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If it has been thoroughly comprehended — and I must insist on the thorough prehension, thorough comprehension of this necessity — that it can, under no circumstances, be the task of the sound to wait upon the sick, to make the sick whole, then also another necessity has been comprehended, — the necessity of leeches and nurses who are themselves sick. And now we have and hold with both hands the sense of the ascetic priest. The ascetic priest must be taken as the predestined saviour, herdsman and advocate of the sick herd; it is only thereby that we understand his vast historic mission. The sway over suffering is his kingdom; to it his instinct leads him; in it he proves his own most private art, his mastery, his kind of happiness. To understand the sick one and disinherited one and himself in them, he must be sick himself, he must be thoroughly related to them. But he must also be strong, be more completely master of himself even than of others, be undaunted, especially in his will to power, — in order to secure for himself the confidence and the fear of the sick, in order to be a hold, an opposition, a support, a constraint, a taskmaster, a tyrant, a god for them. He has to defend them, his herd. Against whom? Against the sound, no doubt whatever, and also against their envy of the sound; he must be the natural opponent and despiser of all health and capability which are rude, impetuous, unbridled, brutal, relentless, robber-animal-like. The priest is the first form of that more delicate animal which is quicker to despise than to hate. He will not be spared the necessity of waging war against the beasts of prey, a war of cunning (of "spirit") rather than of power, as is self-evident; for that he will, under certain circumstances, be compelled to fashion of himself almost a new variety of the beast of prey type, or, at least, to signify such a type, — a new animal monstrosity in which the ice-bear, the agile and calmly-deliberative tiger-cat and, last but not least, the fox seem to be fused into a unity interesting and at the same time awe-inspiring. Suppose he is compelled by need, he may, with bearlike earnestness, gravity, sagacity, coldness, and superior craft, make his appearance among the other kind of beasts of prey; as the herald and mouthpiece of more mysterious powers; with the resolution of scattering, wherever he can, the seed of mischief, discord and self-contradiction on this soil; and only too sure of his power to lord it over sufferers at all times. He brings with him salves and balms, no doubt whatever; but before acting as a leech he must inflict the wound. Then, in the very act of soothing the pain caused by the wound, he will at the same time pour poison into the wound. For in this art he is master, this great sorcerer and tamer of beasts of prey in whose presence whatever is sound, of necessity becomes sick, and whatever is sick, tame. And truly, well enough he will defend his herd, — this curious herdsman. He will also defend it against itself, against the meanness, knavery, malignity secretly smouldering within the herd; against whatever is owned by all the sick and sickly among themselves. He wages a prudent, hard and secret war against anarchy and self-dissolution, threatening at any moment to break out in the herd in which that most dangerous blasting and explosive power — resentment —, keeps steadily accumulating. To discharge this powder in such a manner as not to blow up either the herd or the herdsman, this is his specific artist feat, as also his highest usefulness. Were we to express the value of the priestly existence in the shortest formula, we should have straightway to put it thus: the priest is the person who changes the direction of resentment. For every sufferer will instinctively seek for a cause of his suffering; more exactly, a doer; still more definitely a doer susceptible of suffering, and guilty; in short, anything living against which, under some pretence or other, he may discharge his emotions — either in deed or in effigy. For the discharge of emotions is the greatest attempt on the part of the sufferer to procure for himself alleviation, — or rather, to bring about stupefaction of his pain. It is his narcotic which he wants instinctively against pain of any kind. Here only, according to my supposition, is to be found the real physiological causality of resentment, revenge and their sister-feelings, i.e., in a longing for stupefaction of pain through an emotion. That causality is generally and, as I think, very erroneously, sought for in a counter-thrust given in defence, a mere protective measure of re-action, a "reflex-motion" in case of a sudden injury or impending danger, such as is still performed by a decapitated frog which tries to rid himself of some macerating acid. But the difference is fundamental: in the one case the guarding against further injury is intended; in the other the object is to narcotise some torturing, secret pain which grows intolerable, by means of a violent emotion of any kind, and to remove it, for the moment at least, from consciousness. For this an emotion is needed, the wilder the better; and for causing it, some pretence is required. "Somebody must be to blame because I feel badly" — this kind of logic is shared by all the sick; and this is the more the case the more the true — the physiological — cause of their feeling badly is hidden to them. (It may peradventure consist in a diseased state of the nervus sympathicus, or in an abnormally large secretion of bile, or in a poverty of the blood in sulphate and phosphate of potash, or in pressures in the abdomen which impede the circulation of the blood, or in a degeneration of the ovaries and the like.) All sufferers show a frightful readiness and inventiveness in pretexts to painful emotions. They rejoice in their suspicion and in the brooding over wrongs and seeming injuries suffered from others. They ransack the intestines of their past and their now for dark and suspicious stories in which they are at liberty to revel in some harassing suspicion and narcotise themselves with their own poison of malignity. They will tear open the oldest wounds; they bleed to death from scars healed long ago; they make evil-doers of friend, wife and child and whatever else is nearest them. "I suffer; for this some one must be to blame" — so all sick sheep think. But their shepherd, the ascetic priest, says: "Right so, my sheep! Some one must be to blame for this. But thou thyself art this some one; thou thyself art alone to blame for this; — thou thyself art alone to blame for thyself!" . . . . This is bold enough and false enough. But one thing, at least, is attained through it; as we have seen, the direction of resentment — is changed.
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Now my readers will make out what the Æsculapian instincts of life have accomplished or, at least, have tried to accomplish through the ascetic priest, and for what purpose he has used, for the time being, the tyranny of such paradoxical and paralogical concepts as "guilt," "sin," "sinfulness," "perdition," "damnation;" to render, in some measure, the sick harmless; to destroy the incurable through themselves; to give the less diseased strictly the direction towards themselves, a backward direction of their resentment ("One thing is needed"); and to make full use, in this manner, of the bad instincts of all sufferers for the purpose of self-discipline, self-control and self-vanquishment. It is apparent that a "medication" of this kind (a mere medication of emotions) is nothing less than an actual healing of the sick in the physiological sense. One is not even entitled to maintain that the instinct of life therewith in any way has in view the end and aim of healing. A kind of crowding and organisation of the sick on the one side (the most popular term for this is "church") and, on the other side, a kind of provisional protection of the more soundly-constituted, the more full-fraught; the tearing-up of a gap between the sound and the sick — this was, for a long time, the only thing done! And it was much! very much! . . . . [It will be observed that, in the present essay, I have started out with a presupposition which, with the class of readers I stand in need of, requires no demonstration: that "sinfulness" in man is not a matter of the fact, but only the interpretation of a fact, viz., of a physiological depression, — the latter being viewed in the perspective of morality and religion, which for us has lost its obligatory force. — The fact that any one feels himself "guilty " or "sinful," by no means proves that he is right in feeling himself so; as little as that anybody is well merely because he feels well. I but recall the celebrated witch-trials. In those days the most sagacious and humanest judges did not doubt the actual existence of a guilt; the "witches" themselves did not doubt it, — and yet, such a guilt did not exist. — To express this presupposition in an enlarged form: "mental pangs" themselves I do not recognise as a fact at all, but only as an interpretation (causal interpretation) of facts which so far defied exact formulation: as something, therefore, which has, so far, escaped our grasp and is scientifically not binding — no more than a stout word in place of a consumptive interrogation mark. If any one cannot away with "mental pangs," the fault, roughly speaking, lies not in his "soul," but rather in his belly (I say, roughly speaking, which, however, by no means implies the wish to be roughly heard, roughly understood . . . .). A strong and well-fashioned man will digest his experiences (including deeds and misdeeds) as he will his meals, even if he has to devour hard morsels. In case he fail to "get beyond" an experience, this kind of indigestion is physiological no less than that other — and, in many cases, merely one of the consequences of the other. — With such a view, one may, entre nous, nevertheless be the most determined opponent of all materialism . . . .]
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But is he, actually, a leech, this ascetic priest? We have already seen in what respect we are hardly justified in calling him a leech, however much he likes to feel himself a "saviour," to be revered as a "saviour." It is only suffering itself, the distemper of the sufferer, which he combats; not the cause of these states, not actual sickness. This must constitute our most fundamental objection to priestly medication. But if we, over and above, place ourselves in the perspective which the priest alone knows and holds, then our admiration will know no bounds in beholding how much he has seen, sought and found in it. The mitigation of suffering, the "comforting" in all its forms, appears to be his proper genius. How ingeniously has he understood his task of "comforter!" How recklessly and daringly has he chosen the means for it! Christianity, especially, might be called a great storehouse of most ingenious sedatives; containing, as it does, so many restorative, palliative and narcotising physics and potions; having dared, as it did, so many most dangerous and bold things for that purpose; and having made out, as it did, in such a fine, refined, southern-refined fashion by what stimulative emotions, temporarily at least, the deep depression, the leaden languor, the sullen sadness of the physiologically depressed can be conquered. For generally speaking: the principal problem of all great religions was to combat a certain heaviness and weariness which had become epidemic. We may posit as extremely probable that from time to time on certain spots of the earth, almost necessarily, a feeling of physiological depression will prevail over large masses of people, which, however, from a lack of physiological knowledge, does not appear in consciousness as such, so that the "cause" of it, the treatment to be applied to it, can only be sought for and tried in an exclusively psychologico-moral way. (— This, to wit, is my most general formula of that which ordinarily is called "religion") Such a feeling of depression may be of the most diverse origin: it may, peradventure, be the consequence of an intermingling of all too heterogenous races (or of classes; classes always express differences of descent and race; European "resignation," the "pessimism" of the nineteenth century is, in the main, the consequence of an irrationally sudden intermingling of the classes); or it may be due to a wrongly-directed emigration — a race having come into a climate for which its powers of adaptation are insufficient (the case of the Indians in India); or the effect of age and exhaustion of the race (Parisian pessimism after 1850); or to improper diet (alcoholism of the middle ages; the nonsense of the vegetarians, who, of course, have the authority of younker Christopher in Shakespeare to speak in their favour); or of blood-poisoning, malaria, syphilis and the like (German depression after the Thirty-years' war which infected the half of Germany with pestilential diseases and thus paved the way for German servility, German faint-heartedness). In every such case on the largest scale a war is waged against the feeling of low-spiritedness. Let us take a short survey of the most important practics and forms of it. (Here, as is but fair, I pass over entirely the specific philosophers'-struggle against the feeling of low-spiritedness, which, as a rule, is contemporaneous with it. It is interesting enough, but too absurd, too practically indifferent, too cobweb-like and commonplace: e.g., when an attempt is made to demonstrate the erroneousness of pain, — by naïvely supposing that pain must vanish as soon as the illusoriness of it is recognised — but lo and behold! it took good care not to vanish . . .). That dominating low-spiritedness is combated first of all by such means as will reduce vitality in general to its lowest point. If possible, no more willing and no more wishing at all; to avoid all that causes emotions, that makes "blood" (to eat no salt; hygiene of the fakir); not to love; not to hate; equanimity; not to take revenge; not to enrich one's self; not to work; to beg; if possible, no woman, or as little woman as possible; in spiritual respects the maxim of Pascal "il faut s abêtir." Result, expressed psychologico-morally, "self-mortification," "sanctification;" expressed physiologically: hypnotisation, — the endeavour to bring about for man a state approximately equivalent to the winter-sleep of some kinds of animals, or the summer-sleep of many equatorial plants, — a minimum of nourishment and metabolism with which life can just exist but no more rises to the threshold of consciousness. To compass this end, an astonishing amount of human energy has been expended. In vain peradventure? . . . . That such sportsmen of "holiness," who abound at all times and almost among all peoples, did really succeed in finding for themselves a salvation from that which they combated by means of such rigorous training, this must not be doubted. By means of their system of hypnotic processes, they did, in countless cases, actually succeed in getting rid of that deep physiological depression, and hence their methodic reckons among the most general ethnological facts. Nor have we any right to count (in the manner of a certain clumsy kind of roastbeef-chewing "freethinkers " and younker Christophers) such an intention of starving the body and the "desire," as in itself among the symptoms of insanity. The more certain it is that it is, or may be, the way to all kinds of mental disturbances, — for instance, to "inner lights " (as in the case of the Hesychasts on mount Athos), or to hallucinations of sounds and apparitions, or to voluptuous outbursts and ecstasies of sensuality (story of St. Theresa). The interpretation given to this kind of conditions by those who are subject to them has, as is self-evident, always been as fancifully-false as possible. Yet, let people not over-hear the tone of most deeply convinced thankfulness which sounds even in the mere will to this kind of interpretation. The most exalted state, salvation itself, that finally attained total hypnotisation and stillness, they always regard as the mystery in itself, for the expression of which not even the highest symbols will suffice, — as a putting up at, and return to the inmost nature, as a becoming free from all illusion, as "knowing," as "truth," as "being;" as an escape from every goal, every desire, every doing; also as a Beyond Good and Evil. "Good and Evil," says the Buddhist, — "both are fetters; each is mastered by the perfect one." "Deeds and not-deeds," says the believer of the Vedânta, "do not bring him pain. Good and Evil, either he shakes from him being a wise man; his realm no longer suffers from any deed; Good and Evil, he has transcended both." This view, we see, prevails in the whole of India, in Brahmanism as well as in Buddhism. (Neither according to the Indian nor the Christian manner of thinking is that "salvation" regarded as attainable through virtue, through moral improvement, highly though the hypnotising value of virtue be prized in these religions. This must be borne in mind. It is, by the bye, simply in accordance with facts. To have, in this respect, remained true, may perhaps be regarded as the best bit of realism in the three greatest and otherwise so thoroughly moralised religions. "For the knowing one no duty exists" . . . . By the apposition of virtues salvation is not attained; for salvation consists in the being at one with the Brahman which allows of no increase of perfection; nor is it attained by the deposition of vices; for the Brahman, with which to be at one constitutes that which is salvation, is eternally pure." These passages are taken from the commentary of the Cankara, as quoted by the first true connoisseur of Indian Philosophy in Europe, my friend Paul Deussen.) The "salvation" in the great religions we shall therefore honour. A little difficult we find it, however, to preserve a serious countenance when seeing the valuation at which a thing so small as deep sleep is held by these life-weary ones who have grown too tired even for dreaming; deep sleep being regarded as an entering into the Brahman, as the attained unio mystica with God. "When he afterwards has altogether fallen asleep" — thus we are taught in the oldest and most venerable "scripture" — "and fully come to rest, so that no longer he will behold anything in dream, then he is, O dear one, united with that which is; into himself he has entered; enshrouded by the knowledge-like self he no longer has any consciousness of that which is Without or Within. This bridge is not passed over by the day nor by the night, not by age nor by death, not by suffering, not by a good deed nor an evil deed." "In deep sleep," so say likewise the faithful of this deepest of the three great religions, "the soul rises from the body, enters into the highest light and thereby appears in its proper form: then it is the highest spirit itself which walks about, jesting and sporting and joying, be it with women, with waggons or with friends; then it thinks no longer of this bodily appendage to which the prâna (the life-breath) is yoked, as a cart-horse is to the cart." Nevertheless, here also, as in the case of "salvation," we shall never lose sight of the fact that, however much resplendent with oriental exaggeration, at bottom the very same valuation is expressed, which was the valuation of the clear, calm, Grecian-calm, but suffering Epicurus: the hypnotic feeling of nothingness, the rest of deepest sleep, impassiveness in short. This state with the suffering and thoroughly-disappointed may pass for the highest good, for the value of values; it must receive positive value and be regarded as the positive itself. (According to the same logic of feeling in all pessimistic religions, the nothing is called God.)
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Much more frequently than such an hypnotic subduing of all sensibility, of sensitiveness (which presupposes comparatively rare powers, above all, courage, contempt of the opinion of others, "intellectual Stoicism"), another and much easier training is tried as a remedy for states of depression: machinal activity. That thereby in no slight degree a sufferer's existence is made more bearable, is true beyond a doubt. In our days this fact is rather equivocally called "the blessings of labour." The alleviation consists in the sufferer's interest being deliberately turned away from his suffering, — so that, continually, an acting, and again an acting only, rises into consciousness, little room being left in consequence for suffering. For it is narrow, this chamber of human consciousness! Machinal activity and all its appurtenances — such as absolute regularity, punctual and unconditional obedience, the final regulation of habits, the filling-up of one's time, a certain permission of, nay training to "impersonality," to self-forgetting, to incuria sui —: how thoroughly, how cunningly, has the ascetic priest understood to avail himself of this activity in the war against pain! Especially when he had to deal with sufferers coming from the lower classes, with working-slaves or prisoners (or women, who, as a rule, are both in one, working-slaves and prisoners), all that was requisite for making them thenceforth regard things hated as a boon, a relative happiness, was a little art in changing names and anabaptising things. The discontentedness of the slave with his lot at any rate has not been invented by priests. — A still more highly prized means in the struggle with depression is the ordaining of a little joy, easily accessible and capable of being made the rule. This medication is frequently employed in connection with the one just mentioned. The most frequent form in which joy is thus ordained as a remedy, is the joy of bringing joy (such as doing good, making gifts, easing, helping, condoling, consoling, praising, distinguishing). The ascetic priest, by prescribing love for the neighbour, prescribes at bottom a stimulation of the strongest, most "life-asserting" instinct, though in a cautiously weighed out dose — of the will to power. The happiness of the "smallest superiority," as afforded by all benefiting, serving, helping, distinguishing, is the most liberal consolatory means the physiologically-depressed are in custom of using, provided they are well advised. If not, they will harass one another, — in obedience, of course, to the same fundamental instinct. If we seek for the beginnings of Christianity in the Roman world, we find societies for mutual help, as societies for the aid of the poor, the sick, burial-societies, grown up from the lowest bottom of the society of that time, consciously practising that principal means against depression, small joy, the joy of mutual benefit. Perhaps, this was something new in those days, quite an invention? In a thus created "will to mutuality," to herd-formation, to "congregation," to the "caenaculum" now in turn that will to power which has, though on a small scale, been thus provoked, must rise to a new and much fuller outburst. In the struggle against depression, the formation of herds is a decided advance and victory. The growth of community confirms in the individual a new interest which often enough will raise him above the most personal feeling of malcontent, the aversion from self ("despectio sui" of Geulinx). Prompted by a desire of casting off the sullen depression and impotence, the sick, the sickly, will instinctively strive for gregarious organisation. The ascetic priest makes out and furthers this instinct. Wherever there are herds, it is the instinct of impotence which willed, and the policy of the priest which organised herds. For let us not overlook this: it is law universal for the strong to strive away from one another, as for the weak to strive towards one another. Whenever the former enter into alliance with one another they do so (with much resistance on the part of each individual conscience) solely for the purpose of joint action and aggression and with the prospect of an aggressive joint-action and a joint-indulgence of their will to power. The weak, on the other hand, will gather together just taking delight in the gathering. In so doing their instinct is appeased, to the same degree as the instinct of the born "masters" (i.e., the solitary beast-of-prey species of man) is by organisation provoked and alarmed from the bottom. Beneath every oligarchy — all history teaches this — the tyrannic lusting is always hidden. All oligarchies constantly tremble from the strain which each individual member requires to check this lusting. (Thus, for instance, was it with the Greek. Plato tells us so in a hundred passages, — Plato, who knew his like — and himself. . . .)
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The means of the ascetic priest with which hitherto we have become acquainted — the quenching of all vitality, machinal activity, minute joy, above all, the joy of "love for the neighbour," herd-organisation, the arousing of the communal feeling of power, thanks to which the self-dissatisfaction of the individual is stunned by the delight which he takes in the flourishing of the community — these are, judged after modern measure, his innocent means in the struggle with "depression." Let us now pass to the more interesting, the "guilty" means. In all of them the point is to effect an extravagance of feeling, — which is made to serve as the most effective narcotic against dull, paralysing persistent suffering. For this reason, priestly inventiveness has been inexhaustible in the excogitation of this one question: By what can an extravagance of feeling be effected? . . . This sounds harsh; it is plain it would sound more agreeable and would find more willing ears if I were to speak in some such manner as this: "The ascetic priest at all times availed himself of the enthusiasm contained in all strong emotions." But why flatter the dainty ears of our modern tenderlings? Why should we for our part make any concessions, however slight, to their tartuffism of words? Thereby we psychologists would be guilty of a tartuffism of deed; apart from the fact that it would beget nausea in us. The good taste — others may say "the honesty" — of a psychologist consists now-a-days if in anything in his opposing the shamefully-permoralised language by which as by a phlegm all modern judging on man and things is covered. Let there be no deception in this point: what constitutes the most pertinent characteristic of modern souls and modern books is not "falsehood," but the incarnate innocence in moralistic mendaciousness. To be obliged to re-discover everywhere this "innocence," this constitutes, perhaps, the most repulsive part of our work, of all the rather doubtful work assigned to the modern psychologist for his task. It is a part of our great danger, it is a way which may lead just us to the great surfeit. I have no doubt as to the only use which posterity will make of modern books, of all modern things (taking for granted that the books will remain, which, it is true, need hardly be feared, and taking for granted, also, the existence — some day — of a posterity with sterner, severer, healthier taste). It can only be the use as emetics and this because of their moral dulcification and falseness, their inmost femininism which delights in calling itself idealism and, at any rate, believes itself to be so. Our educated classes of to-day, our "good ones" do not lie, — I admit; but it is not to their credit! The proper lie, the genuine, resolute, "honest" lie (on the value of which Plato may be consulted) would be far too rigorous, far too strong for them; to ask it of them would be asking what one dare never ask of them: to open their eyes upon themselves, to know how to distinguish between "true" and "false" with respect to their own persons. Them the dishonest lie alone befits. All those who to-day feel themselves as "good men," are perfectly incapable of looking at a subject in any other fashion than the fashion of dishonestly lying, profoundly lying, and yet innocently lying, naïvely lying, blue-eyedly lying, virtuously lying. These "good men," — they are now-a-days, each and every one, wholly and hopelessly permoralised and, with respect to honesty, spoiled and bungled for aye and evermore. Who among them could yet stand to hear a truth "about man!". . . . Or more tangibly expressed: who of them could stand a true biography! . . . . A few symptoms: Lord Byron wrote some most personal things about himself, but Thomas Moore was "too good" for that: he burned the papers of his friend. The same is said to have been done by Dr. Gwinner, the executor of Schopenhauer's will. For Schopenhauer also left a few observations on himself and probably also against himself (“εἰς έαυτόν”). The worthy American biographer of Beethoven, Mr. Thayer, came to a sudden halt in his work: having arrived at a certain point of this most venerable and naïve life, he could stand it no longer. Moral: what sensible man to-day would write an honest word about himself? — unless, perchance, he happened to be a member of the order of Saint Foolhardise. We are promised an autobiography of Richard Wagner; — who doubts that it will be a smart autobiography? . . . . Let us but recall the comical excitement created in Germany by the Roman Catholic priest Janssen, by the extremely "square" and harmless picture which he drew of the movement of the Reformation in Germany. Imagine what would happen if some one were to give us a different account of the Reformation, if a true psychologist were to paint for us a true Luther, — no longer with the moralistic simplicity of a country-parson, no longer with the honey-mouthed and regardful modesty of protestant historians, but peradventure, with the intrepidy of Taine, out of strength of soul and not prompted by any prudent indulgence to strength? . . . . (The Germans, by the bye, have succeeded most admirably in producing the classical type of this indulgence; (they may well claim him, claim him to their advantage): their Leopold Ranke, to wit, this born classical advocatus of every causa fortior, this cleverest of all clever "matter-of-fact" men.)
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But I hope, I am understood by this time. Reason enough, — is it not so? — why we psychologists now-a-days should fail to rid ourselves of a certain feeling of mistrust of ourselves! . . . . Probably we also are still "too good" for our handicraft; probably we also are the victims of, the prey of, the sick of this permoralised taste of our age, much though we do feel ourselves to be the detesters of it; — probably we also will be infected by it. What was it that that diplomatist warned of, when speaking to his fellows? "Messieurs," he said, "above all let us mistrust our first emotions! They are nearly always good." . . . . In like manner every modern psychologist should speak to his fellows . . . . And this brings us back to our problem, which does really require some severity on our part, especially some mistrust of "first emotions." The ascetic ideal in the service of an extravagance of feelings — he who remembers the preceding essay will anticipate in the main the summary of the contents of that which we have now to consider, and which is pressed into these eleven words. To loose for once the human soul from all its joints; to plunge it into terrors, chills, ardours, ecstasies, so as to rid it — as if by some stroke of lightning — from whatever is petty and trivial in depression, dulness and ill-humour, — what ways lead to this goal? and which of them most unfailingly? . . . . At last all great emotions capable of reaching it, provided that they discharge themselves suddenly, — anger, fear, lustfulness, revenge, hope, triumph, despair, cruelty; and the ascetic priest has actually without hesitation taken into his service the whole pack of savage dogs in man and let loose now one and now another; always with the like intention of awakening man from his slow dreariness, of putting to flight, for times at least, his dull pain, his lingering misery; and this always with a religious interpretation and "vindication." Every such extravagance of feeling will, as is self-evident, afterwards make itself paid (it will make the sick one still sicker); and hence this kind of treatment is, judged by modern standards, a "guilty" kind. And yet, in behalf of equity, it must the more be insisted upon that this cure has been applied with good conscience; that the ascetic priest has presented it in the deepest faith in its utility, nay indispensability; that he even, often enough, almost broke down in presence of the misery which he created; and likewise, that the violent physiological detrimental consequences of such excesses, perhaps even mental derangements, are at bottom by no means adverse to this kind of medication; which, as we have already shown, was not directed towards the curing of diseases, but towards the counteracting, the mitigating, the narcotising of the feeling of depression. The end in view was attained all the same. The principal expedient which the ascetic priest resorted to, in order to make the chords of the human soul resound with every kind of lacerating and ecstatic music, was — as everybody knows — simply this, that he took advantage of the feeling of guilt in man. The origin of this feeling was indicated in the preceding essay, as a bit of animal psychology, as no more. There we met with the feeling of guilt, as it were, as raw material. It was only in the hands of the priest, this real artist in feelings of guilt, that it took form — and Oh, what form! "Sin" — for this name is the priestly re-interpretation of the animal "bad conscience" (of cruelty turned inward) — was the greatest event so far in the history of the sick soul. It is the most dangerous and most fatal artist-feat of religious interpretation. Man, suffering from self, in some way or other, most likely physiologically; peradventure like some animal shut into a cage; confused as to the why, the wherefore; eager for reasons (reasons lighten burdens), eager also for medicines and narcoses; at last consults some one who "seeth also in secret" — and behold! he receives a hint; he receives from his magician, the ascetic priest, a first hint as to the cause of his suffering: he is to seek for it within himself, in a guilt, in a bit of his past; he is told to regard his suffering as a state of punishment . . . . He has heard, he has understood, the unhappy one. And now he walks off like the pullet about which a line has been drawn. He does not find his way out of this circle of lines: the sick one has been transformed into "the sinner" . . . . And now the aspect of this new patient, "the sinner," cannot be got rid of for some few thousands of years. Will it ever be got rid of? Wherever we turn our eye, we are met by the hypnotic gaze of the sinner ever moving in one direction only (in the direction of "guilt," as being the only cause of suffering); by bad conscience, this horrible animal, in the words of Luther; by a rumination of the past, a mal-interpretation of the deed, the "evil eye" for all doing; by the will to misunderstand suffering, made the contents of life; by the re-interpretation of suffering into feelings of guilt, fear and punishment; by the scourge, the penitential garb, the starving body, contrition; by the self-racking of the sinner in the cruel machinery of a restless, sickly-voluptuous conscience; by the silent pain, the extremest fear, the agony of a tortured heart, the convulsions of an unknown happiness, the cry for "salvation." And truly, by means of this system of processes, former depression, heaviness and weariness were completely conquered; life once more became very interesting. Waking, for ever waking, overwatched, glowing, charred, pining and yet not tired — thus looked the man, the "sinner," who now had become initiated in these mysteries. The ascetic priest, this grand old magician, in the battle against uneasiness— he had most certainly conquered, his kingdom had come. Now men no longer railed against pain, no, they panted for pain. "More pain! more pain!" thus for centuries cried the longing of his disciples and initiated ones. Every extravagance of feeling which begot pain, everything which prostrated, cast down, crushed, removed, transfigured, the secret of the torture chambers, the inventiveness of hell itself — all was now unravelled, found out, utilised; all was at the service of the magician; all served henceforth to the victory of his ideal, the ascetic ideal. "My kingdom is not of this world" — he kept saying now as ever. Had he really still the right to say so? . . . . Goethe maintained that there are but thirty-six tragic situations. We might tell from this, if we did not know it otherwise, that Goethe was not an ascetic priest. Such a one knows more . . . .
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In reference to this entire kind of priestly medication, the "guilty" kind, every word of criticism is superfluous. That such an extravagance of feeling as the ascetic priest is wont to prescribe his patients in this case (calling it, of course, by the holiest names and being himself thoroughly convinced of the holiness of his purpose) did really benefit a sick one, who would like to maintain an assertion of this sort? At least, people should understand each other about the word "benefit." If it is intended to convey that such a system of treatment has improved man, I do not contradict; but I add what I call "improved" — viz., much the same as "tamed," "weakened," "dispirited," "refined," "effeminate," "unmanned" (which is almost equivalent to injured . . . .). But when it is principally the case of sick, ill-humoured, depressed persons, such a system, granting even that it did make the patient "better," at any rate made him sicker. Let people but consult a physician of a lunatic asylum, as to the result of every methodical application of penitential tortures, of contritions, fits of salvation and the like. History, also, may be consulted. Wherever the ascetic priest succeeded in enforcing this treatment of the sick, the diseasedness with most alarming rapidity spread in intensity and extent. And what was always the "result"? A shattered nervous system, in addition to what was sick already; and this holds true on the largest scale as on the smallest, for individuals as for masses. In the suite of penitential and salvational training we find enormous epileptic epidemics, — the largest that history records —, such as those of the "St. Vitus-and St. John-dancers" in the middle ages. We find (and this is another variety of its consequence) frightful paralyses and chronic depressions with which under given circumstances the temperament of a people or a city (Geneva, Bale) for ever turns into its contrary. Here also belongs the witch hysteria, something akin to somnambulism (there were eight great epidemic outbreaks of this disease merely between 1564 and 1605). So also we find in the suite of this training those death-lusting deliria of whole masses whose awful cry "evviva la morte" was heard throughout the whole of Europe, interrupted now with voluptuous, now with destruction-craving idiosyncrasies. The same emotional change with the same intermittences and alterations is noticed even now wherever and whenever the ascetic dogma of sinfulness gains once more some great success. (Religious neurosis appears as a form of epilepsy; no doubt whatever. What it is? Quaeritur.) On the whole, the ascetic ideal and its sublimely-moral cult (that most ingenious, most unscrupulous and most dangerous systematisation of all means for bringing about an extravagance of feeling under the protection of holy ends) has imprinted itself in terrible and unforgettable manner on man's whole history; and, unfortunately, not on his history only. I know of scarcely anything which to the same extent as this idea has affected destructively the health and race-vitality especially of Europeans. It may, without any exaggeration, be called the true fate in the sanitary history of European man. At the most, the specifically Germanic influence might possibly be placed on a par with its influence. I mean the alcoholic poisoning of Europe, which has so far strictly kept pace with the political and racial predominance of the Germanics. (Wherever they inoculated their blood, they inoculated also their vice.) Third in the series syphilis might be mentioned, — magno sed proxima, intervallo.
22
The ascetic priest, wherever he attained to mastery, corrupted mental health; consequently, he corrupted also the taste in artibus et literis; he does so still. " Consequently?" — I hope, I am forthwith conceded this "consequently; " at least, I shall not do so much as prove it. Here but one hint: it refers to the fundamental book of Christian literature, its specific model, its "book in itself." While yet in the middle of Graeco-Roman magnificence, which was also a book-magnificence; in the presence of an antique world of letters which had not yet been crippled and crushed; in a time when it was still possible to read some books for the possession of which now half literatures would be given in exchange — the folly and vanity of Christian agitators — they are called church fathers — dared to decree: "We too have our classical literature, we need not that of the Greeks." And so saying they pointed with pride to the books of ecclesiastical legends, apostolic letters and apologetical tractlets; somewhat in the manner that the English "Salvation-Army" in our days wages war, by means of a kindred literature, against Shakespeare and other "heathens." I do not love the "New Testament," as my readers will have made out already. I am almost alarmed at being so isolated in my taste, as regards this most highly estimated and over-estimated work of literature (the taste of two thousand years is against me): but what boots it! Here stand I, I can no other. — I have the courage for my bad taste. The Old Testament — how very different! My highest respect to the Old Testament! In it I find great men, an heroic landscape, and a touch of that rarest thing on earth, the incomparable naïveté of strong heart. Still more, I find a people. But in the New Testament nothing but petty sectarian affairs, nothing but rococo of the soul, everything adorned, cornered, whimsical, nothing but conventicle-air and (which is not to be forgotten) an occasional tinge of bucolic sweetishness which belongs to that epoch (and the Roman province) and which is not so much a Jewish as a Hellenistic trait. Humility and consequentialness side by side; a talkativeness of feelings, which is almost benumbing; passionateness, not passion; painful demeanour; obviously, in this case every education in manners has been wanting. How can one make so much fuss about one's petty faults, as these pious little people do! Nobody cares a straw for them; God least of all. Finally, they strive even for "the crown of life everlasting," — all these little people of the province. Wherefore? As reward for what? This is pushing immodesty to its utmost! An "immortal" Peter — who could stand him! They have an ambition which makes one laugh. They ruminate their most personal affairs, their stupidities, sadnesses, and common-place cares, as if the In-itself of things were obliged to look after their affairs; they never grow tired of twisting God himself into the smallest trouble in which they happen to be. And this persistent intimacy of God, betraying the worst taste! This Jewish, and not merely Jewish, forwardness towards God, with mouth and clutch! . . . . There are small despised "heathen-peoples" in the East of Asia from which these first Christians might have learnt an important lesson, — some reverential tact. These peoples, as is witnessed by Christian missionaries, do not allow themselves even so much as to pronounce the name of their God. This seems to me rather delicate. Certain it is that not merely for "first" Christians it is too delicate. — In order to be aware of the contrast, let people call to mind Luther, that "most eloquent" and most immodest of all peasants whom Germany has ever had, the Lutheran manner of expression which just he appreciated best in his communings with God. Luther's opposition to the mediating Saints of the Church (especially, to "the Pope, the devil's hog") was, no doubt whatever, at veriest bottom the opposition of a boor who felt disturbed at the finished etiquette of the Church, — that etiquette of reverence peculiar to hieratic taste, which grants entrance into the sanctuary only to the more hallowed and more taciturn spirits, shutting out all boors. Boors must, once for all, be denied the right to speak here, — but Luther, the peasant, wished to change this at any price; as it was, he did not think it German enough. He wished, above all, to speak directly, to speak in person, to speak without ceremony, with his God . . . . Well, he did so. — The ascetic ideal (I think the reader has made out this) was never and nowhere a school for good taste, still less for good manners; it was, at best, a school for hieratic manners. The reason is, it contains in itself something mortally inimical to all good manners, — lack of measure, aversion from measure; it is itself a "ne plus ultra."
