To me all morality is one. Morality is hunger and thirst after righteousness. Morality is a quality of will. The differences that there are between Christ and Nietzsche are differences of the intellect—where no man is final.
The doctrine of each is a doctrine of sacrifice; with one it is a sacrifice of love, with the other it is a sacrifice of labor. For myself, I care not for the half-truths of any man. I said to my soul, “Shall I cast out love for labor?” And my soul replied, “For what wilt thou labor but love?”
Moral sublimity lies in the escape from self. The doctrine of Christ is a negation of life, that of Nietzsche an affirmation; it seems to me much easier to attain to sublimity with the former.
It is easier to die for righteousness than to live for it. If you are to die, you have but to fix your eyes upon your vision, and see that you do not take them away. But the man who will live for righteousness—he must plant and reap, must gather fire-wood and establish a police-force; and to do these things nobly is not easy; to do them sublimely seems hardly possible at all.
Twenty centuries ago the Jewish world was a little plain, and God a loving Father. He held you in his arms, he spoke to you in every dream, in every fantasy, in every accident. Life was very short—but a little trial—you had only to be patient, and nothing mattered. Society did not exist—only your neighbor existed. Knowledge did not exist, nor was it needed—the world was to end—perhaps to-night—and what difference made all the rest? You took no heed for the morrow—for would not your Father send you bread? You resisted not evil—for if you died, was not that all that you could ask?
It was with such a sweet and simple faith as this that the victory of Jesus Christ was won. These were his ideas, and as the soul was all-consuming with him, he lived by them and died by them, and stands as the symbol of faith.
And now twenty centuries have gone by. And a new teacher has come to whom also the soul is all-consuming. What ideas has he? And what task does he face?