Eugen Dühring: Elimination of All Judaic Elements, Chapter Four, Fourth Point
Ausscheidung alles Judäerthums, Kapitel Vier, Vierter Punkt
Source Material: German Scan | German Corrected
Editor’s Note: This work is part of a series; refer to Table of Contents.
Fourth Point:
Religion-related character traits of the ancient Germans, distinguished from the Celtic tribes and in contrast to the Jews. Meaning of the original absence of priests.
If one examines the origins of the German-national religion, one finds not only the exact opposite of all Judaism and Israeli Christianity, but also, within the framework of the Aryan peoples, a relatively significant freedom from superstition and religious tendencies toward submissiveness.
The earliest state about which an insightful observer has provided us with some details is the one in which the Germans found themselves when Caesar was in Gaul. This commander reports to us in his writings on the Gallic War not unimportant details about the religion of the peoples he dealt with or came into contact with.
He describes, on the one hand, the Gauls and, in a very favorable contrast to them, on the other hand, the Germans. In doing so, he relies on direct interrogations of those who had to report to him about the tribes whose beliefs, institutions, and customs he had not observed himself.
His account of the Germans revealed the distinguishing circumstance that this people at that time did not have actual gods but instead venerated natural objects, such as fire. However, even this cult must have been relatively free of superstition; for Caesar highlights as an advantage of the Germans that they had no priestly class, which, for us, can only be assessed with regard to the still undeveloped division of functions.
In contrast, he emphasizes how the Gauls not only had priests but also granted them tremendous influence over public affairs—indeed, over all matters. Clearly, the tribal contrast is unmistakable here for us.
Even today, in France and England, the national spirit is far more bound in terms of religion than in Germany.
The Gauls and the inhabitants of ancient Britain belonged to the Celtic race, and this race has always been inclined to submit to religious prejudices and priests, while the Germanic race, throughout its entire history, has never ceased to repeatedly rebel anew against the foreign imposition of absolute priestly rule.
At the very least, it is only from this perspective that one can understand how Germany, in particular, had to become the soil on which, already in the Middle Ages, the secular powers contested the Church’s dominance in its fullness of power and, in modern times with the Reformation, actually wrested it away to a decisive extent.
The medieval attempts by the emperors against the popes were already a stirring of the naturally freedom-loving spirit that has been inherent to the Germans from the beginning.
However, the religious Reformation would be misunderstood in its deeper essence if, despite all the accumulated superstition in which it remained mired, one did not see in it a rebellion in the sense of that ancestral drive for freedom.
Let us therefore not forget that priestless origin attested by Caesar and that initial inclination to direct religious attention to natural objects and forces as the causes of events and outcomes, rather than to actual gods.
Among other races, such as the Slavs, something similar seems to have prevailed originally. Indeed, it may well be that most peoples, before they developed a more artificial system of superstition, practiced a kind of nature worship. However, this alone is not what matters.
The Germans were relatively advanced and yet simple and natural in their religion. Even later, in the face of all things foreign, they retained that advantageous inclination, while the originally Celtic lands, even with their later mixed populations, repeated the old spectacle of religious devotion.
The contempt with which Caesar speaks of the idols of the Gauls, of the human sacrifices there, and of the priestly power that intervened in private rights and the most intimate relationships, suppressing every rebellion, vividly recalls the entire history of that land lying before us.
Here, the Celtic national character, least distracted by the Roman mixture, has been able to reveal itself even more in its essence than among the Britons, where later the Norman element brought about a significant change for the better.
Among very many peoples, traces of human sacrifices can be found in the crudest primordial states; but the Gauls, in Caesar’s time, were already quite developed—far more so than the Germans.
Nevertheless, it was precisely then that these Gauls stuffed their enormous idolatrous puppets with people destined for sacrificial death. One almost believes they can see omens of later history in this, when thinking ahead to the Parisian St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and similar events.
Indeed, through the tribal predispositions, a unity of character enters the history of a people which, where it concerns the worse traits, is admittedly not appealing.
However unpleasant the impression may be that this Celtic legacy of devotion and priestly veneration leaves among such an outstanding cultured people as the French, amidst the best of the Aryan peoples, it is still far removed by a wide margin from the corresponding Jewish conditions.
The latter not only had human sacrifices literally at the beginning of their history but also—without even mentioning their modern human slaughter here—at the end of their Israeli existence, a very particular echo of it in the notion that Jehovah, to be appeased, demanded a highly select sacrifice, namely that of his own son.
It will be said that this is a Christian idea; but a name that is often enough synonymous with Jewish will not prevent the discerning from recognizing here the continuity in the perpetuation of ancient Jewish notions of human sacrifice, and in that specific case seeing only an escalation and refinement of Jewish cruelty and malice.
How else could a Jewish god have been imbued with the urge for such alleged atonement if the Jewish mindset itself had not harbored and nurtured such impulses as part of its natural disposition!
Yet a comparison with a modern cultured people, even if it concerns their worst excesses, does the Jews too much honor and inevitably becomes an injustice.
The Celtic spirit is passionately devout but possesses neither that malice nor that servile nature by which the Jewish race, scarcely comparable due to its depth and baseness, is characterized.
Moreover, the French, whose tribal nature, on its better side, also rests on the later admixture of the Frankish element, must attribute the worst traits of their history to the Jewish-Christian misguidance of the Celtic spirit. Indeed, the most egregious excesses in European peoples’ history are, for the most part, results of foreign religion.
To avoid being unjust, however, one must not overlook that the French, in their great Revolution, roused themselves to a step against religion—albeit one soon undone.
The attempt to abolish religion would not have been possible if the ancient religious predisposition had been linked to a political spirit hostile to freedom.
If one were to also consider the current population of the British Isles and the history of this population, the prevailing differences—especially those between the English and the Irish—would reveal the influences of descent and tribal mixtures on the shaping of religion in a highly instructive way.
However, it is not my intention here to delve into these details. It suffices that from the previous statements about France and England, one can see how, to the extent that Celtic blood predominated, the receptivity to the foreign, imported religious system was greater and led to lower and less free expressions of that component of Christianity which is everywhere attributed to the better aspects of the modern national spirit.
The other, worse component—namely the Israeli one—had to intensify its harmful effect all the more, the weaker the modern national resistance was.
The greatest resilience has been among the Germans; and here, even in the so-called Christian-Germanic, the Germanic element has persisted as an independent factor. This would hardly have happened if a national character had not been present, as already indicated by the traits Caesar highlighted.
To remain without priests for a long period of development is indeed a sign of a great strength of the individual sense of freedom, which does not easily surrender its genuinely natural religion to custodial administration.
However, wherever any element of superstitious cult exists, no matter how natural it may be, the formation of a priestly class cannot be avoided in the course of societal development.
As labor and all functions divide, so too does the religious function, which was once common to all members of the people, pass to a specific professional class, and with this, superstition naturally increases. To the natural obscurities and errors are then added those deliberately stirred and nurtured by the interests of that class.
Therefore, we will not concern ourselves with investigating when the era of priests began among the Germans. In any case, this nation distinguished itself from others by the fact that, due to the relative naturalness and health of its original religious conceptions, it was able to avoid a priesthood for a long time.
However, any priesthood among the Germans, despite the damaging and oppressive institutions of the foreign, imported religion, has always had less influence than among other modern nations.
The Nordic spirit has repeatedly risen against the creeping influence of priests, and even now, northern Germany is the place where the people, relatively speaking, care the least about their preachers and priests and have almost entirely cut off their influence on public and private affairs.
What Caesar reported, then, is not a lifeless antiquity but an important trait of that character which, throughout the nation’s history, has proven itself despite all foreign overshadowing and will continue to prove itself even more visibly in the future, when it comes to the complete elimination of religious Asiaticism—that is, Israeli Christianity—for modern peoples.