17.

Wherever the will to power declines in any form, there is always a physiological regression, a décadence decline. The deity of decline, shorn of its most masculine virtues and drives, now necessarily becomes the god of the physiologically regressed, the weak. They do not call themselves the weak; they call themselves "the good." One understands, without needing a hint, at which moments in history the dualistic fiction of a good and an evil god first becomes possible. With the same instinct with which the subjugated bring their god down to the "Good in itself," they strike the good qualities from the god of their conquerors; they take revenge on their masters by demonizing their god. The good god, just like the devil: both are the offspring of décadence.

How can one still yield so much to the simplicity of Christian theologians today, to decree with them that the evolution of the concept of God from the "God of Israel," from the folk-god to the Christian god, to the epitome of all good, is a progress? Even Renan does it. As if Renan had a right to simplicity! The opposite is obvious. If the prerequisites of ascending life, if everything strong, brave, masterful, and proud are eliminated from the concept of God, if it sinks step by step to the symbol of a crutch for the weary, a lifebuoy for all the drowning, if it becomes a poor-man's god, a sinner's god, a sick-man's god par excellence by excellence/preeminently, and the predicate "Savior," "Redeemer" remains as the divine predicate in general: what does such a transformation speak of? Such a reduction of the divine?

Indeed: "the kingdom of God" has become larger with it. Formerly, he only had his people, his "chosen" people. Meanwhile, he went, just like his people themselves, into foreign lands, on a journey; since then, he never sat still anywhere anymore: until he finally became at home everywhere, the great cosmopolitan, until he got "the great number" and half the earth on his side. But the god of "the great number," the democrat among the gods, nevertheless did not become a proud pagan god: he remained a Jew, he remained the god of the corners, the god of all dark nooks and places, of all unhealthy quarters of the whole world! His world empire is, as before, an underworld empire, a hospital, a basement empire, a ghetto empire. And he himself, so pale, so weak, so décadent. Even the palest of the pale still became masters over him, the lord metaphysicians, the conceptual albinos. These spun around him until he, hypnotized by their movements, became a spider himself, became a metaphysician himself. Now he spun the world out of himself again—sub specie Spinozae under the aspect of Spinoza/from the perspective of Spinoza—now he transfigured himself into something ever thinner and paler, became "ideal," became "pure spirit," became an "absolutum" absolute, became a "thing-in-itself." Decay of a god: God became "thing-in-itself."

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