CHAPTER III: THE RELIGIOUS MOOD

Beyond Good and Evil 89 of 301 indifference to religious matters in the midst
of which he has been born and brought up, usually sublimates itself in his
case into circumspection and cleanliness, which shuns contact with religious
men and things; and it may be just the depth of his tolerance and humanity
which prompts him to avoid the delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings
with it.—Every age has its own divine type of naivete, for the discovery of
which other ages may envy it: and how much naivete—adorable, childlike,
and boundlessly foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in his
superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting,
simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man as a lower
and less valuable type, beyond, before, and ABOVE which he himself has
developed—he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert,
head-and-hand drudge of ‘ideas,’ of ‘modern ideas’! 59. Whoever has seen
deeply into the world has doubtless divined what wisdom there is in the fact
that men are superficial. It is their preservative instinct which teaches them to
be flighty, lightsome, and false. Here and there one finds a passionate and
exaggerated adoration of ‘pure forms’ in philosophers as well as in artists: it
is not to be doubted that whoever has NEED of the cult of the
Beyond Good and Evil 90 of 301 superficial to that extent, has at one time or
another made an unlucky dive BENEATH it. Perhaps there is even an order
of rank with respect to those burnt children, the born artists who find the
enjoyment of life only in trying to FALSIFY its image (as if taking
wearisome revenge on it), one might guess to what degree life has disgusted
them, by the extent to which they wish to see its image falsified, attenuated,
ultrified, and deified,—one might reckon the homines religiosi among the
artists, as their HIGHEST rank. It is the profound, suspicious fear of an
incurable pessimism which compels whole centuries to fasten their teeth into
a religious interpretation of existence: the fear of the instinct which divines
that truth might be attained TOO soon, before man has become strong
enough, hard enough, artist enough.... Piety, the ‘Life in God,’ regarded in
this light, would appear as the most elaborate and ultimate product of the
FEAR of truth, as artist-adoration and artist- intoxication in presence of the
most logical of all falsifications, as the will to the inversion of truth, to
untruth at any price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective means
of beautifying man than piety, by means of it man can become so artful, so
superficial, so iridescent, and so good, that his appearance no longer offends.
Beyond Good and Evil 91 of 301 60. To love mankind FOR GOD’S SAKE—
this has so far been the noblest and remotest sentiment to which mankind has
attained. That love to mankind, without any redeeming intention in the
background, is only an ADDITIONAL folly and brutishness, that the
inclination to this love has first to get its proportion, its delicacy, its gram of
salt and sprinkling of ambergris from a higher inclination—whoever first
perceived and ‘experienced’ this, however his tongue may have stammered as
it attempted to express such a delicate matter, let him for all time be holy and
respected, as the man who has so far flown highest and gone astray in the
finest fashion! 61. The philosopher, as WE free spirits understand him—as
the man of the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general
development of mankind,—will use religion for his disciplining and
educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political and economic
conditions. The selecting and disciplining influence—destructive, as well as
creative and fashioning—which can be exercised by means of religion is
manifold and varied, according to the sort of people placed under its spell and
protection. For those who are strong and independent, destined and trained to
command, in whom the judgment and skill of a ruling
Beyond Good and Evil 92 of 301 race is incorporated, religion is an additional
means for overcoming resistance in the exercise of authority—as a bond
which binds rulers and subjects in common, betraying and surrendering to the
former the conscience of the latter, their inmost heart, which would fain
escape obedience. And in the case of the unique natures of noble origin, if by
virtue of superior spirituality they should incline to a more retired and
contemplative life, reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of
government (over chosen disciples or members of an order), religion itself
may be used as a means for obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of
managing GROSSER affairs, and for securing immunity from the
UNAVOIDABLE filth of all political agitation. The Brahmins, for instance,
understood this fact. With the help of a religious organization, they secured to
themselves the power of nominating kings for the people, while their
sentiments prompted them to keep apart and outside, as men with a higher
and super-regal mission. At the same time religion gives inducement and
opportunity to some of the subjects to qualify themselves for future ruling
and commanding the slowly ascending ranks and classes, in which, through
fortunate marriage customs, volitional power and delight in self-control are
on the increase. To them religion offers sufficient
Beyond Good and Evil 93 of 301 incentives and temptations to aspire to higher
intellectuality, and to experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control,
of silence, and of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost
indispensable means of educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise
above its hereditary baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy.
And finally, to ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for
service and general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives
invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart,
ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy, with
something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of justification of
all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all the semi-animal poverty of
their souls. Religion, together with the religious significance of life, sheds
sunshine over such perpetually harassed men, and makes even their own
aspect endurable to them, it operates upon them as the Epicurean philosophy
usually operates upon sufferers of a higher order, in a refreshing and refining
manner, almost TURNING suffering TO ACCOUNT, and in the end even
hallowing and vindicating it. There is perhaps nothing so admirable in
Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to
Beyond Good and Evil 94 of 301 elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly
higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual
world in which they find it difficult enough to live—this very difficulty being
necessary. 62. To be sure—to make also the bad counter-reckoning against
such religions, and to bring to light their secret dangers—the cost is always
excessive and terrible when religions do NOT operate as an educational and
disciplinary medium in the hands of the philosopher, but rule voluntarily and
PARAMOUNTLY, when they wish to be the final end, and not a means
along with other means. Among men, as among all other animals, there is a
surplus of defective, diseased, degenerating, infirm, and necessarily suffering
individuals; the successful cases, among men also, are always the exception;
and in view of the fact that man is THE ANIMAL NOT YET PROPERLY
ADAPTED TO HIS ENVIRONMENT, the rare exception. But worse still.
The higher the type a man represents, the greater is the improbability that he
will SUCCEED; the accidental, the law of irrationality in the general
constitution of mankind, manifests itself most terribly in its destructive effect
on the higher orders of men, the conditions of whose lives are delicate,
diverse, and difficult to determine. What, then, is the attitude of
Beyond Good and Evil 95 of 301 the two greatest religions above-mentioned to
the SURPLUS of failures in life? They endeavour to preserve and keep alive
whatever can be preserved; in fact, as the religions FOR SUFFERERS, they
take the part of these upon principle; they are always in favour of those who
suffer from life as from a disease, and they would fain treat every other
experience of life as false and impossible. However highly we may esteem
this indulgent and preservative care (inasmuch as in applying to others, it has
applied, and applies also to the highest and usually the most suffering type of
man), the hitherto PARAMOUNT religions—to give a general appreciation
of them—are among the principal causes which have kept the type of ‘man’
upon a lower level—they have preserved too much THAT WHICH
SHOULD HAVE PERISHED. One has to thank them for invaluable services;
and who is sufficiently rich in gratitude not to feel poor at the contemplation
of all that the ‘spiritual men’ of Christianity have done for Europe hitherto!
But when they had given comfort to the sufferers, courage to the oppressed
and despairing, a staff and support to the helpless, and when they had allured
from society into convents and spiritual penitentiaries the broken-hearted and
distracted: what else had they to do in order to work systematically in that
Beyond Good and Evil 96 of 301 fashion, and with a good conscience, for the
preservation of all the sick and suffering, which means, in deed and in truth,
to work for the DETERIORATION OF THE EUROPEAN RACE? To
REVERSE all estimates of value—THAT is what they had to do! And to
shatter the strong, to spoil great hopes, to cast suspicion on the delight in
beauty, to break down everything autonomous, manly, conquering, and
imperious—all instincts which are natural to the highest and most successful
type of ‘man’— into uncertainty, distress of conscience, and self-destruction;
forsooth, to invert all love of the earthly and of supremacy over the earth, into
hatred of the earth and earthly things—THAT is the task the Church imposed
on itself, and was obliged to impose, until, according to its standard of value,
‘unworldliness,’ ‘unsensuousness,’ and ‘higher man’ fused into one
sentiment. If one could observe the strangely painful, equally coarse and
refined comedy of European Christianity with the derisive and impartial eye
of an Epicurean god, I should think one would never cease marvelling and
laughing; does it not actually seem that some single will has ruled over
Europe for eighteen centuries in order to make a SUBLIME ABORTION of
man? He, however, who, with opposite requirements (no longer Epicurean)
and with some divine