The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
56
After all, the question is, to what _end_ are falsehoods perpetrated? The fact that, in Christianity, “holy” ends are entirely absent, constitutes _my_ objection to the means it employs. Its ends are only _bad_ ends: the poisoning, the calumniation and the denial of life, the contempt of the body, the degradation and self-pollution of man by virtue of the concept sin,—consequently its means are bad as well.—My feelings are quite the reverse when I read the law-book of _Manu, an_ incomparably superior and more intellectual work, which it would be a sin against the _spirit_ even to _mention_ in the same breath with the Bible. You will guess immediately why: it has a genuine philosophy behind it, _in_ it, not merely an evil-smelling Jewish distillation of Rabbinism and superstition,—it gives something to chew even to the most fastidious psychologist.
And, _not_ to forget the most important point of all, it is fundamentally different from every kind of Bible: by means of it the _noble classes,_ the philosophers and the warriors guard and guide the masses; it is replete with noble values, it is filled with a feeling of perfection, with a saying of yea to life, and a triumphant sense of well-being in regard to itself and to life,—the sun shines upon the whole book.—All those things which Christianity smothers with its bottomless vulgarity: procreation, woman, marriage, are here treated with earnestness, with revere nee, with love and confidence. How can one possibly place in the hands of children and women, a book that contains those vile words: “to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband ... it is better to marry than to burn.”[11] And is it decent to be a Christian so long as the very origin of man is Christianised,—that is to say, befouled, by the idea of the _immaculata conceptio?_ ... I know of no book in which so many delicate and kindly things are said to woman, as in the Law-Rook of Manu; these old grey-beards and saints have a manner of being gallant to women which, perhaps, cannot be surpassed. “The mouth of a woman,” says Manu on one occasion, “the breast of a maiden, the prayer of a child, and the smoke of the sacrifice, are always pure.” Elsewhere he says: “there is nothing purer than the light of the sun, the shadow cast by a cow, air, water, fire and the breath of a maiden.” And finally—perhaps this is also a holy lie:—“all the openings of the body above the navel are pure, all those below the navel are impure. Only in a maiden is the whole body pure.”
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.