ooks 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_
revolutions--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_....

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 individ