at the strong races of northern Europe did not repudiate this
Christian god does little credit to their gift for religion--and not
much more to their taste. They ought to have been able to make an end of
such a moribund and worn-out product of the _decadence_. A curse lies
upon them because they were not equal to it; they made illness,
decrepitude and contradiction a part of their instincts--and since then
they have not managed to _create_ any more gods. Two thousand years have
come and gone--and not a single new god! Instead, there still exists,
and as if by some intrinsic right,--as if he were the _ultimatum_ and
_maximum_ of the power to create gods, of the _creator spiritus_ in
mankind--this pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid
image of decay, conjured up out of emptiness, contradiction and vain
imagining, in which all the instincts of _decadence_, all the cowardices
and wearinesses of the soul find their sanction!--

20.

In my condemnation of Christianity I surely hope I do no injustice to a
related religion with an even larger number of believers: I allude to
_Buddhism_. Both are to be reckoned among the nihilistic religions--they
are both _decadence_ religions--but they are separated from each other
in a very remarkable way. For the fact that he is able to _compare_ them
at all the critic of Christianity is indebted to the scholars of
India.--Buddhism is a hundred times as realistic as Christianity--it is
part of its living heritage that it is able to face problems objectively
and coolly; it is the product of long centuries of philosophical
speculation. The concept, "god," was already disposed of before it
appeared. Buddhism is the only genuinely _positive_ religion to be
encountered in history, and this applies even to its epistemology (which
is a strict phenomenalism). It does not speak of a "struggle with sin,"
but, yielding to reality, of the "struggle with suffering." Sharply
differentiating itself from Christianity, it puts the self-deception
that lies in moral concepts behind it; it is, in my phrase, _beyond_
good and evil.--The two physiological facts upon which it grounds itself
and upon which it bestows its chief attention are: first, an excessive
sensitiveness to sensation, which manifests itself as a refined
susceptibility to pain, and _secondly_, an extraordinary spirituality, a
too protracted concern with concepts and logical procedures, under the
influence of which the instinct