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The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice: the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit; it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation. 65
The mightiest men have hitherto always bowed reverently before the saint, as the enigma of self-subjugation[Pg 188] 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; the strength and love of power, and knew how to honour it: they honoured something in themselves when they honoured the saint.... The mighty ones of the world learned 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 halt before the saint. 70-71
Perhaps the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most fighting and suffering, the conceptions "God" and "sin," will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child's plaything or a child's pain seems to an old man.... 75
To love mankind for God's sake—this has so far been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained. 79
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, betraying and surrendering to the former the conscience of the latter, their inmost heart, which would fain escape obedience. 80
Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary baseness and work itself upward to future supremacy. And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart, ennoblement of obedience, additional[Pg 189] social happiness and sympathy, with something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all the semi-animal poverty of their souls. 81
"Knowledge for its own sake"—that is the last snare laid by morality: we are thereby completely entangled in morals once more. 85
He who attains his ideal, precisely thereby surpasses it. 86
Sympathy for all—would be harshness and tyranny for thee, my good neighbour! 88
To be ashamed of one's immorality is a step on the ladder at the end of which one is ashamed also of one's morality. 89
A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the animalisation of God. 90
Not their love of humanity, but the impotence of their love, prevents the Christians of to-day—burning us. 91
There is no such thing as moral phenomena, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena. 91
The criminal is often enough not equal to his deed: he extenuates and maligns it. 91
The great epochs of our life are at the points when we gain courage to rebaptise our badness as the best in us. 92
It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author—and that he did not learn it better. 93 Even concubinage has been corrupted—by marriage. 93
A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at six or seven great men—Yes, and then to get round them. 94
From the senses originate all trustworthiness, all good conscience, all evidence of truth. 95
Our vanity would like what we do best to pass[Pg 190] precisely for what is most difficult to us.—Concerning the origin of many systems of morals. 96
When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is generally something wrong with her sexual nature. Barrenness itself conduces to a certain virility of taste; man, indeed, if I may say so, is "the barren animal." 96
That which an age considers evil is usually an unseasonable echo of what was formerly considered good—the atavism of an old ideal. 97
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil. 98
Objection, evasion, joyous distrust, and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology. 98
The Jews—-a people "born for slavery," as Tacitus and the whole ancient world say of them; "the chosen people among the nations," as they themselves say and believe—the Jews performed the miracle of the inversion of valuations, by means of which life on earth obtained a new and dangerous charm for a couple of millenniums. Their prophets fused into one the expressions "rich," "godless," "wicked," "violent," "sensual," and for the first time coined the word "world" as a term of reproach. In this inversion of valuations (in which is also included the use of the word "poor" as synonymous with "saint" and "friend") the significance of the Jewish people is to be found; it is with them that the slave-insurrection in morals commences. 117
The beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Csar Borgia) are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as one seeks a "morbidness" in the constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths.... 118
All the systems of morals which address themselves to individuals with a view to their "happiness," as it is called—what else are they but suggestions for behaviour adapted to the degree of danger from themselves in which the individuals live; recipes for their passions, their good and bad propensities in so far as such have the Will to Power and would like to play the master; small and great expediencies and elaborations, permeated with the musty odour of old family medicines and old-wife wisdom; all of them grotesque and absurd in their form—because they address themselves to "all," because they generalise where generalisation is not authorised; all of them speaking unconditionally, and taking themselves unconditionally; all of them flavoured not merely with one grain of salt, but rather endurable only, and sometimes even seductive, when they are over-spiced and begin to smell dangerously, especially of "the other world." 118-119
In view ... of the fact that obedience has been most practised and fostered among mankind hitherto, one may reasonably suppose that, generally speaking, the need thereof is now innate in every one, as a kind of formal conscience. ... 120
