THE ANTICHRIST
By
Friedrich Nietzsche
Translation: H.L. Mencken
6.
It is a painful and tragic spectacle that rises before me: I have drawn back the curtain from the
rottenness of man. This word, in my mouth, is at least free from one suspicion: that it involves a moral accusation against
humanity. It is used--and I wish to emphasize the fact again--without any moral significance: and this is so far true that the rottenness I speak of is most apparent to me precisely in those quarters where there has been most aspiration,
hitherto, toward "virtue" and "
Godliness." As you probably surmise, I understand rottenness in the sense of
decadence: my argument is that all the values on which
mankind now fixes its highest aspirations are
decadence-values.
I call an animal, a species, an individual
corrupt, when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers, what is injurious to it. A
history of the "higher feelings," the "ideals of
humanity"--and it is possible that I'll have to write it--would almost explain why man is so degenerate. Life it
self appears to me as an instinct for growth, for
survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power: whenever the will to power fails there is disaster. My contention is that all the highest values of
humanity have been emptied of this will--that the values of
decadence, of
nihilism, now prevail under the holiest names.