The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
7
Christianity is called the religion of _pity._—Pity is opposed to the tonic passions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life: its action is depressing. A man loses power when he pities. By means of pity the drain on strength which suffering itself already introduces into the world is multiplied a thousandfold. Through pity, suffering itself becomes infectious; in certain circumstances it may lead to a total loss of life and vital energy, which is absurdly put of proportion to the magnitude of the cause (—the case of the death of the Nazarene). This is the first standpoint; but there is a still more important one. Supposing one measures pity according to the value of the reactions it usually stimulates, its danger to life appears in a much more telling light On the whole, pity thwarts the law of development which is the law of selection. It preserves that which is ripe for death, it fights in favour of the disinherited and the condemned of life; thanks to the multitude of abortions of all kinds which it maintains in life, it lends life itself a sombre and questionable aspect.
People have dared to call pity a virtue (—in every _noble_ culture it is considered as a weakness—); people went still further, they exalted it to _the_ virtue, the root and origin of all virtues,—but, of course, what must never be forgotten is the fact that this was done from the standpoint of a philosophy which was nihilistic, and on whose shield the device _The Denial of Life_ was inscribed. Schopenhauer was right in this respect: by means of pity, life is denied and made _more worthy of denial,_—pity is the _praxis_ of Nihilism. I repeat, this depressing and infectious instinct thwarts those instincts which aim at the preservation and enhancement of the value life: by _multiplying_ misery quite as much as by preserving all that is miserable, it is the principal agent in promoting decadence,—pity exhorts people to nothing, to _nonentity!_ But they do not say “_nonentity_” they say “Beyond,” or “God,” or “the true life”; or Nirvana, or Salvation, or Blessedness, instead. This innocent rhetoric, which belongs to the realm of the religio-moral idiosyncrasy, immediately appears to be _very much less innocent_ if one realises what the tendency is which here tries to drape itself in the mantle of sublime expressions—the tendency of hostility to life.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.