable services. And who is sufficiently rich in
(39:51):
gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation of all
that the spiritual men of Christianity have done for Europe. Hitherto,
But when they had given comfort to the sufferers, courage
to be oppressed and despairing, a staff and support to
the helpless, And when they had allured from society into
covenants and spiritual penitentiaries. The broken, heartened and distracted. What
(40:16):
else had they to do in order to work systematically
in that fashion and with a good conscience, for the
preservation of all the sick and suffering, which means, indeed,
in truth, to work for the deterioration of the European race,
to reverse all estimates of value, that is what they
had to do, And to shatter the strong, to spoil
(40:39):
great hopes, to cast suspicion on the delight in beauty,
to break down everything autonomous, manly, conquering and imperious, all
instincts which are natural to the highest and most successful
type of man, into uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self destruction. Forsooth,
(41:03):
to invert all love of the earth and of supremacy
over the earth into hatred of the earth and earthly things.
That is the task the Church imposed on itself and
was obliged to impose, until according to its standard of value, unworldliness, unsensuousness,
and higher man fused into one sentiment. If one could
(41:28):
observe the strangely painful, equally coarse and refined comedy of
European Christianity with the derisive and impartial eye of an
epicurean god, I should think one would never cease marveling
and laughing. Does it not actually seem that some single
(41:48):
will has ruled over Europe for eighteen centuries in order
to make a sublime abortion of man? He, however, who,
with opposite requirements, no longer Epicurean, and with some divine
hammer in his hand, could approach this almost voluntary degeneration
(42:08):
and stunting of mankind, as exemplified in the European Christian Pascal,
for instance? Would he not have to cry aloud with rage,
pity and horror, Oh, you bunglers, presumptuous, pitiful bunglers, What
have you done? Was that a work for your hands?
(42:30):
How you have hacked and botched my finest stone? What
have you presumed to do? I should say that Christianity
has hitherto been the most portentous of presumptions. Men not
great enough nor hard enough to be entitled as artist
to take part in fashioning man, Men not sufficiently strong
(42:53):
and far sighted to allow, with sublime self constraint the
obvious law of the thou thousandfold failures and perishings, to prevail.
Men not sufficiently noble to see the radically different grades
of rank and intervals of rank that separate man from man.
Such men, with their quality before God, have hitherto swayed
(43:16):
the destiny of Europe, until at last a dwarfed, almost
ludicrous species has been produced, a gregarious animal, something obligingly
sickly mediocre, the European of the present day. End of
Chapter three
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