THE ANTICHRIST
By
Friedrich Nietzsche
Translation: H.L. Mencken
43.
When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life it
self, but in "the beyond"--in nothingness--then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct--henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: this is now the "meaning" of life. . . . Why be public-
spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one's
self about the common welfare, and try to serve it? . . . Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path."--"One thing only is necessary". . . That every man, because he has an "immortal
soul," is as
good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of every individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly suspended in their behalf--it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of
selfishness to infinity, to insolence. And yet
Christianity has to thank precisely this miserable flattery of personal vanity for its triumph--it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon
evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of
humanity to its side. The "salvation of the
soul"--in plain English: "the world revolves around me." . . . The poisonous doctrine, "equal rights for all," has been propagated as a
Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct
Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all feelings of
reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the first prerequisite to every step upward, to every development of
civilization--out of the ressentiment of the masses it has forged its chief weapons against us, against everything noble, joyous and high
spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth . . . To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon noble
humanity ever perpetrated.--And let us not underestimate the fatal influence that
Christianity has had, even upon politics! Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for feelings of honourable pride in him
self and his equals--for the pathos of distance. . . Our politics is sick with this lack of courage!--The aristocratic attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of
souls; and if belief in the "privileges of the majority" makes and will continue to make r
evolution--it is
Christianity, let us not doubt, and
Christian valuations, which convert every r
evolution into a carnival of blood and crime!
Christianity is a revolt of all
creatures that creep on the ground against everything that is lofty: the gospel of the "lowly" lowers . . .