The Antichrist · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
21.
The things necessary to Buddhism are a very mild climate, customs of great gentleness and liberality, and _no_ militarism; moreover, it must get its start among the higher and better educated classes. Cheerfulness, quiet and the absence of desire are the chief desiderata, and they are _attained_. Buddhism is not a religion in which perfection is merely an object of aspiration: perfection is actually normal.-- Under Christianity the instincts of the subjugated and the oppressed come to the fore: it is only those who are at the bottom who seek their salvation in it. Here the prevailing pastime, the favourite remedy for boredom is the discussion of sin, self-criticism, the inquisition of conscience; here the emotion produced by _power_ (called "God") is pumped up (by prayer); here the highest good is regarded as unattainable, as a gift, as "grace." Here, too, open dealing is lacking; concealment and the darkened room are Christian. Here body is despised and hygiene is denounced as sensual; the church even ranges itself against cleanliness (--the first Christian order after the banishment of the Moors closed the public baths, of which there were 270 in Cordova alone). Christian, too, is a certain cruelty toward one's self and toward others; hatred of unbelievers; the will to persecute. Sombre and disquieting ideas are in the foreground; the most esteemed states of mind, bearing the most respectable names, are epileptoid; the diet is so regulated as to engender morbid symptoms and over-stimulate the nerves. Christian, again, is all deadly enmity to the rulers of the earth, to the "aristocratic"--along with a sort of secret rivalry with them (--one resigns one's "body" to them; one wants _only_ one's "soul"...). And Christian is all hatred of the intellect, of pride, of courage, of freedom, of intellectual _libertinage_; Christian is all hatred of the senses, of joy in the senses, of joy in general....
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.