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You now realise what it was that came to an end with the death on the cross: a new and thoroughly[Pg 184] original effort towards a Buddhistic movement of peace, towards real and not merely promised happiness on earth. For, as I have already pointed out, this remains the fundamental difference between the two religions of decadence: Buddhism promises little but fulfils more, Christianity promises everything but fulfils nothing.—The "glad tidings" were followed closely by the absolutely worst tidings—those of St Paul. Paul is the incarnation of a type which is the reverse of that of the Saviour; he is the genius in hatred, in the standpoint of hatred, and in the relentless logic of hatred. And alas what did this dysangelist not sacrifice to his hatred! Above all the Saviour himself: he nailed him to his cross. Christ's life, his example, his doctrine and death, the sense and the right of the gospel—not a vestige of alt this was left, once this forger, prompted by his hatred, had understood in it only that which could serve his purpose. Not reality: not historical truth! ... And once more, the sacerdotal instinct of the Jew, perpetrated the same great crime against history,—he simply cancelled the yesterday, and the day before that, out of Christianity; he contrived of his own accord a history of the birth of Christianity. He did more: he once more falsified the history of Israel, so as to make it appear as a prologue to his mission: all the prophets had referred to his "Saviour." ... Later on the Church even distorted the history of mankind so as to convert it into a prelude to Christianity.... The type of the Saviour, his teaching, his life, his death, the meaning of his death, even the sequel to his death—nothing remained untouched, nothing was left which even[Pg 185] remotely resembled reality. St Paul simply transferred the centre of gravity of the whole of that great life, to a place behind this life,—in the lie of the "resuscitated" Christ. At bottom, he had no possible use for the life of the Saviour,—he needed the death on the cross, and something more. To regard as honest a man like St Paul (a man whose home was the very headquarters of Stoical enlightenment) when he devises a proof of the continued existence of the Saviour out of a hallucination; or even to believe him when he declares that he had this hallucination, would amount to foolishness on the part of a psychologist: St Paul desired the end, consequently he also desired the means.... Even what he himself did not believe, was believed in by the idiots among whom he spread his doctrine.—What he wanted was power; with St Paul the priest again aspired to power,—he could make use only of concepts, doctrines, symbols with which masses may be tyrannised over, and with which herds are formed. What was the only part of Christianity which was subsequently borrowed by Muhamed? St Paul's invention, his expedient for priestly tyranny and to the formation of herds: the belief in immortality—that is to say, the doctrine of the "Last Judgment." ...

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When the centre of gravity of life is laid, not in life, but in a beyond—in nonentity,—life is utterly robbed of its balance. The great lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all nature in the instincts,—everything in the instincts that is beneficent, that promotes life and that is a guarantee[Pg 186] of the future, henceforward aroused suspicion. The very meaning of life is now construed as the effort to live in such a way that life no longer has any point.... Why show any public spirit? Why be grateful for one's origin and one's forebears? Why collaborate with one's fellows, and be confident? Why be concerned about the general weal or strive after it?... All these things are merely so many "temptations," so many deviations from the "straight path." "One thing only is necessary." ... That everybody, as an "immortal soul," should have equal rank, that in the totality of beings, the "salvation" of each individual may lay claim to eternal importance, that insignificant bigots and three-quarter-lunatics may have the right to suppose that the laws of nature may be persistently broken on their account,—any such magnification of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to insolence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt And yet it is to this miserable flattery of personal vanity that Christianity owes its triumph,—by this means it lured all the bungled and the botched, all revolting and revolted people, all abortions, the whole of the refuse and offal of humanity, over to its side. The "salvation of the soul"—in plain English: "the world revolves around me" ... The poison of the doctrine "equal rights for all"—has been dispensed with the greatest thoroughness by Christianity: Christianity, prompted by the most secret recesses of bad instincts, has waged a deadly war upon all feeling of reverence and distance between man and man—that is to say, the prerequisite of all elevation, of every growth in culture; out of[Pg 187] the resentment of the masses it wrought its principal weapons against us, against everything noble, joyful, exalted on earth, against our happiness on earth.... To grant "immortality" to every St Peter and St Paul, was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble humanity that has ever been perpetrated.—And do not let us underestimate the fatal influence which, springing from Christianity, has insinuated itself even into politics! Nowadays no one has the courage of special rights, of rights of t dominion, of a feeling of self-respect and of respect for his equals,—of pathos of distance. Our politics are diseased with this lack of courage!—The aristocratic attitude of mind has been most thoroughly undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if the belief in the "privilege of the greatest number" creates and will continue to create revolutions,—it is Christianity, let there be no doubt about it, and Christian values, which convert every revolution into blood and crime! Christianity is the revolt of all things that crawl on their bellies against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the "lowly" lowers....

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—The Gospels are invaluable as a testimony of the corruption which was already persistent within the first Christian communities. That which St Paul, with the logician's cynicism of a Rabbi, carried to its logical conclusion, was nevertheless merely the process of decay which began with the death of the Saviour.—These gospels cannot be read too cautiously; difficulties lurk behind every word they[Pg 188] contain. I confess, and people will not take this amiss, that they are precisely on that account a joy of the first rank for a psychologist,—as the reverse of all naive perversity, as refinement par excellence, as a masterpiece of art in psychological corruption. The gospels stand alone. Altogether the Bible allows of no comparison. The first thing to be remembered if we do not wish to lose the scent here, is, that we are among Jews. The dissembling of holiness which, here, literally amounts to genius, and which has never been even approximately achieved elsewhere either by books or by men, this fraud in word and pose which in this book is elevated to an Art, is not the accident of any individual gift, of any exceptional nature. These qualities are a matter of race. With Christianity, the art of telling holy lies, which constitutes the whole of Judaism, reaches its final mastership, thanks to many centuries of Jewish and most thoroughly serious training and practice. The Christian, this ultima ratio of falsehood, is the Jew over again—he is even three times a Jew.... The fundamental will only to make use of concepts, symbols and poses, which are demonstrated by the practice of the priests, the instinctive repudiation of every other kind of practice, every other standpoint of valuation and of utility—all this is not only tradition, it is hereditary; only as an inheritance is it able to work like nature. The whole of mankind, the best brains, and even the best ages—(one man only excepted who is perhaps only a monster)—have allowed themselves to be deceived. The gospels were read as the book of innocence ... this is no insignificant[Pg 189] sign of the virtuosity with which deception has been practised here.—Of course, if we could only succeed in seeing all these amazing bigots and pretended saints, even for a moment, all would be at an end—and it is precisely because I can read no single word of theirs, without seeing their pretentious poses, that I have made an end of them.... I cannot endure a certain way they have of casting their eyes heavenwards.—Fortunately for Christianity, books are for the greatest number, merely literature. We must not let ourselves be led away: "judge not!" they say, but they dispatch all those to hell who stand in their way. Inasmuch as they let God do the judging, they themselves, judge; inasmuch as they glorify God, they glorify themselves; inasmuch as they exact those virtues of which they themselves happen to be capable—nay more, of which they are in need in order to be able to remain on top at all;—they assume the grand airs of struggling for virtue, of struggling for the dominion of virtue. "We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves for the good" (—"the Truth," "the Light," "the Kingdom of God"): as a matter of fact they do only what they cannot help doing. Like sneaks they have to play a humble part; sit away in corners, and remain obscurely in the shade, and they make all this appear a duty; their humble life now appears as a duty, and their humility is one proof the more of their piety!... Oh, what a humble, chaste and compassionate kind of falsity! "Virtue itself shall bear us testimony." ... Only read the gospels as books calculated to seduce by means of morality: morality is appropriated by these petty people,—they know[Pg 190] what morality can do! The best way of leading mankind by the nose is with morality! The fact is that the most conscious conceit of people who believe themselves to be chosen, here simulates modesty: in this way they, the Christian community, the "good and the just" place themselves once and for all on a certain side, the side "of Truth"—and the rest of mankind, "the world" on the other.... This was the most fatal kind of megalomania that had ever yet existed on earth: insignificant little abortions of bigots and liars began to lay sole claim to the concepts "God," "Truth," "Light," "Spirit," "Love," "Wisdom," "Life," as if these things were, so to speak, synonyms of themselves, in order to fence themselves off from "the world"; little ultra-Jews, ripe for every kind of madhouse, twisted values round in order to suit themselves, just as if the Christian, alone, were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even the "ultimate tribunal" of all the rest of mankind.... The whole fatality was rendered possible only because a kind of megalomania, akin to this one and allied to it in race,—the Jewish kind—was already to hand in the world: the very moment the gulf between Jews and Judo-Christians was opened, the latter had no alternative left, but to adopt the same self-preservative measures as the Jewish instinct suggested, even against the Jews themselves, whereas the Jews, theretofore, had employed these same measures only against the Gentiles. The Christian is nothing more than an anarchical Jew.