The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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“Truth” as it is understood by every prophet, every sectarian, every free thinker, every socialist and every church-man, is an absolute proof of the fact that these people haven’t even begun that discipline of the mind and that process of self-mastery, which is necessary for the discovery of any small, even exceedingly small truth.—Incidentally, the deaths of martyrs have been a great misfortune in the history of the world: they led people astray.... The conclusion which all idiots, women and common people come to, that there must be something in a cause for which someone lays down his life (or which, as in the case of primitive Christianity, provokes an epidemic of sacrifices),—this conclusion put a tremendous check upon all investigation, upon the spirit of investigation and of caution. Martyrs have _harmed_ the cause of truth. ... Even to this day it only requires the crude fact of persecution, in order to create an honourable name for any obscure sect who does not matter in the least What? is a cause actually changed in any way by the fact that some one has laid down his life for it? An error which becomes honourable, is simply an error that possesses one seductive charm the more: do you suppose, dear theologians, that we shall give you the chance of acting the martyrs for your lies?—A thing is refuted by being laid respectfully on ice, and theologians are refuted in the same way. This was precisely the world-historic foolishness of all persecutors; they lent the thing they combated a semblance of honour by conferring the fascination of martyrdom upon it.... Women still lie prostrate before an error to-day, because they have been told that some one died on the cross for it _Is the cross then an argument?_—But concerning all these things, one person alone has said what mankind has been in need of for thousands of years,—_Zarathustra._ “Letters of blood did they write on the way they went, and their folly taught that truth is proved by blood. “But blood is the very worst testimony of truth; blood poisoneth even the purest teaching, and turneth it into delusion and into blood feuds. “And when a man goeth through fire for his teaching—what does that prove? Verily, it is more when out of one’s own burning springeth one’s own teaching.”[10]
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.