44.
—The gospels are invaluable as evidence of the corruption that was
already persistent within the primitive community. That which
Paul, with the cynical logic of a rabbi, later developed to a conclusion
was at bottom merely a process of decay that had begun with the death of
the Saviour.—These gospels cannot be read too carefully; difficulties
lurk behind every word. I confess—I hope it will not be held against
me—that it is precisely for this reason that they offer first-rate joy to
a psychologist—as the opposite of all merely naive corruption, as
refinement par excellence, as an artistic triumph in psychological
corruption. The gospels, in fact, stand alone. The Bible as a whole is not
to be compared to them. Here we are among Jews: this is the first thing
to be borne in mind if we are not to lose the thread of the matter. This
positive genius for conjuring up a delusion of personal “holiness”
unmatched anywhere else, either in books or by men; this elevation of
fraud in word and attitude to the level of an art—all this is not
an accident due to the chance talents of an individual, or to any
violation of nature. The thing responsible is race. The whole of
Judaism appears in Christianity as the art of concocting holy lies, and
there, after many centuries of earnest Jewish training and hard practice
of Jewish technic, the business comes to the stage of mastery. The
Christian, that ultima ratio of lying, is the Jew all over
again—he is threefold the Jew. . . The underlying will to make
use only of such concepts, symbols and attitudes as fit into priestly
practice, the instinctive repudiation of every other mode of
thought, and every other method of estimating values and utilities—this
is not only tradition, it is inheritance: only as an inheritance
is it able to operate with the force of nature. The whole of mankind, even
the best minds of the best ages (with one exception, perhaps hardly
human—), have permitted themselves to be deceived. The gospels have been
read as a book of innocence. . . surely no small indication of the
high skill with which the trick has been done.—Of course, if we could
actually see these astounding bigots and bogus saints, even if
only for an instant, the farce would come to an end,—and it is precisely
because I cannot read a word of theirs without seeing their
attitudinizing that I have made am end of them. . . . I simply
cannot endure the way they have of rolling up their eyes.—For the
majority, happily enough, books are mere literature.—Let us not be led
astray: they say “judge not,” and yet they condemn to hell
whoever stands in their way. In letting God sit in judgment they judge
themselves; in glorifying God they glorify themselves; in demanding
that every one show the virtues which they themselves happen to be
capable of—still more, which they must have in order to remain on
top—they assume the grand air of men struggling for virtue, of men
engaging in a war that virtue may prevail. “We live, we die, we sacrifice
ourselves for the good” (—”the truth,” “the
light,” “the kingdom of God”: in point of fact, they simply
do what they cannot help doing. Forced, like hypocrites, to be sneaky, to hide
in corners, to slink along in the shadows, they convert their necessity into a
duty: it is on grounds of duty that they account for their lives of
humility, and that humility becomes merely one more proof of their piety. . . Ah,
that humble, chaste, charitable brand of fraud! “Virtue itself shall bear
witness for us.”. . . . One may read the gospels as books of moral
seduction: these petty folks fasten themselves to morality—they know the
uses of morality! Morality is the best of all devices for leading mankind by
the nose!—The fact is that the conscious conceit of the chosen here
disguises itself as modesty: it is in this way that they, the “community,”
the “good and just,” range themselves, once and for always, on
one side, the side of “the truth”—and the rest of mankind,
“the world,” on the other. . . In that we observe the most
fatal sort of megalomania that the earth has ever seen: little abortions of bigots
and liars began to claim exclusive rights in the concepts of “God.”
“the truth,” “the light,” “the spirit,”
“love,” “wisdom” and “life,” as if these
things were synonyms of themselves and thereby they sought to fence themselves
off from the “world”; little super-Jews, ripe for some sort of madhouse,
turned values upside down in order to meet their notions, just as if the Christian
were the meaning, the salt, the standard and even thelast judgment of all
the rest. . . . The whole disaster was only made possible by the fact that there
already existed in the world a similar megalomania, allied to this one in race,
to wit, the Jewish: once a chasm began to yawn between Jews and
Judaeo-Christians, the latter had no choice but to employ the self-preservative
measures that the Jewish instinct had devised, even against the Jews
themselves, whereas the Jews had employed them only against non-Jews. The Christian
is simply a Jew of the “reformed” confession.—