43.
When the centre of gravity of life is placed, not in life itself,
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 himself 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 revolution—it is
Christianity, let us not doubt, and Christian valuations, which convert
every revolution 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 . . .