But to the extent to which "improving" acts as an argument, deteriorating must also act as a refutation. The error can be shown to be an error, by examining the lives of those who represent it: a false step, a vice can refute.... This indecent form of opposition, which comes from below and behind—the doglike kind of attack, has not died out either. Priests, as psychologists, never discovered anything more interesting than spying out the secret vices of their adversaries—they prove Christianity by looking about for the world's filth. They apply this principle more particularly to the greatest on earth, to the geniuses: readers will remember how Goethe has been attacked on every conceivable occasion in Germany (Klopstock and Herder were among the first to give a "good example" in this respect—birds of a feather flock together).
397.
One must be very immoral in order to make people moral by deeds. The moralist's means are the most terrible that have ever been used; he who has not the courage to be an immoralist in deeds may be fit for anything else, but not for the duties of a moralist.
Morality is a menagerie; it assumes that iron bars may be more useful than freedom, even for the creatures it imprisons; it also assumes that there are animal-tamers about who do not shrink from terrible means, and who are acquainted with the use of red-hot iron. This terrible species, which enters into a struggle with the wild animal, is called "priests."
***
Man, incarcerated in an iron cage of errors, has become a caricature of man; he is sick, emaciated, ill-disposed towards himself, filled with a loathing of the impulses of life, filled with a mistrust of all that is beautiful and happy in life—in fact, he is a wandering monument of misery. How shall we ever succeed in vindicating this phenomenon—this artificial, arbitrary, and recent miscarriage—the sinner—which the priests have bred on their territory?
***
In order to think fairly of morality, we must put two biological notions in its place: the taming of the wild beasts, and the rearing of a particular species.
The priests of all ages have always pretended that they wished to "improve" ... But we, of another persuasion, would laugh if a lion-tamer ever wished to speak to us of his "improved" animals. As a rule, the taming of a beast is only achieved by deteriorating it: even the moral man is not a better man; he is rather a weaker member of his species. But he is less harmful....
398.