A first example, quite
provisional. At all times they have
wanted to "improve" men: this above all was called
morality.
Under the same word, however, the most
divergent tendencies
are concealed. Both
the taming of the beast, man, and
the breeding of a particular kind of man have been called
"improvement." Such
zoological terms are required to express
the realities -- realities, to be sure, of which the typical
"improver," the
priest, neither knows anything, nor wants to
know any thing. To call
the taming of an animal its
"improvement" sounds almost like a joke to our ears. Whoever
knows what goes on in
menageries doubts that the beasts are
"improved" there. They are weakened, they are made less
harmful, and through the depressive effect of fear, through
pain, through wounds, and through hunger they become
sickly
beasts. It is no different with the tamed man whom the
priest has "improved." In the early
Middle Ages, when
the church was indeed, above all, a
menagerie, the most
beautiful specimens of the "
blond beast" were hunted down
everywhere; and the noble
Teutons, for example, were
"improved." But how did such an "improved"
Teuton who had
been seduced into a
monastery look afterward? Like a
caricature of man -- like a
miscarriage: he had become a
"sinner," he was
stuck in a cage, imprisoned among all sorts
of terrible concepts. And there he lay, sick, miserable,
malevolent against himself: full of hatred against
the springs of life, full of suspicion against all that was
still strong and happy. In short, a "
Christian."
Physiologically speaking: in
the struggle with beasts to
make them sick may be the only means for making them weak.
This
the church understood: it ruined man -- weakened him --
but it claimed to have "improved" him.
from The Twilight of the Idols (1888) by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by H.L. Mencken, who took this gibberish seriously.
Previous |
Next