Neither God Nor Devil*
JACQUES B. BRUNIUS
TO ATHEISTS
I
WANT TO SPEAK
now to all those who, like myself, have no god.
On the horizon
I
can discern little scattered groups of them. They
have already ventured too far alone, unconcerned with what was
happening behind them, detached from the enigmas they have solved
for themselves, unconscious of the knots which still remain to
be
severed, blind to the hymeneals to be tied. They bear various labels,
either adopted by them<;elves or given them by others. There are
free;.thinkers, agnostics, the irreligious, the impious, the anti-religious,
unbeliewrs, anti-clericals, rationalists. Very few will consent to declare
themselves atheists, a word still bearing a heavy burden of reproba–
tion. There are also the nietzscheans. They have all my sympathy
for they are out of luck: there is n_o subject and no man about whom
people have talked and continue to talk more nonsense than about
Nietzsche. The fact that the fascists have adopted him would be of no
importance-the catholics after all have appropriated Rimbaud–
but the worst of it is that a lot of nit-wits have hastened to make a
present of Nietzsche to the dictators, apparently without having read
him. Let it pass. Not being a nietzschean,
I
leave it to the specialists
to defend Nietzsche, but in passing
I
should like to say a few words
to them.
It
was but normal and necessary, and to be foreseen, that
during the process of man's emancipation a Nietzsche should have
arisen to oppose in the most aggressive way all the powers relentle..-.sly
bent on crushing the individual, by the 'will to power' conceived on
the individual plane. Moreover, the unconquerable disgust inspired
by the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie, solely bent on gorging itself,
could but result in restoring to the 'dangerous life' its prestige of
chivalry.
It
is only by an odious fraud that the dictators lay claim to
nietzschism, precisely in order to perpetuate the powers of oppression,
objects of Nietzsche's revolt. Nationalists
a
Ia Barres, transfering to
the whole nation
this
impulse of individual aggressiveness, had already
*
To be published by
Fontaine
Editions. The preceding chapters are entitled:
I.
Skull and Crossbones; II. Quartered Men; III. To a Christian.
