25.
The history of Israel is invaluable as a typical history of an
attempt to denaturize all natural values: I point to five facts
which bear this out. Originally, and above all in the time of the
monarchy, Israel maintained the right attitude of things, which is to say,
the natural attitude. Its Jahveh was an expression of its consciousness of
power, its joy in itself, its hopes for itself: to him the Jews looked for
victory and salvation and through him they expected nature to give them
whatever was necessary to their existence—above all, rain. Jahveh is the
god of Israel, and consequently the god of justice: this is the
logic of every race that has power in its hands and a good conscience in
the use of it. In the religious ceremonial of the Jews both aspects of
this self-approval stand revealed. The nation is grateful for the high
destiny that has enabled it to obtain dominion; it is grateful for the
benign procession of the seasons, and for the good fortune attending its
herds and its crops.—This view of things remained an ideal for a long
while, even after it had been robbed of validity by tragic blows: anarchy
within and the Assyrian without. But the people still retained, as a
projection of their highest yearnings, that vision of a king who was at
once a gallant warrior and an upright judge—a vision best visualized in
the typical prophet (i.e., critic and satirist of the moment),
Isaiah. —But every hope remained unfulfilled. The old god no longer
could do what he used to do. He ought to have been abandoned. But what
actually happened? simply this: the conception of him was changed—the
conception of him was denaturized; this was the price that had
to be paid for keeping him.—Jahveh, the god of “justice”—he
is in accord with Israel no more, he no longer visualizes the
national egoism; he is now a god only conditionally. . . The public notion
of this god now becomes merely a weapon in the hands of clerical
agitators, who interpret all happiness as a reward and all unhappiness as
a punishment for obedience or disobedience to him, for “sin”.
that most fraudulent of all imaginable interpretations, whereby a “moral
order of the world” is set up, and the fundamental concepts, “cause”
and “effect,” are stood on their heads. Once natural causation
has been swept out of the world by doctrines of reward and punishment some
sort of unnatural causation becomes necessary: and all other
varieties of the denial of nature follow it. A god who demands—in
place of a god who helps, who gives counsel, who is at bottom merely a
name for every happy inspiration of courage and self-reliance. . . Morality
is no longer a reflection of the conditions which make for the sound
life and development of the people; it is no longer the primary
life-instinct; instead it has become abstract and in opposition to life—a
fundamental perversion of the fancy, an “evil eye” on all
things. What is Jewish, what is Christian morality? Chance robbed
of its innocence; unhappiness polluted with the idea of “sin”.
well-being represented as a danger, as a “temptation”. a
physiological disorder produced by the canker worm of conscience...