THE ANTICHRIST
by Friedrich Nietzsche
Published 1895
translation by H.L.Mencken
Published 1920
PREFACE
This book belongs to the most rare of men. Perhaps not one of them is yet alive. It is
possible that they may be among those who understand my "Zarathustra": how could I
confound myself with those who are now sprouting ears?--First the day after tomorrow
must come for me. Some men are born posthumously.
The conditions under which any one understands me, and necessarily understands me--I
know them only too well. Even to endure my seriousness, my passion, he must carry
intellectual integrity to the verge of hardness. He must be accustomed to living on mountain
tops--and to looking upon the wretched gabble of politics and nationalism as beneath him.
He must have become indifferent; he must never ask of the truth whether it brings profit to
him or a fatality to him... He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that
no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth.
The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most
distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to
economize in the grand manner--to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm...Reverence
for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self.....
Very well, then! of that sort only are my readers, my true readers, my readers
foreordained: of what account are the rest?--The rest are merely humanity.--One must
make one's self superior to humanity, in power, in loftiness of soul,--in contempt.
FRIEDRICHW. NIETZSCHE.
1.
--Let us look each other in the face.We are Hyperboreans--we know well enough how
remote our place is. "Neither by land nor by water will you find the road to the
Hyperboreans": even Pindar<http://www.satanic.org.au/library/classics/antichrist.html>,in his day, knew that
much about us. Beyond the North, beyond the ice, beyond death--our life, our
happiness...We have discovered that happiness; we know the way; we got our knowledge of
it from thousands of years in the labyrinth.Who else has found it?--The man of today?--"I
don't know either the way out or the way in; I am whatever doesn't know either the way out
or the way in"--so sighs the man of today...This is the sort of modernity that made us ill,--
we sickened on lazy peace, cowardly compromise, the whole virtuous dirtiness of the
modern Yea and Nay. This tolerance and largeur of the heart that "forgives" everything
because it "understands" everything is a sirocco to us. Rather live amid the ice than among
modern virtues and other such south-winds! . . .We were brave enough; we spared neither
ourselves nor others; but we were a long time finding out where to direct our courage.We
grew dismal; they called us fatalists. Our fate--it was the fulness, the tension, the storing up
of powers.We thirsted for the lightnings and great deeds; we kept as far as possible from
the happiness of the weakling, from "resignation" . . . There was thunder in our air; nature,
as we embodied it, became overcast--for we had not yet found the way. The formula of our
happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal...
2.
What is good?--Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in
man.
What is evil?--Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness?--The feeling that power increases--thatresistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but
efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).
The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help
them to it.
What is more harmful than any vice?--Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak--
Christianity...
3.
The problem that I set here is not what shall replace mankind in the order of living
creatures (--man is an end--): but what type of manmust be bred, must be willed, as being
the most valuable, the most worthy of life, the most secure guarantee of the future.
This more valuable type has appeared often enough in the past: but always as a happy
accident, as an exception, never as deliberately willed. Very often it has been precisely the
most feared; hitherto it has been almost the terror of terrors ;--and out of that terror the
contrary type has been willed, cultivated and attained: the domestic animal, the herd
animal, the sick brute-man--the Christian. . .