y, scorn,
cunning, violence? who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous
_ardeurs_ of victory and of destruction? No one would understand such a
god: why should any one want him?--True enough, when a nation is on the
downward path, when it feels its belief in its own future, its hope of
freedom slipping from it, when it begins to see submission as a first
necessity and the virtues of submission as measures of self-preservation,
then it _must_ overhaul its god. He then becomes a hypocrite, timorous
and demure; he counsels "peace of soul," hate-no-more, leniency, "love"
of friend and foe. He moralizes endlessly; he creeps into every private
virtue; he becomes the god of every man; he becomes a private citizen, a
cosmopolitan.... Formerly he represented a people, the strength of a
people, everything aggressive and thirsty for power in the soul of a
people; now he is simply _the good god_.... The truth is that there is
no other alternative for gods: _either_ they are the will to power--in
which case they are national gods--_or_ incapacity for power--in which
case they have to be good....

17.

Wherever the will to power begins to decline, in whatever form, there is
always an accompanying decline physiologically, a _decadence_. The
divinity of this _decadence_, shorn of its masculine virtues and
passions, is converted perforce into a god of the physiologically
degraded, of the weak. Of course, they do not _call_ themselves the
weak; they call themselves "the good."... No hint is needed to indicate
the moments in history at which the dualistic fiction of a good and an
evil god first became possible. The same instinct which prompts the
inferior to reduce their own god to "goodness-in-itself" also prompts
them to eliminate all good qualities from the god of their superiors;
they make revenge on their masters by making a _devil_ of the latter's
god.--The _good_ god, and the devil like him--both are abortions of
_decadence_.--How can we be so tolerant of the naivete of Christian
theologians as to join in their doctrine that the evolution of the
concept of god from "the god of Israel," the god of a people, to the
Christian god, the essence of all goodness, is to be described as
_progress_?--But even Renan does this. As if Renan had a right to be
naive! The contrary actually stares one in the face. When everything
necessary to _ascending_ life; when all that is strong, courageous,
masterful and proud has been eliminated fro