No More Learning

By the spirit which it has thus
given to European humanity—in conjunction with
the power of abnegation, and very often in con-
junction with the profound conviction and loyalty of
thatabnegation—ithas perhaps chiselled and shaped
the most subtle individualities which have ever
existed in human society : the individualities of the
higher ranks of the Catholic clergy, especially when
these priests have sprung from a noble family, and
have brought to their work, from the very beginning,
the innate grace of gesture, the dominating glance


## p. 60 (#92) ##############################################

62
THE DAWN OF DAY.
of the eye, and beautiful hands and feet. Here the
human face acquires that spiritualisation brought
about by the continual ebb and flow of two kinds
of happiness (the feeling of power and the feeling
of submission) after a carefully-planned manner
of living has conquered the beast in man. Here
an activity, which consists in blessing, forgiving
sins, and representing the Almighty, ever keeps
alive in the soul, and even in the body, the conscious-
ness of a supreme mission; here we find that noble
contempt concerning the perishable nature of the
body, of well-being, and of happiness, peculiar to
born soldiers: their pride lies in obedience, a dis-
tinctly aristocratic trait; their excuse and their
idealism arise from the enormous impossibility of
their task. The surpassing beauty and subtleties
of these princes of the Church have always proved
to the people the truth of the Church; a momentary
brutalisation of the clergy (such as came about in
Luther's time) always tended to encourage the con-
trary belief. And would it be maintained that this
result of beauty and human subtlety, shown in
harmony of figure, intellect, and task, would come
to an end with religions ? and that nothing higher
could be obtained, or even conceived ?
61.
THE NEEDFUL SACRIFICE. —Those earnest,
able, and just men of profound feelings, who
are still Christians at heart, owe it to themselves
to make one attempt to live for a certain space
of time without Christianity! they owe it to their
faith that they should thus for once take up their


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 6i
believed to be the shortest way to perfection : exactly
in the same manner as a few philosophers thought
they could dispense with tedious and laborious
dialectics, and the collection of strictly-proved
facts, and point out a royal road to truth. It
was an error in both cases, but nevertheless a great
cordial for those who were worn out and despairing
in the wilderness.
60.
All Spirit finally becomes Visible. —
Christianity has assimilated the entire spirituality
of an incalculable number of men who were by
nature submissive, all those enthusiasts of humilia-
tion and reverence, both refined and coarse. It has
in this way freed itself from its own original rustic
coarseness—of which we are vividly reminded when
we look at the oldest image of St. Peter the Apostle
—and has become a very intellectual religion,
with thousands of wrinkles, arriere-pense'es, and
masks on its face. It has made European humanity
more clever, and not only cunning from a theo-
logical standpoint. By the spirit which it has thus
given to European humanity—in conjunction with
the power of abnegation, and very often in con-
junction with the profound conviction and loyalty of
that abnegation—it has perhaps chiselled and shaped
the most subtle individualities which have ever
existed in human society : the individualities of the
higher ranks of the Catholic clergy, especially when
these priests have sprung from a noble family, and
have brought to their work, from the very beginning,
the innate grace of gesture, the dominating glance


## p. 62 (#94) ##############################################

62 THE DAWN OF DAY.
of the eye, and beautiful hands and feet. Here the
human face acquires that spiritualisation brought
about by the continual ebb and flow of two kinds
of happiness (the feeling of power and the feeling
of submission) after a carefully-planned manner
of living has conquered the beast in man. Here
an activity, which consists in blessing, forgiving
sins, and representing the Almighty, ever keeps
alive in the soul, and even in the body, the conscious-
ness of a supreme mission; here we find that noble
contempt concerning the perishable nature of the
body, of well-being, and of happiness, peculiar to
born soldiers: their pride lies in obedience, a dis-
tinctly aristocratic trait; their excuse and their
idealism arise from the enormous impossibility of
their task. The surpassing beauty and subtleties
of these princes of the Church have always proved
to the people the truth of the Church; a momentary
brutalisation of the clergy (such as came about in
Luther's time) always tended to encourage the con-
trary belief. And would it be maintained that this
result of beauty and human subtlety, shown in
harmony of figure, intellect, and task, would come
to an end with religions? and that nothing higher
could be obtained, or even conceived?
61.
The Needful Sacrifice. —Those earnest,
able, and just men of profound feelings, who
are still Christians at heart, owe it to themselves
to make one attempt to live for a certain space
of time without Christianity! they owe it to their
faith that they should thus for once take up their


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 63
abode "in the wilderness "—if for no other reason
than that of being able to pronounce on the question
as to whether Christianity is needful. So far,
however, they have confined themselves to their
own narrow domain and insulted every one who
happened to be outside of it: yea, they even be-
come highly irritated when it is suggested to them
that beyond this little domain of theirs lies the great
world, and that Christianity is, after all,only a corner
of it! No; your evidence on the question will be
valueless until you have lived year after year with-
out Christianity, and with the inmost desire to
continue to exist without it: until, indeed, you have
withdrawn far, far away from it. It is not when
your nostalgia urges you back again, but when your
judgment, based on a strict comparison, drives you
back, that your homecoming has any significance!
—Men of coming generations will deal in this
manner with all the valuations of the past; they
must be voluntarily lived over again, together with
their contraries, in order that such men may finally
acquire the right of shifting them.
62.
On the Origin of Religions. —How can
any one regard his own opinion of things as a re-
velation? This is the problem of the formation
of religions: there has always been some man in
whom this phenomenon was possible. A postulate
is that such a man already believed in revelations.
Suddenly, however, a new idea occurs to him one
day, his idea; and the entire blessedness of a great


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64 THE DAWN OF DAY.
personal hypothesis, which embraces all existence
and the whole world, penetrates with such force
into his conscience that he dare not think himself
the creator of such blessedness, and he therefore
attributes to his God the cause of this new idea and
likewise the cause of the cause, believing it to be
the revelation of his God. How could a man be
the author of so great a happiness? ask his pessi-
mistic doubts. But other levers are secretly at
work: an opinion may be strengthened by one's
self if it be considered as a revelation; and in this
way all its hypothetic nature is removed; the matter
is set beyond criticism and even beyond doubt: it
is sanctified. It is true that, in this way, a man
lowers himself to playing the r61e of " mouthpiece,"
but his thought will end by being victorious as a
divine thought—the feeling of finally gaining the
victory conquers the feeling of degradation. There
is also another feeling in the background: if a man
raises his products above himself, and thus appar-
ently detracts from his own worth, there neverthe-
less remains a kind of joyfulness, paternal love, and
paternal pride, which compensates man—more than
compensates man—for everything.
63-
Hatred of One's Neighbour. —Supposing
that we felt towards our neighbour as he does him-
self—Schopenhauer calls this compassion, though it
would be more correct to call it auto-passion, fellow-
feeling—we should be compelled to hate him, if, like
Pascal, he thought himself hateful. And this was


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 65
probably the general feeling of Pascal regarding
mankind, and also that of ancient Christianity,
which, under Nero, was "convicted" of odium
generis humani, as Tacitus has recorded.
64.
The Broken-Hearted Ones. —Christianity
has the instinct of a hunter for finding out all those
who may by hook or by crook be driven to despair
—only a very small number of men can be brought
to this despair. Christianity lies in wait for such
as those,and pursues them. Pascal made an attempt
to find out whether it was not possible, with the
help of the very subtlest knowledge, to drive every-
body into despair. He failed : to his second despair.
65.
Brahminism and Christianity. —There are
certain precepts for obtaining a consciousness of
power: on the one hand, for those who already
know how to control themselves, and who are there-
fore already quite used to the feeling of power; and,
on the other hand, for those who cannot control
themselves. Brahminism has given its care to the
former type of man; Christianity to the latter.
66.
The Faculty of Vision. —During the whole
of the Middle Ages it was believed that the real dis-
tinguishing trait of higher men was the faculty of
E


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66" THE DAWN OF DAY.
having visions—that is to say, of having a grave
mental trouble. And, in fact, the rules of life of all
the higher natures of the Middle Ages (the religiosi)
were drawn up with the object of making man cap-
able of vision! Little wonder, then, that the exag-
gerated esteem for these half-mad fanatics, so-called
men of genius, has continued even to our own days.
"They have seen things that others do not see "—
no doubt! and this fact should inspire us with caution
where they are concerned, and not with belief!
67.
The Price of Believers. —He who sets such
a value on being believed in has to promise heaven
in recompense for this belief: and every one, even
a thief on the Cross, must have suffered from a
terrible doubt and experienced crucifixion in every
form: otherwise he would not buy his followers so
dearly.
68.
The First Christian. —The whole world still
believes in the literary career of the " Holy Ghost,"
or is still influenced by the effects of this belief:
when we look into our Bibles we do so for the
purpose of " edifying ourselves," to find a few words
of comfort for our misery, be it great or small—in
short, we read ourselves into it and out of it.
But who—apart from a few learned men-—know
that it likewise records the history of one of the
most ambitious and importunate souls that ever


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 67
existed, of a mind full of superstition and cunning:
the history of the Apostle Paul? Nevertheless,
without this singular history, without the tribula-
tions and passions of such a mind, and of such a
soul, there would have been no Christian kingdom;
we should have scarcely have even heard of a little
Jewish sect, the founder of which died on the Cross.
It is true that, if this history had been understood
in time, if we had read, really read, the writings of
St. Paul, not as the revelations of the "Holy
Ghost," but with honest and independent minds,
oblivious of all our personal troubles—there were
no such readers for fifteen centuries—it would have
been all up with Christianity long ago: so search-
ingly do these writings of the Jewish Pascal lay bare
the origins of Christianity, just as the French Pascal
let us see its destiny and how it will ultimately
perish. That the ship of Christianity threw over-
board no inconsiderable part of its Jewish ballast,
that it was able to sail into the waters of the heathen
and actually did do so: this is due to the history
of one single man, this apostle who was so greatly
troubled in mind and so worthy of pity, but who
was also very disagreeable to himself and to others.
This man suffered from a fixed idea, or rather
a fixed question, an ever-present and ever-burning
question : what was the meaning of the Jewish Law?
and, more especially, the fulfilment of this Law?
In his youth he had done his best to satisfy it, thirst-
ing as he did for that highest distinction which the
Jews could imagine—this people, which raised the
imagination of moral loftiness to a greater elevation
than any other people, and which alone succeeded


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68
THE DAWN OF DAY.
in uniting the conception of a holy God with the idea
of sin considered as an offence against this holiness.
St. Paul became at once the fanatic defender and
guard-of-honour of this God and His Law. Cease-
lessly battling against and lying in wait for all
transgressors of this Law and those who presumed
to doubt it, he was pitiless and cruel towards all evil-
doers, whom he would fain have punished in the
most rigorous fashion possible.
Now, however, he was aware in his own person
of the fact that such a man as himself—violent,
sensual, melancholy, and malicious in his hatred-
could not fulfil the Law; and furthermore, what
seemed strangest of all to him, he saw that his
boundless craving for power was continually
provoked to break it, and that he could not help
yielding to this impulse. Was it really “the flesh”
which made him a trespasser time and again? Was
it not rather, as it afterwards occurred to him,
the Law itself, which continually showed itself
to be impossible to fulfil, and seduced men into
transgression with an irresistible charm? But
at that time he had not thought of this means of
escape. As he suggests here and there, he had
many things on his conscience-hatred, murder,
sorcery, idolatry, debauchery, drunkenness, and
orgiastic revelry,—and to however great an extent
he tried to soothe his conscience, and, even more,
his desire for power, by the extreme fanaticism of
his worship for and defence of the Law, there were
times when the thought struck him : “It is all in
vain! The anguish of the unfulfilled Law cannot be
overcome. ” Luther must have experienced similar


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 69
feelings, when, in his cloister, he endeavoured to
become the ideal man of his imagination; and, as
Lutherone day began to hate the ecclesiastical ideal,
and the Pope, and the saints, and the whole clergy,
with a hatred which was all the more deadly as he
could not avow it even to himself, an analogous
feeling took possession of St. Paul. The Law was
the Cross on which he felt himself crucified. How
he hated it! What a grudge he owed it! How he
began to look round on all sides to find a means for
its total annihilation, that he might no longer be
obliged to fulfil it himself! And at last a liberating
thought, together with a vision—which was only to
be expected in the case of an epileptic like himself
—flashed into his mind: to him, the stern upholder
of the Law—who, in his innermost heart, was tired
to death of it—there appeared on the lonely path
that Christ, with the divine effulgence on His coun-
tenance, and Paul heard the words: "Why perse-
cutest thou Me? "
What actually took place, then, was this: his
mind was suddenly enlightened, and he said to
himself: "It is unreasonable to persecute this
Jesus Christ! Here is my means of escape, here
is my complete vengeance, here and nowhere else
have I the destroyer of the Law in my hands! "
The sufferer from anguished pride felt himself
restored to health all at once, his moral despair
disappeared in the air; for morality itself was
blown away, annihilated—that is to say, fulfilled,
there on the Cross! Up to that time that ig-
nominious death had seemed to him to be the
principal argument against the "Messiahship"


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? 0 THE DAWN OF DAY.
proclaimed by the followers of the new doctrine:
but what if it were necessary for doing away with
the Law? The enormous consequences of this
thought, of this solution of the enigma, danced
before his eyes, and he at once became the happiest
of men. The destiny of the Jews, yea, of all
mankind, seemed to him to be intertwined with this
instantaneous flash of enlightenment: he held the
thought of thoughts, the key of keys, the light of
lights; history would henceforth revolve round him!
For from that time forward he would be the apostle
of the annihilation of the Law! To be dead to sin
—that meant to be dead to the Law also; to be
in the flesh—that meant to be under the Law!
To be one with Christ—that meant to have become,
like Him, the destroyer of the Law; to be dead
with Him—that meant likewise to be dead to the
Law. Even if it were still possible to sin, it would
not at any rate be possible to sin against the Law:
"I am above the Law," thinks Paul; adding, " If I
were now to acknowledge the Law again and to
submit to it, I should make Christ an accomplice
in the sin "; for the Law was there for the purpose
of producing sin and setting it in the foreground,
as an emetic produces sickness. God could not
have decided upon the death of Christ had it been
possible to fulfil the Law without it; henceforth,
not only are all sins expiated, but sin itself is
abolished; henceforth the Law is dead; henceforth
"the flesh" in which it dwelt is dead—or at all
events dying, gradually wasting away. To live for
a short time longer amid this decay! —this is the
Christian's fate, until the time when, having become


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 71
one with Christ, he arises with Him, sharing with
Christ the divine glory, and becoming, like Christ,
a " Son of God. " Then Paul's exaltation was at its
height, and with it the importunity of his soul—
the thought of union with Christ made him lose all
shame, all submission, all constraint, and his un-
governable ambition was shown to be revelling in
the expectation of divine glories.
Such was the first Christian, the inventor of
Christianity! before him there were only a few
Jewish sectaries.
69.
Inimitable. —There is an enormous strain and
distance between envy and friendship, between self-
contempt and pride: the Greek lived in the former,
the Christian in the latter.
70.
The Use of a Coarse Intellect. —The
Christian Church is an encyclopaedia of primitive
cults and views of the most varied origin; and is,
in consequence, well adapted to missionary work:
in former times she could—and still does—go
wherever she would, and in doing so always found
something resembling herself, to which she could
assimilate herself and gradually substitute her own
spirit for it. It is not to what is Christian in her
usages, but to what is universally pagan in them,
that we have to attribute the development of this
universal religion. Her thoughts, which have their
origin at once in the Judaic and in the Hellenic
spirit, were able from the very beginning to raise


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72 THE DAWN OF DAY.
themselves above the exclusiveness and subtleties
of races and nations, as above prejudices. Although
we may admire the power which makes even the
most difficult things coalesce, we must nevertheless
not overlook the contemptible qualities of this power
—the astonishing coarseness and narrowness of the
Church's intellect when it was in process of formation,
a coarseness which permitted it to accommodate
itself to any diet, and to digest contradictions like
pebbles.
7i-
The Christian Vengeance against Rome.
—Perhaps nothing is more fatiguing than the sight
of a continual conqueror: for more than two
hundred years the world had seen Rome over-
coming one nation after another, the circle was
closed, all future seemed to be at an end, every-
thing was done with a view to its lasting for all
time—yea, when the Empire built anything it was
erected with a view to being acre ferennius. We,
who know only the "melancholy of ruins," can
scarcely understand that totally different melancholy
of eternal buildings, from which men endeavoured
to save themselves as best they could—with the
light-hearted fancy of a Horace, for example.
Others sought different consolations for the weari-
ness which was closely akin to despair, against the
deadening knowledge that from henceforth all
progress of thought and heart would be hopeless,
that the huge spider sat everywhere and merci-
lessly continued to drink all the blood within
its reach, no matter where it mr^ht spring forth.



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THE DAWN OF DAY. 73
This mute, century-old hatred of the wearied spec-
tators against Rome, wherever Rome's domination
extended, was at length vented in Christianity,
which united Rome, " the world," and " sin " into a
single conception. The Christians took their re-
venge on Rome by proclaiming the immediate and
sudden destruction of the world; by once more
introducing a future—for Rome had been able to
transform everything into the history of its own
past and present—a future in which Rome was no
longer the most important factor; and by dreaming
of the last judgment—while the crucified Jew, as
the symbol of salvation, was the greatest derision
on the superb Roman praetors in the provinces;
for now they seemed to be only the symbols of
ruin and a "world " ready to perish.
72.
The "Life after Death. " — Christianity
found the idea of punishment in hell in the entire
Roman Empire: for the numerous mystic cults have
hatched this idea with particular satisfaction as
being the most fecund egg of their power. Epicurus
thought he could do nothing better for his followers
than to tear this belief up by the roots: his triumph
found its finest echo in the mouth of one of his
disciples, the Roman Lucretius, a poet of a gloomy,
though afterwards enlightened, temperament.
Alas! his triumph had come too soon: Christi-
anity took under its special protection this belief
in subterranean horrors, which was already begin-
ning to die away in the minds of men; and that


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74 THE DAWN OF DAY.
was clever of it. For, without this audacious leap
into the most complete paganism, how could it
have proved itself victorious over the popularity
of Mithras and Isis? In this way it managed
to bring timorous folk over to its side—the most
enthusiastic adherents of a new faith! The Jews,
being a people which, like the Greeks, and even in
a greater degree than the Greeks, loved and still
love life, had not cultivated that idea to any great
extent: the thought of final death as the punishment
of the sinner, death without resurrection as an
extreme menace: this was sufficient to impress these
peculiar men, who did not wish to get rid of their
bodies, but hoped, with their refined Egypticism,
to preserve them for ever. (A Jewish martyr,
about whom we may read in the Second Book of
the Maccabees, would not think of giving up his
intestines, which had been torn out: he wanted to
have them at the resurrection: quite a Jewish
characteristic! )
Thoughts of eternal damnation were far from the
minds of the early Christians: they thought they
were delivered from death, and awaited a trans-
formation from day to day, but not death. (What
a curious effect the first death must have produced
on these expectant people! How many different
feelings must have been mingled together—as-
tonishment, exultation, doubt, shame, and passion!
Verily, a subject worthy of a great artist! ) St.
Paul could say nothing better in praise of his
Saviour than that he had opened the gates of im-
mortality to everybody—he did not believe in the
resurrection of those who had not been saved: more


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 75
than this, by reason of his doctrine of the impossi-
bility of carrying out the Law, and of death con-
sidered as a consequence of sin, he even suspected
that, up to that time, no one had become immortal
(or at all events only a very few, solely owing to
special grace and not to any merits of their own):
it was only in his time that immortality had begun
to open its gates—and only a few of the elect would
finally gain admittance, as the pride of the elect can-
not help saying.
In other places, where the impulse towards life
was not so strong as among the Jews and the
Christian Jews, and where the prospect of im-
mortality did not appear to be more valuable than
the prospect of a final death, that pagan, yet not
altogether un-Jewish addition of Hell became a very
useful tool in the hands of the missionaries: then
arose the new doctrine that even the sinners and
the unsaved are immortal, the doctrine of eternal
damnation, which was more powerful than the idea
of a final death, which thereafter began to fade
away. It was science alone which could overcome
this idea, at the same time brushing aside all other
ideas about death and an after-life. We are poorer
in one particular: the "life after death" has no
further interest for us! an indescribable blessing,
which is as yet too recent to be considered as such
throughout the world. And Epicurus is once more
triumphant.
73-
For the "Truth " ! —" The truth of Chris-
tianity was attested by the virtuous lives of the


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j6 THE DAWN OF DAY.
Christians, their firmness in suffering, their un-
shakable belief, and above all by the spread and
increase of the faith in spite of all calamities. "—
That's how you talk even now. The more's the
pity. Learn, then, that all this proves nothing
either in favour of truth or against it; that truth
must be demonstrated differently from conscien-
tiousness, and that the latter is in no respect what-
ever an argument in favour of the former.
74-
A Christian ArriAee-pensee. —Would not
this have been a general reservation among
Christians of the first century: "It is better to
persuade ourselves into the belief that we are euilty
rather than that we are innocent; for it is impossible
to ascertain the disposition of so powerful a judge
—but it is to be feared that he is looking out only
for those who are conscious of guilt. Bearing in
mind his great power, it is more likely that he will
pardon a guilty person than admit that any one is
innocent, in his presence. " This was the feeling of
poor provincial folk in the presence of the Roman
praetor: " He is too proud for us to dare to be inno-
cent. " And may not this very sentiment have made
its influence felt when the Christians endeavoured
to picture to themselves the aspect of the Supreme
Judge?
75-
Neither European nor Noble. —There is
something Oriental and feminine inChristianity,and


## p. 77 (#109) #############################################

THE DAWN OF DAY. J?
this is shown in the thought, " Whom the Lord
loveth, He chasteneth "; for women in the Orient
consider castigations and the strict seclusion of their
persons from the world as a sign of their husband's
love, and complain if these signs of love cease.
76.
If you think it Evil, you make it Evil. —
The passions become evil and malignant when
regarded with evil and malignant eyes. It is in this
way that Christianity has succeeded in transforming
Eros and Aphrodite—sublime powers, capable of
idealisation — into hellish genii and phantom
goblins, by means of the pangs which every sexual
impulse was made to raise in the conscience of the
believers. Is it not a dreadful thing to transform
necessary and regular sensations into a source of
inward misery,and thus arbitrarily to render interior
misery necessary and regular in the case of every
man! Furthermore, this misery remains secret,
with the result that it is all the more deeply rooted;
for it is not all men who have the courage, which
Shakespeare shows in his sonnets, of making public
their Christian gloom on this point.
Must a feeling, then, always be called evil against
which we are forced to struggle, which we must
restrain even within certain limits, or, in given cases,
banish entirely from our minds? Is it not the habit
of vulgar souls always to call an enemy evil! and
must we call Eros an enemy? The sexual feelings,
like the feelings of pity and adoration, possess the
particular characteristic that, in their case, one being


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78 THE DAWN OF DAY.
gratifies another by the pleasure he enjoys—it is but
rarely that we meet with such a benevolent arrange-
ment in nature. And yet we calumniate and corrupt
it all by our bad conscience! We connect the pro-
creation of man with a bad conscience!
But the outcome of this diabolisation of Eros is
a mere farce: the " demon " Eros becomes an object
of greater interest to mankind than all the angels
and saints put together, thanks to the mysterious
Mumbo-Jumboism of the Church in all things
erotic: it is due to the Church that love stories,
even in our own time, have become the one common
interest which appeals to all classes of people—
with an exaggeration which would be incompre-
hensible to antiquity, and which will not fail to
provoke roars of laughter in coming generations.
All our poetising and thinking, from the highest to
the lowest, is marked, and more than marked, by
the exaggerated importance bestowed upon the love
story as the principal item of our existence.
Posterity may perhaps, on this account, come to
the conclusion that its entire legacy of Christian
culture is tainted with narrowness and insanity.
77-
The Tortures of the Soul. —The whole
world raises a shout of horror at the present day if
one man presumes to torture the body of another:
the indignation against such a being bursts forth
almost spontaneously. Nay; we tremble even at
the very thought of torture being inflicted on a
man or an animal, and we undergo unspeakable

X


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 79
misery when we hear of such an act having been
accomplished. But the same feeling is experienced
in a very much lesser degree and extent when it
is a question of the tortures of the soul and the
dreadfulness of their infliction. Christianity has
introduced such tortures on an unprecedented scale,
and still continues to preach this kind of martyr-
dom—yea, it even complains innocently of back-
sliding and indifference when it meets with a state
of soul which is free from such agonies. From all
this it now results that humanity, in the face of
spiritual racks, tortures of the mind, and instru-
ments of punishment, behaves even to-day with the
same awesome patience and indecision which it ex-
hibited in former times in the presence of the
cruelties practised on the bodies of men or animals.
Hell has certainly not remained merely an empty
sound; and a new kind of pity has been devised
to correspond to the newly-created fears of hell—
a horrible and ponderous compassion, hitherto un-
known; with people "irrevocably condemned to
hell," as, for example, the Stony Guest gave Don
Juan to understand, and which, during the Christian
era, should often have made the very stones weep.
Plutarch presents us with a gloomy picture of the
state of mind of a superstitious man in pagan times:
but this picture pales when compared with that of
a Christian of the Middle Ages, who supposes that
nothing can save him from "torments everlasting. "
Dreadful omens appear to him: perhaps he sees a
stork holding a snake in his beak and hesitating to
swallow it. Or all nature suddenly becomes pale;
or bright, fiery colours appear across the surface
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80 THE DAWN OF DAY.
of the earth. Or the ghosts of his dead relations
approach him, with features showing traces of
dreadful sufferings. Or the dark walls of the room
in which the man is sleeping are suddenly lighted
up, and there, amidst a yellow flame, he perceives
instruments of torture and a motley horde of snakes
and devils. Christianity has surely turned this
world of ours into a fearful habitation by raising
the crucifix in all parts and thereby proclaiming
the earth to be a place "where the just man is
tortured to death! " And when the ardour of
some great preacher for once disclosed to the public
the secret sufferings of the individual, the agonies
of the lonely souls, when, for example, Whitefield
preached "like a dying man to the dying," now
bitterly weeping, now violently stamping his feet,
speaking passionately, in abrupt and incisive tones,
without fearing to turn the whole force of his attack
upon any one individual present, excluding him
from the assembly with excessive harshness—then
indeed did it seem as if the earth were being trans-
formed into a "field of evil. " The huge crowds
were then seen to act as if seized with a sudden
attack of madness: many were in fits of anguish;
others lay unconscious and motionless; others,
again, trembled or rent the air with their piercing
shrieks. Everywhere there was a loud breathing,
as of half-choked people who were gasping for the
breath of life. "Indeed," said an eye-witness once,
"almost all the noises appeared to come from people
who were dying in the bitterest agony. "
Let us never forget that it was Christianity which
first turned the death-bed into a bed of agony, and


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 8i
that, by the scenes which took place there, and the
terrifying sounds which were made possible there
for the first time, it has poisoned the senses and the
blood of innumerable witnesses and their children.
Imagine the ordinary man who can never efface
the recollection of words like these: "Oh, eternity!
Would that I had no soul! Would that I had
never been born! My soul is damned, damned;
lost for ever! Six days ago you might have
helped me. But now all is over. I belong to the
devil, and with him I will go down to hell. Break,
break, ye poor hearts of stone! Ye will not break?
What more can be done for hearts of stone? I am
damned that ye may be saved! There he is!
Yea; there he is! Come, good devil! Come! "
78.
AVENGING JUstICe. —Misfortune and guilt:
these two things have been put on one scale by
Christianity; so that, when the misfortune which
follows a fault is a serious one, this fault is always
judged accordingly to be a very heinous one. But
this was not the valuation of antiquity, and that
is why Greek tragedy—in which misfortune and
punishment are discussed at length, and yet in
another sense—forms part of the great liberators
of the mind to an extent which even the ancients
themselves could not realise. They remained in-
genuous enough not to set up an "adequate rela-
tion" between guilt and misfortune. The guilt of
their tragic heroes is, indeed, the little pebble that
makes them stumble, and on which account they
F


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82 THE DAWN OF DAY.
sometimes happen to break an arm or knock out
an eye. Upon this the feeling of antiquity made
the comment, " Well, he should have gone his way
with more caution and less pride. " It was reserved
for Christianity, however, to say: "Here we have
a great misfortune, and behind this great misfortune
there must lie a great fault, an equally serious fmilt,
though we cannot clearly see it! If, wretched man,
you do not feel it,it is because your heart is hardened
—and worse than this will happen to you! "
Besides this, antiquity could point to examples
of real misfortunes, misfortunes that were pure
and innocent; it was only with the advent of
Christianity that all punishment became well-
merited punishment: in addition to this it renders
the imagination of the sufferer still more suffering,
so that the victim, in the midst of his distress, is
seized with the feeling that he has been morally
reproved and cast away. Poor humanity! The
Greeks had a special word to stand for the feeling of
indignation which was experienced at the misfortune
of another: among Christian peoples this feeling
was prohibited and was not permitted to develop;
hence the reason why they have no name for this
more virile brother of pity.
79-
A PROPOSal. —If, according to the arguments
of Pascal and Christianity, our ego is always hate-
ful, how can we permit and suppose other people,
whether God or men, to love it? It would be
contrary to all good principles to let ourselves be


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 83
loved when we know very well that we deserve
nothing but hatred—not to speak of other repug-
nant feelings. "But this is the very Kingdom of
Grace. " Then you look upon your love for your
neighbour as a grace? Your pity as a grace?
Well, then, if you can do all this, there is no reason
why you should not go a step further: love your-
selves through grace, and then you will no longer
find your God necessary, and the entire drama of
the Fall and Redemption of mankind will reach its
last act in yourselves!
80.
The Compassionate Christian. — A
Christian's compassion in the presence of his
neighbour's suffering has another side to it: viz.
his profound suspicion of all the joy of his neigh-
bour, of his neighbour's joy in everything that he
wills and is able to do.
81.
The Saint's Humanity. —A saint had fallen
into the company of believers, and could no longer
stand their continually expressed hatred for sin.
At last he said to them: "God created all things,
except sin: therefore it is no wonder that He does
not like it. But man has created sin, and why,
then, should he disown this only child of his merely
because it is not regarded with a friendly eye by
God, its grandfather? Is that human? Honour
to whom honour is due—but one's heart and duty
must speak, above all, in favour of the child—and
only in the second place for the honour of the
grandfather! "


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84 THE DAWN OF DAY.
82.
The Theological Attack. —"You must
arrange that with yourself; for your life is at
stake! "—Luther it is who suddenly springs upon
us with these words and imagines that we feel the
knife at our throats. But we throw him off with
the words of one higher and more considerate than
he: "We need form no opinion in regard to this
or that matter, and thus save our souls from trouble.
For, by their very nature, the things themselves
cannot compel us to express an opinion. "
S3-
POOR Humanity ! —A single drop of blood too
much or too little in the brain may render our life
unspeakably miserable and difficult, and we may
suffer more from this single drop of blood than
Prometheus from his vulture. But the worst is when
we do not know that this drop is causing our suffer-
ings—and we think it is " the devil! " Or " sin! "
84.
The Philology of Christianity. —How
little Christianity cultivates the sense of honesty
can be inferred from the character of the writings
of its learned men. They set out their conjectures
as audaciously as if they were dogmas, and are but
seldom at a disadvantage in regard to the inter-
pretation of Scripture. Their continual cry is: "I
am right, for it is written "—and then follows an
explanation so shameless and capricious that a


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 85
philologist, when he hears it, must stand stock-still
between anger and laughter, asking himself again
and again: Is it possible? Is it honest? Is it even
decent?
It is only those who never—or always—attend
church that underestimate the dishonesty with
which this subject is still dealt in Protestant
pulpits; in what a clumsy fashion the preacher
takes advantage of his security from interruption;
how the Bible is pinched and squeezed; and how
the people are made acquainted with every form of
the art of false reading.
When all is said and done, however, what can
be expected from the effects of a religion which,
during the centuries when it was being firmly
established, enacted that huge philological farce
concerning the Old Testament? I refer to that
attempt to tear the Old Testament from the hands
of the Jews under the pretext that it contained only
Christian doctrines and belonged to the Christians
as the true people of Israel, while the Jews had
merely arrogated it to themselves without authority.
This was followed by a mania of would-be inter-
pretation and falsification, which could not under
any circumstances have been allied with a good
conscience. However strongly Jewish savants pro-
tested, it was everywhere sedulously asserted that
the Old Testament alluded everywhere to Christ,
and nothing but Christ, more especially His Cross,
and thus, wherever reference was made to wood, a
rod, a ladder, a twig, a tree, a willow, or a staff,
such a reference could not but be a prophecy re-
lating to the wood of the Cross: even the setting-


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86 THE DAWN OF DAY.
up of the Unicorn and the Brazen Serpent, even
Moses stretching forth his hands in prayer—yea,
the very spits on which the Easter lambs were
roasted: all these were allusions to the Cross, and,
as it were, preludes to it! Did any one who kept
on asserting these things ever believe in them?
Let it not be forgotten that the Church did not
shrink from putting interpolations in the text of the
Septuagint (e. g. Ps. xcvi. I o), in order that she might
later on make use of these interpolated passages
as Christian prophecies. They were engaged in a
struggle, and thought of their foes rather than of
honesty.
85.
Subtlety in Penury. —Take care not to laugh
at the mythology of the Greeks merely because it
so little resembles your own profound metaphysics!
You should admire a peoplewho checked their quick
intellect at this point, and for a long time after-
wards had tact enough to avoid the danger of
scholasticism and hair-splitting superstition.
86.
The Christian Interpreters of the Body.
—Whatever originates in the stomach, the intes-
tines, the beating of the heart, the nerves, the bile,
the seed—all those indispositions, debilities, irrita-
tions, and the whole contingency of that machine
about which we know so little—a Christian like
Pascal considers it all as a moral and religious
phenomenon, asking himself whether God or the


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 87
devil, good or evil, salvation or damnation, is the
cause. Alas for the unfortunate interpreter! How
he must distort and worry his system! How he
must distort and worry himself in order to gain
his point!
87.
The Moral Miracle. —In the domain of
morality, Christianity knows of nothing but the
miracle: the sudden change in all valuations, the
sudden renouncement of all habits, the sudden and
irresistible predilection for new things and persons.
Christianity looks upon this phenomenon as the
work of God, and calls it the act of regeneration,
thus giving it a unique and incomparable value.
Everything else which is called morality, and which
bears no relation to this miracle, becomes in con-
sequence a matter of indifference to the Christian,
and indeed, so far as it is a feeling of well-being
and pride, an object of fear. The canon of virtue,
of the fulfilled law, is established in the New
Testament, but in such a way as to be the canon
of impossible virtue: men who still aspire to moral
perfections must come to understand, in the face
of this canon, that they are further and further
removed from their aim; they must despair of
virtue, and end by throwing themselves at the feet
of the Merciful One.
It is only in reaching a conclusion like this that
moral efforts on the part of the Christian can still
be regarded as possessing any value: the condition
that these efforts shall always remain sterile, painful,
and melancholy is therefore indispensable; and it


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88 THE DAWN OF DAY.
is in this way that those efforts could still avail to
bring about that moment of ecstasy when man ex-
periences the " overflow of grace" and the moral
miracle. This struggle for morality is, however,
not necessary; for it is by no means uncommon for
this miracle to happen to the sinner at the very
moment when he is, so to speak, wallowing in the
mire of sin: yea, the leap from the deepest and
most abandoned sinfulness into its contrary seems
easier, and, as a clear proof of the miracle, even
more desirable.
What, for the rest, may be the signification of
such a sudden, unreasonable, and irresistible re-
volution, such a change from the depths of misery
into the heights of happiness? (might it be a
disguised epilepsy ? ) This should at all events
be considered by alienists, who have frequent op-
portunities of observing similar "miracles "—for
example, the mania of murder or suicide. The
relatively "more pleasant consequences" in the case
of the Christian make no important difference.
88.
Luther, the Great Benefactor. —Luther's
most important result is the suspicion which he
awakened against the saints and the entire Christian
vita contemplativa; only since his day has an un-
christian vita contemplativa again become possible
in Europe, only since then has contempt for laymen
and worldly activity ceased. Luther continued to
be an honest miner's son even after he had been
shut up in a monastery, and there, for lack of other
S


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 89
depths and "borings," he descended into himself,
and bored terrifying and dark passages through his
own depths—finally coming to recognise that an
introspective and saintly life was impossible to him,
and that his innate " activity" in body and soul
would end by being his ruin. For a long time,
too long, indeed, he endeavoured to find the way
to holiness through castigations; but at length he
made up his mind, and said to himself: "There is
no real vita contemplativa! We have been deceived.
The saints were no better than the rest of us. "
This was truly a rustic way of gaining one's case;
but for the Germans of that period it was the only
proper way. How edified they felt when they could
read in their Lutheran catechism: "Apart from the
Ten Commandments there is no work which could
find favour in the eyes of God—these much-boasted
spiritual works of the saints are purely imaginary! "
89.
Doubt as Sin. —Christianity has done all it
possibly could to draw a circle round itself, and has
even gone so far as to declare doubt itself to be
a sin. We are to be precipitated into faith by a
miracle, without the help of reason, after which we
are to float in it as the clearest and least equivocal
of elements—a mere glance at some solid ground,
the thought that we exist for some purpose other
than floating, the least movement of our amphibious
nature: all this is a sin! Let it be noted that,
following this decision, the proofs and demonstra-
tion of the faith, and all meditations upon its origin,


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90 THE DAWN OF DAY.
are prohibited as sinful. Christianity wants blind-
ness and frenzy and an eternal swan-song above
the waves under which reason has been drowned!
90.
Egoism versus Egoism. —How many are there
who still come to the conclusion: "Life would be
intolerable were there no God! " Or, as is said in
idealistic circles: "Life would be intolerable if its
ethical signification were lacking. " Hence there
must be a God—or an ethical signification of
existence! In reality the case stands thus: He
who is accustomed to conceptions of this sort does
not desire a life without them, hence these concep-
tions are necessary for him and his preservation—
but what a presumption it is to assert that every-
thing necessary for my preservation must exist
in reality! As if my preservation were really
necessary! What if others held the contrary
opinion? if they did not care to live under the
conditions of these two articles of faith, and did not
regard life as worth living if they were realised ! —
And that is the present position of affairs.
91-
The Honesty of God. —An omniscient and
omnipotent God who does not even take care that
His intentions shall be understood by His creatures
—could He be a God of goodness? A God, who,
for thousands of years, has permitted innumerable
doubts and scruples to continue unchecked as if
they were of no importance in the salvation of man-


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THE DAWN OF DAY. 91
kind, and who, nevertheless, announces the most
dreadful consequences for any one who mistakes his
truth? Would he not be a cruel god if, being him-
self in possession of the truth, he could calmly con-
template mankind, in a state of miserable torment,
worrying its mind as to what was truth?
Perhaps, however, he really is a God of goodness,
and was unable to express Himself more clearly?
Perhaps he lacked intelligence enough for this?
Or eloquence? All the worse! For in such a
case he may have been deceived himself in regard
to what he calls his "truth," and may not be far
from being another " poor, deceived devil! " Must
he not therefore experience all the torments of hell
at seeing His creatures suffering so much here below
—and even more, suffering through all eternity—
when he himself can neither advise nor help them,
except as a deaf and dumb person, who makes all
kinds of equivocal signs when his child or his dog
is threatened with the most fearful danger? A dis-
tressed believer who argues thus might be pardoned
if his pity for the suffering God were greater than
his pity for his "neighbours"; for they are his
neighbours no longer if that most solitary and
primeval being is also the greatest sufferer and
stands most in need of consolation.
Every religion shows some traits of the fact that
it owes its origin to a state of human intellectuality
which was as yet too young and immature: they
all make light of the necessity for speaking the
truth: as yet they know nothing of the duty of
God, the duty of being clear and truthful in His
communications with men. No one was more


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90
THE DAWN OF DAY.
are prohibited as sinful. Christianity wants blind-
ness and frenzy and an eternal swan-song above
the waves under which reason has been drowned !
90.
EGOISM VERSUS EGOISM. —How many are there
who still come to the conclusion: “Life would be
intolerable were there no God! ” Or, as is said in
idealistic circles : “Life would be intolerable if its
ethical signification were lacking. ” Hence there
must be a God—or an ethical signification of
existence! In reality the case stands thus : He
who is accustomed to conceptions of this sort does
not desire a life without them, hence these concep-
tions are necessary for him and his preservation-
but what a presumption it is to assert that every-
thing necessary for my preservation must exist
in reality! As if my preservation were really
necessary! What if others held the contrary
opinion ? if they did not care to live under the
conditions of these two articles of faith, and did not
regard life as worth living if they were realised !