I. CRITIQUE OF RELIGION

All the beauty and sublimity we have bestowed upon real and imaginary things I will reclaim as the property and product of man: as his fairest apology. Man as poet, as thinker, as God, as love, as power: with what regal liberality he has lavished gifts upon things so as to impoverish himself and make himself feel wretched! His most unselfish act hitherto has been to admire and worship and to know how to conceal from himself that it was he who created what he admired.—

1. Genesis of Religions

On the origin of religion. — In the same way as today the uneducated man believes that anger is the cause of his being angry, spirit the cause of his thinking, soul the cause of his feeling – in short, just as there is still thoughtlessly posited a mass of psychological entities that are supposed to be causes – so, at a yet more naive stage, man explained precisely the same phenomena with the aid of psychological personal entities. Those conditions that seemed to him strange, thrilling, overwhelming, he interpreted as obsession and enchantment by the power of a person. (Thus the Christian, the most naive and backward species of man today, traces hope, repose, the feeling of “redemption,” back to psychological inspiration by God: to him, as an essentially suffering and disturbed type, the feeling of happiness, resignation and repose naturally seems strange and in need of explanation.) Among intelligent, strong, and vigorous races it is mainly the epileptic who inspires the conviction that a strange power is here at work; but every related condition of subjection, e.g., that of the inspired man, of the poet, of the great criminal, of passions such as love and revenge, also leads to the invention of extra-human powers. A condition is made concrete in a person, and when it overtakes us is thought to be effected by that person. In other words: In the psychological concept of God, a condition, in order to appear as effect, is personified as cause.

The psychological logic is this: When a man is suddenly and overwhelmingly suffused with the feeling of power – and this is what happens with all great affects – it raises in him a doubt about his own person: he does not dare to think himself the cause of this astonishing feeling – and so he posits a stronger person, a divinity, to account for it.

In summa: the origin of religion lies in extreme feelings of power which, because they are strange, take men by surprise: and like a sick man who, feeling one of his limbs uncommonly heavy, comes to the conclusion another man is lying on top of him, the naive homo religiosus divides himself into several persons. Religion is a case of “altération de la personalité.” A sort of feeling of fear and terror at oneself— But also a feeling of extraordinary happiness and exaltation— Among the sick the feeling of health is sufficient to inspire belief in God, in the nearness of God.

Rudimentary psychology of the religious man: — All changes are effects; all effects are effects of will ( – the concept “nature,” “law of nature” is lacking); all effects suppose an agent. Rudimentary psychology: one is a cause oneself only when one knows that one has performed an act of will.

Result: when man experiences the conditions of power, the imputation is that he is not their cause, that he is not responsible for them: they come without being willed, consequently we are not their author: the will that is not free (i.e., the consciousness that we have been changed without having willed it) needs an external will.

Consequence: man has not dared to credit himself with all his strong and surprising impulses – he has conceived them as “passive,” as “suffered,” as things imposed upon him: religion is the product of a doubt concerning the unity of the person, an altération of the personality: in so far as everything great and strong in man has been conceived as superhuman and external, man has belittled himself – he has separated the two sides of himself, one very paltry and weak, one very strong and astonishing, into two spheres, and called the former “man,” the latter “God.”

He has continued to think in this way; in the period of the moral idiosyncrasy he did not interpret his exalted and sublime moral states as “willed,” as “work” of the person. The Christian too divides his person into a mean and weak fiction which he calls man, and another which he calls God (redeemer, savior)—

Religion has debased the concept “man”; its ultimate consequence is that everything good, great, true is superhuman and bestowed only through an act of grace—

One way of raising man from the abasement produced by the subtraction of exalted and strong states as foreign conditions was the family theory. These exalted and strong states could at least be interpreted as the influence of our ancestors; we belonged together, in solidarity; we grow greater in our own eyes when we act according to a norm known to us.

Attempt by noble families to square religion with the feeling of their own worth. Poets and seers do the same: they feel proud, honored, and chosen for such an association – they attach great importance to not being considered at all as individuals, but merely as mouthpieces (Homer).

Step by step man takes possession of his exalted and proud states, he takes possession of his acts and works. Formerly one believed one was doing oneself an honor by denying responsibility for one’s highest acts and attributing them to – God. Absence of free will counted as that which imparted a higher value to an action: a god was conceived as its author.

Priests are the actors of something superhuman which they have to make easily perceptible, whether it be in the nature of ideals, gods, or saviors: in this they find their calling, for this their instincts serve them; to make everything as believable as possible they have to go as far as possible in posturing and posing; the shrewdness of their actor’s art must above all aim at giving them a good conscience, by means of which alone is it possible to carry true conviction.

The priest wants to have it understood that he counts as the highest type of man, that he rules – even over those who wield power – that he is indispensable, unassailable – that he is the strongest power in the community, absolutely not to be replaced or undervalued.

Means*: he alone possesses knowledge; he alone possesses virtue; he alone has sovereign lordship over himself; he alone is in a certain sense God and goes back to the divinity; he alone is the intermediary between God and other people; the divinity punishes every opposition to, every thought directed against a priest.

Means: truth exists. There is only one way of attaining it: to become a priest. Everything good in society, in nature, in tradition, is to be traced back to the wisdom of the priests. The holy book is their work. The whole of nature is only a fulfillment of the dogmas contained in it. There is no other source of the good than the priests. Every other kind of excellence is of a different order from that of the priest; e.g., that of the warrior.

Consequence: if the priest is to be the highest type, then the degrees which lead to his virtues must constitute the degrees of value among men. Study, emancipation from the senses, the nonactive, the impassible, absence of affects, the solemn; antithesis: the lowest order of man.

The priest has taught one kind of morality: in order that he shall be considered the highest type of man. He conceives an antithetical type: the chandala. To make these contemptible by every means provides a foil to the order of castes. – The priest’s extreme fear of sensuality is also conditioned by the insight that this is the most serious threat to the order of castes (that is, to order in general)— Every “more liberal tendency” in puncto puncti throws the marriage laws overboard—

The philosopher as a further development of the priestly type: — has the heritage of the priest in his blood; is compelled, even as rival, to struggle for the same ends with the same means as the priest of his time; he aspires to supreme authority.

What gives authority when one does not have physical power in one’s hands (no army, no weapons of any kind—)? How, in fact, does one gain authority over those who possess physical strength and authority? (They compete with the awe inspired by princes, by the victorious conqueror, by the wise statesman).

Only by arousing the belief that they have in their hands a higher, mightier strength – God. Nothing is sufficiently strong: the mediation and service of the priests is needed. They establish themselves as indispensable intermediaries: they need as conditions of their existence: (1) belief in the absolute superiority of their God, belief in their God; (2) that there is no other, no direct access to God. The second demand alone creates the concept “heterodoxy,” the first the concept “unbeliever” (i.e., one who believes in another God—).

Critique of the holy lie. — That the lie is permitted as a means to pious ends is part of the theory of every priesthood – to what extent it is part of their practice is the object of this inquiry.

But philosophers too, as soon as, with priestly ulterior motives, they form the intention of taking in hand the direction of mankind, at once also arrogate to themselves the right to tell lies: Plato before all. The most imposing is the twofold lie developed by the typically Aryan philosophers of the Vedanta: two systems contradictory in all their main features but for educational reasons alternating, supplementary and complementary. The lie of the one is intended to create a condition in which alone the truth of the other can become audible—

How far does the pious lie of priests and philosophers go? – One must ask what presuppositions they require for the purpose of education, what dogmas they have to invent to satisfy these presuppositions.

First: they must have power, authority, unconditional credibility on their side.

Secondly: they must have the whole course of nature in their hands, so that everything that affects the individual seems to be conditioned by their laws.

Thirdly: they must also possess a more extensive domain of power whose control eludes the eyes of its subjects: power of punishment in the beyond, in the “after death” – and of course the means of discovering the way to bliss.

– They have to set aside the concept of a natural course of events: but since they are clever and thoughtful people they are able to promise a host of effects, conditioned, of course, by prayers or the strict observance of their laws. – They can, moreover, prescribe a host of things that are absolutely reasonable – provided only that they do not point to experience or empiricism as the source of this wisdom, but to revelation or the consequence of “the sternest penances.”

The holy lie therefore applies principally: to the purpose of an action ( – natural purpose, reason are made to vanish: a moral purpose, the fulfillment of a law, a service to God appears as purpose—) : to the consequence of an action ( – natural consequence is interpreted as supernatural and, to produce a surer effect, the prospect of other, uncontrollable consequences is held out).

In this way a concept of good and evil is created that seems to be altogether divorced from the natural concept “useful,” “harmful,” “life-promoting,” “life-retarding” – in so far as another life is imagined, it can even be directly inimical to the natural concept of good and evil.

In this way the famous “conscience” is at last created: an inner voice which does not measure the value of every action with regard to its consequences, but with regard to its intention and the degree to which this intention conforms with the “laws.”

The holy lie therefore invented (1) a God who punishes and rewards, who strictly observes the law-book of the priests and is strict about sending them into the world as his mouthpieces and plenipotentiaries; (2) an afterlife in which the great punishment machine is first thought to become effective – to this end the immortality of the soul; (3) conscience in man as the consciousness that good and evil are permanent – that God himself speaks through it when it advises conformity with priestly precepts; (4) morality as denial of all natural processes, as reduction of all events to a morally conditioned event, moral effects (i.e., the idea of punishment and reward) as effects permeating all things, as the sole power, as the creator of all transformation; (5) truth as given, as revealed, as identical with the teaching of the priests: as the condition for all salvation and happiness in this life and the next.

In summa: what is the price of moral improvement? – Unhinging of reason, reduction of all motives to fear and hope (punishment and reward); dependence upon a priestly guardianship, upon pedantic formalities which claim to express a divine wifi; the implanting of a “conscience” which sets a false knowing in place of testing and experiment: as if what should be done and what left undone had already been determined – a kind of castration of the seeking and forward-striving spirit; in summa: the worst mutilation of man that can be imagined presented as the “good man.”

In practice, all the reason, the whole heritage of prudence, subtlety, caution which is the presupposition of the priestly canon, is afterwards arbitrarily reduced to a mere mechanism: conformity with the law itself counts as an end, as the highest end, life no longer has any problems; the whole conception of the world is polluted by the idea of punishment; with the object of representing the priestly life as the non plus ultra of perfection, life itself is transformed into a defamation and pollution of life; the concept “God” represents a turning away from life, a critique of life, even a contempt for it; truth is transformed into the priestly lie, the striving for truth into study of the noscriptures, into a means of becoming a theologian—

Toward a critique of the law-book of Manu. — The whole book is founded on the holy lie. Was the well-being of mankind the inspiration of this system? Was this species of man, who believes in the interestedness of every action, interested or not in imposing this system? To improve mankind – how is this intention inspired? Where is the concept of improvement derived from?

We find a species of man, the priestly, which feels itself to be the norm, the high point and the supreme expression of the type man: this species derives the concept “improvement” from itself. It believes in its own superiority, it wills itself to be superior in fact: the origin of the holy lie is the will to power—

Establishment of rule: to this end, the rule of those concepts that place a non plus ultra of power with the priesthood. Power through the lie – in the knowledge that one does not possess it physically, militarily – the lie as a supplement to power, a new concept of “truth.”

It is a mistake to suppose an unconscious and naive development here, a kind of self-deception— Fanatics do not invent such carefully thought-out systems of oppression— The most coldblooded reflection was at work here; the same kind of reflection as a Plato applied when he imagined his “Republic.” “He who wills the end must will the means” – all lawgivers have been clear in their minds regarding this politician’s insight.

We possess the classic model in specifically Aryan forms: we may therefore hold the best-endowed and most reflective species of man responsible for the most fundamental lie that has ever been told— That lie has been copied almost everywhere: Aryan influence has corrupted all the world—

A lot is said today about the Semitic spirit of the New Testament: but what is called Semitic is merely priestly – and in the racially purest Aryan law-book, in Manu, this kind of “Semitism,” i.e., the spirit of the priest, is worse than anywhere else.

The Christian priest is from the first a mortal enemy of sensuality: no greater antithesis can be imagined than the innocently awed and solemn attitude adopted by, e.g., the most honorable women’s cults of Athens in the presence of the symbols of sex. The act of procreation is the mystery as such in all nonascetic religions: a sort of symbol of perfection and of the mysterious design of the future: rebirth, immortality.

Physiology of the nihilistic religions. Each and every nihilistic religion: a systematized case history of sickness employing religious-moralistic nomenclature.

With pagan cults, it is around the interpretations of the great annual cycles that the cult revolves. With the Christian cult, it is around a cycle of paralytic phenomena that the cult revolves—

The only way to refute priests and religions is this: to show that their errors have ceased to be beneficial – that they rather do harm; in short, that their own “proof of power” no longer holds good—

two are the forces most precious to mankind.

The first is Demeter, the Goddess.
She is the Earth—or any name you wish to call her—and she sustains humanity with solid food.

Next came the son of the virgin, Dionysus, bringing the counterpart to bread, wine and the blessings of life’s flowing juices.
His blood, the blood of the grape, lightens the burden of our mortal misery.
When, after their daily toils, men drink their fill, sleep comes to them, bringing release from all their troubles. There is no other cure for sorrow.
Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour out to offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed.

Do not mistake the rule of force for true power. Men are not shaped by force.

This God [Dionysus] is also a prophet. Possession by his ecstasy, his sacred frenzy, opens the soul’s prophetic eyes.
Those whom his spirit takes over completely often with frantic tongues foretell the future.

We have seen that Dionysos has no contact whatever with the Aryan world of ideas, but that he can be connected at a number of points with non-Hindu Dravidian religion, as exemplified by the religion of the Kotas of South India and the Oraons and others in the Chota Nagpur-Orissa area.

The cult of Dionysos had no element of asceticism or self-inflicted suffering.

If we take account only of this denoscription of the Greek Dionysos, we find a number of incontestable resemblances between Dionysos and Siva; it is easy to understand why the two have been so often identified.

We are often reproached with having taken as our slogan word anarchy which stirs up fear in so many minds. “Your ideas are excellent – we are told – but you must admit that you have made an unfortunate choice in naming your party. Anarchy, in current speech, is the synonym for disorder, for chaos; that word awakens in the mind the idea of colliding interests, of individuals at war with each other, who cannot succeed in establishing harmony.” ...

The anarchist party hastened to accept the name that was given to it. It insisted first of all on the hyphen uniting an and archy, explaining that under that form, the word an-archy, of Greek origin, signified no power, and not “disorder”; but soon it accepted the word as it was, without giving a useless task to proof-readers or a lesson in Greek to its readers.

The word was thus returned to its primitive, ordinary and common meaning, expressed in 1816 in these words by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. “The philosopher who wants to reform a bad law does not preach insurrection against it…. The character of the anarchist is quite different. He denies the existence of the law, he rejects its validity, he incites men to ignore it as a law and to rise up against its implementation.” The meaning of the word has become even broader today: the anarchist denies not only existing laws, but all established power, all authority; yet the essence remains the same; the anarchist rebels – and this is where he begins – against power, authority, under whatever form it may appear.

But this word, we are told, awakens in the mind the negation of order, and hence the idea of disorder, of chaos!

Let us try to understand each other. What kind of order are you talking about? Is it the harmony of which we dream, we anarchists? The harmony that will establish itself freely in human relations once humanity ceases to be divided into two classes, one sacrificed to the other? The harmony that will arise spontaneously from the solidarity of interests, when all men will form the same single family, when each will work for the well-being of all and all for the well-being of each? Evidently not! Those who reproach anarchism for being the negation of order are not speaking of that future harmony; they speak of order as it is conceived in our present society. So let us take a look at this order which anarchy wishes to destroy.

Order, as it is understood today, means nine-tenths of humanity working to procure luxury, pleasure and the satisfaction of the most execrable of passions for a handful of idlers.

Order is the deprivation for this nine-tenths of humanity of all that is necessary for a healthy life and for the reasonable development of the intellectual qualities. Reducing nine-tenths of humanity to the condition of beasts of burden living from day to day, without ever daring to think of the pleasures man can gain from the study of science, from artistic creation – that is order!

Order is poverty; it is famine become the normal order of society. It is the Irish peasant dying of hunger; it is the peasant of a third of Russia dying of diphtheria, of typhus, of hunger as a result of need in the midst of piles of wheat destined for export. It is the people of Italy reduced to abandoning their luxuriant countryside to wander over Europe seeking some tunnel or other to excavate, where they will risk being crushed to death after having survived a few months longer. It is land taken from the peasant for raising animals to feed the rich; it is land left fallow rather than being given back to those who ask nothing better than to cultivate it.

Order is the woman selling herself to feed her children; it is the child reduced to working in a factory or dying of starvation; it is the worker reduced to the state of a machine. It is the phantom of the worker rising up at the doors of the rich. It is the phantom of the people rising up at the gates of the government.

Order is a tiny minority, elevated into the seats of government, which imposes itself in that way on the majority and prepares its children to continue the same functions in order to maintain the same privileges by fraud, corruption, force and massacre.

Order is the continual war of man against man, of trade against trade, of class against class, of nation against nation. It is the cannon that never ceases to roar over Europe; it is the devastation of countryside, the sacrifice of whole generations on the battlefield, the destruction in a single year of wealth accumulated by centuries of hard toil.

Order is servitude, it is the shackling of thought, the brutalizing of the human race, maintained by the sword and the whip. It is the sudden death by fire-damp, or the slow death by suffocation, of hundreds of miners blown up or buried each year by the greed of the employers, and shot down and bayoneted as soon as they dare complain.

Order, finally, is the drowning in blood of the Paris Commune. It is the death of thirty thousand men, women and children, torn apart by shells, shot down, and buried alive, under the streets of Paris. It is the destiny of Russian youth, immured in prisons, isolated in the snows of Siberia, the best and purest of them dying by the hangman’s rope.

That is order.

And disorder? What is this you call disorder?

It is the uprising of the people against this ignoble order, breaking its fetters, destroying the barriers, and marching towards a better future. It is humanity at the most glorious point in history. It is the revolt of thought on the eve of the revolution; it is the overthrowing of hypotheses sanctioned by the immobility of preceding centuries; it is the opening out of a whole flood of new ideas, audacious inventions, it is the solution of the problems of science.

Disorder is the abolition of ancient slaveries, it is the uprising of the communes; it is the destruction of feudal serfdom, the effort to make an end to economic servitude.

Disorder is the insurrection of peasants rising up against priests and lords, burning castles to give place to farmsteads, emerging from their hovels to take their place in the sun. It is France abolishing royalty, and delivering a mortal blow to serfdom in all of Western Europe.

Disorder is 1848, making the kings tremble and proclaiming the right to work. It is the people of Paris who fight for a new idea and who, while succumbing to massacre, bequeath to humanity the idea of the free commune, and open for it the way towards that revolution whose approach we foresee and whose name will be “the social revolution.”

Disorder – what they call disorder – is all the ages during which whole generations sustained an incessant struggle and sacrificed themselves to prepare a better existence for humanity by freeing it from the servitude of the past. It is the ages during which the popular genius took its free way and in a few years made gigantic steps forward, without which men would have remained in the condition of the slave of antiquity, cringing and debased by misery.

Disorder is the blossoming of the most beautiful passions and the greatest of devotions, it is the epic of supreme human love.

The word anarchy, implying the negation of order, and invoking the memory of the most beautiful moments in the life of the peoples – is it not well chosen for a party that marches towards the conquest of a better future?