(For the record, we are still in Die
Fröhliche Wissenschaft.)
It is generally assumed that
great religions are founded by exceptional individuals: Judaism by Moses with
direct participation of God, Christianity by Jesus Christ, Himself part of the
Trinity, Islam by Muhammad, Buddhism by the Buddha, etc. (It may be argued that
Christianity was started not by Christ, but by Apostle Paul, etc., but all such
arguments are beside the point which I am raising here.) As usual for him,
Nietzsche makes a step further, asking the curious question (in #149 of Die
Fröhliche Wissenschaft) why none of the exceptional Greek sages of old, all
products of a vastly superior civilization to any of those where the great
religions have originated, had been capable of giving birth to a great religion
themselves. Here is that entry, given here in excerpts:
149.
The failures of reformations. Among the Greeks, several attempts to found new
Greek religions failed — which speaks for the higher civilization of the
Greeks, even in rather early times. It suggests that there must have been in
Greece at an early time large numbers of diverse individuals, whose diverse
needs and miseries could not be taken care of with a single prescription of
faith and hope.
Pythagoras
and Plato, perhaps, also Empedocles, and, much earlier yet, the Orphic
enthusiasts, wanted to found new religions; and the first two had souls and
talents, which fitted them so obviously for the role of religious founders that
we can scarcely marvel enough that they should have failed. Yet all they
managed to found were sects. Whenever the reformation of a whole people fails,
and it is only the sects, that elevate their leader, one concludes that the
people has become relatively heterogeneous, and has begun to move away from
rude herd instincts and the morality of mores: they are hovering in an
interesting position that is usually dismissed as a mere decay of morals and
corruption, although in fact it proclaims that the egg is approaching maturity
and that the eggshell is about to be broken. The more general and unconditional
the influence of an individual or the idea of an individual would be, the more
homogenous and the lower must the mass be which is influenced, while
counter-movements give evidence of counter-needs that also want to be satisfied
and recognized. Conversely we can always infer that a civilization is really
high when powerful and domineering natures have very little influence and
create only sects. This applies also to various arts, and to the field of
knowledge. Where someone rules, there are masses; and where we find the masses,
we also find a need to be enslaved. Where men are enslaved, there are few
individuals, and these are opposed by herd instincts and conscience.
From my perspective, I may also
point out the fact that the nations most closely associated with these great
religions are foster nations, who have adopted them from elsewhere.
Christianity was born among the Jews, but has not stayed with the Jews. Torah
Judaism, of Moses and Aaron, no longer exists. Exiled from India, Buddhism took
root in China and elsewhere. Even with Islam, its strongest adherents and
promoters were the Turks and indirectly the Persians, more than the Arabs
themselves. Truly it has been said that there is no honor for a prophet in his
own homeland. As for religions themselves, born in one place, it is in a wholly
different place that they reach their maturity and flourish. Putting it in
other words, it is not in the homeland of their founders that religions grow to
their full potential, but in the foster homes of others whose spirit and
historical destiny are more attuned to their message.
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