155.
In Buddhism this thought prevails: "All passions, everything which creates emotions and leads to blood, is a call to action"—to this extent alone are its believers warned against evil. For action has no sense, it merely binds one to existence. All existence, however, has no sense. Evil is interpreted as that which leads to irrationalism: to the affirmation of means whose end is denied. A road to nonentity is the desideratum, hence all emotional impulses are regarded with horror. For instance: "On no account seek after revenge! Be the enemy of no one!"—The Hedonism of the weary finds its highest expression here. Nothing is more utterly foreign to Buddhism than the Jewish fanaticism of St. Paul: nothing could be more contrary to its instinct than the tension, fire, and unrest of the religious man, and, above all, that form of sensuality which sanctifies Christianity with the name "Love." Moreover, it is the cultured and very intellectual classes who find blessedness in Buddhism: a race wearied and besotted by centuries of philosophical quarrels, but not beneath all culture as those classes were from which Christianity sprang.... In the Buddhistic ideal, there is essentially an emancipation from good and evil: a very subtle suggestion of a Beyond to all morality is thought out in its teaching, and this Beyond is supposed to be compatible with perfection,—the condition being, that even good actions are only needed pro tem., merely as a means,—that is to say, in order to be free from all action.
156.
How very curious it is to see a Nihilistic religion such as Christianity, sprung from, and in keeping with, a decrepit and worn-out people, who have outlived all strong instincts, being transferred step by step to another environment—that is to say, to a land of young people, who have not yet lived at all. The joy of the final chapter, of the fold and of the evening, preached to barbarians and Germans! How thoroughly all of it must first have been barbarised, Germanised! To those who had dreamed of a Walhalla: who found happiness only in war!—A supernational religion preached in the midst of chaos, where no nations yet existed even.
157.
The only way to refute priests and religions is this: to show that their errors are no longer beneficent—that they are rather harmful; in short, that their own "proof of power" no longer holds good....
2. CONCERNING THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY.
158.
Christianity as an historical reality should not be confounded with that one root which its name recalls. The other roots, from which it has sprung, are by far the more important. It is an unprecedented abuse of names to identify such manifestations of decay and such abortions as the "Christian Church," "Christian belief," and "Christian life," with that Holy Name. What did Christ deny?—Everything which to-day is called Christian.