The Portable Nietzsche

by Friedrich Nietzsche

30 The instinctive hatred of reality: a consequence of an extreme capacity for suffering and excitement which no longer wants any contact at all because it feels every contact too deeply. The instinctive exclusion of any antipathy, any hostility, any boundaries or divisions in man’s feelings: the consequence of an extreme capacity for suffering and excitement which experiences any resistance, even any compulsion to resist, as unendurable displeasure (that is, as harmful, as something against which the instinct of self-preservation warns us); and finds blessedness (pleasure) only in no longer offering any resistance to anybody, neither to evil nor to him who is evil—love as the only, as the last possible, way of life. These are the two physiological realities on which, out of which, the doctrine of redemption grew. I call this a sublime further development of hedonism on a thoroughly morbid basis. Most closely related to it, although with a generous admixture of Greek vitality and nervous energy, is Epicureanism, the pagan doctrine of redemption. Epicurus, a typical decadent—first recognized as such by me. The fear of pain, even of infinitely minute pain—that can end in no other way than in a religion of love.