of
_noble_ antiquity, which made Christianity possible; one cannot too
sharply challenge the learned imbecility which today maintains that
theory. At the time when the sick and rotten Chandala classes in the
whole _imperium_ were Christianized, the _contrary type_, the nobility,
reached its finest and ripest development. The majority became master;
democracy, with its Christian instincts, _triumphed_.... Christianity
was not "national," it was not based on race--it appealed to all the
varieties of men disinherited by life, it had its allies everywhere.
Christianity has the rancour of the sick at its very core--the instinct
against the _healthy_, against _health_. Everything that is
well-constituted, proud, gallant and, above all, beautiful gives offence
to its ears and eyes. Again I remind you of Paul's priceless saying:
"And God hath chosen the _weak_ things of the world, the _foolish_
things of the world, the _base_ things of the world, and things which
are _despised_":[23] _this_ was the formula; _in hoc signo_ the
_decadence_ triumphed.--_God on the cross_--is man always to miss the
frightful inner significance of this symbol?--Everything that suffers,
everything that hangs on the cross, is _divine_.... We all hang on the
cross, consequently _we_ are divine.... We alone are divine....
Christianity was thus a victory: a nobler attitude of mind was destroyed
by it--Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of
humanity.--

[22] The word _training_ is in English in the text.

[23] 1 Corinthians i, 27, 28.

52.

Christianity also stands in opposition to all _intellectual_
well-being,--sick reasoning is the only sort that it _can_ use as
Christian reasoning; it takes the side of everything that is idiotic; it
pronounces a curse upon "intellect," upon the _superbia_ of the healthy
intellect. Since sickness is inherent in Christianity, it follows that
the typically Christian state of "faith" _must_ be a form of sickness
too, and that all straight, straightforward and scientific paths to
knowledge _must_ be banned by the church as _forbidden_ ways. Doubt is
thus a sin from the start.... The complete lack of psychological
cleanliness in the priest--revealed by a glance at him--is a phenomenon
_resulting_ from _decadence_,--one may observe in hysterical women and
in rachitic children how regularly the falsification of instincts,
delight in lying for the mere sake of lying, and incapacity for looking
str