THE ANTICHRIST
By
Friedrich Nietzsche
Translation: H.L. Mencken
22.
When
Christianity departed from its native soil, that of the lowest orders, the underworld of the ancient world, and began seeking power among barbarian
peoples, it no longer had to deal with exhausted men, but with men still inwardly savage and capable of
self torture--in brief, strong men, but bungled men. Here, unlike in the case of the Buddhists, the cause of discontent with
self, suffering through
self, is not merely a general sensitiveness and susceptibility to pain, but, on the contrary, an inordinate thirst for inflicting pain on others, a tendency to obtain subjective satisfaction in hostile deeds and ideas.
Christianity had to embrace barbaric concepts and valuations in order to obtain mastery over barbarians: of such sort, for example, are the sacrifices of the first-born, the drinking of blood as a sacrament, the disdain of the intellect and of
culture; torture in all its forms, whether bodily or not; the whole pomp of the cult.
Buddhism is a
religion for
peoples in a further state of development, for races that have become kind, gentle and over-
spiritualized (--
Europe is not yet ripe for it--): it is a summons 'that takes them back to
peace and cheerfulness, to a careful rationing of the
spirit, to a certain hardening of the body.
Christianity aims at mastering beasts of prey; its modus operandi is to make them ill--to make feeble is the
Christian recipe for taming, for "civilizing."
Buddhism is a
religion for the closing, over-wearied stages of
civilization.
Christianity appears before
civilization has so much as begun--under certain circumstances it lays the very foundations thereof.