62.
—With this I come to a conclusion and pronounce my judgment. I condemn
Christianity; I bring against the Christian church the most terrible
of all the accusations that an accuser has ever had in his mouth. It is,
to me, the greatest of all imaginable corruptions; it seeks to work the
ultimate corruption, the worst possible corruption. The Christian church
has left nothing untouched by its depravity; it has turned every value
into worthlessness, and every truth into a lie, and every integrity into
baseness of soul. Let any one dare to speak to me of its “humanitarian”
blessings! Its deepest necessities range it against any effort to abolish
distress; it lives by distress; it creates distress to make itself
immortal. . . . For example, the worm of sin: it was the church that
first enriched mankind with this misery!—The “equality of souls
before God”—this fraud, this pretext for the rancunes
of all the base-minded—this explosive concept, ending in revolution,
the modern idea, and the notion of overthrowing the whole social order—this
is Christian dynamite. . . . The “humanitarian” blessings of
Christianity forsooth! To breed out of humanitas
a self-contradiction, an art of self-pollution, a will to lie at any price,
an aversion and contempt for all good and honest instincts! All this, to
me, is the “humanitarianism” of Christianity!—Parasitism as the
only practice of the church; with its anaemic and “holy”
ideals, sucking all the blood, all the love, all the hope out of life; the
beyond as the will to deny all reality; the cross as the distinguishing
mark of the most subterranean conspiracy ever heard of,—against health,
beauty, well-being, intellect, kindness of soul—against life
itself. . . .
This eternal accusation against Christianity I shall write upon all
walls, wherever walls are to be found—I have letters that even the blind
will be able to see. . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the
one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for
which no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small
enough,—I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race. . . .
And mankind reckons time from the dies
nefastus when this fatality befell—from the first
day of Christianity!—Why not rather from its last?—From
today?—The transvaluation of all values! . . .
THE END