by Christianity's teaching of original sin. Mankind, according to Nietzsche, is corrupt and its highest values are depraved. He asserts that "all the values in which mankind at present summarizes its highest desiderata are decadence values". Mankind is depraved because it has lost its instincts and prefers what is harmful to it: I consider life itself instinct for growth, for durability, for accumulation of forces, for power: where the will to power is lacking there is decline.Depravity results because "nihilistic values dominate under the holiest names". Christian pity Christianity, as a religion of peace, is despised by Nietzsche. According to Nietzsche's account, pity has a depressive effect, loss of vitality and strength, and is harmful to life. It also preserves that which should naturally be destroyed. For a noble morality, pity is a weakness, but for Christianity, it is a virtue. In Schopenhauer's philosophy, which Nietzsche sees as the most nihilistic and opposed to life, pity is the highest virtue of all. But, for Nietzsche:[I]n the role of protector of the miserable, it is a prime agent in the promotion of décadence—pity persuades to extinction.... Of course, one doesn't say "extinction": one says "the other world," or "God," or "the true life," or Nirvana, salvation, blessedness.... This innocent rhetoric, from the realm of religious-ethical balderdash, appears a good deal less innocent when one reflects upon the tendency that it conceals beneath sublime words: the tendency to destroy life. Schopenhauer was hostile to life: that is why pity appeared to him as a virtue.He goes on further, mentioning that the moderns Leo Tolstoy and Richard Wagner adopted Schopenhauer's viewpoint. Aristotle, who lived in 384–322 BC, on the other hand, recognized the unhealthiness of pity and prescribed tragedy as a purgative. Theologians, priests, and philosophers Theology and philosophy, practiced by priests and idealists, are antithetical to reality and actuality. They are supposed to represent a high, pure and superior spirit that is above and has "benevolent contempt for the 'understanding', the 'senses', 'honors', 'good living' and 'science'." To Nietzsche, however, "[t]he pure soul is a pure lie," as he calls the priest a "professional denier, calumniator and poisoner of life,... [an] obvious attorney of mere emptiness" who stands truth upside down on its head. Theologians are placed by Nietzsche in the same class as priests, defining the faith that they foster as "closing one's eyes upon one's self once for all, to