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 [pg 063] 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 become 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after year without Christianity, and with the inmost desire to continue to exist without it: until, indeed, you have withdrawn far, far away from it.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.
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On the Origin of Religions.—How can any one regard his own opinion of things as a revelation? 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 [pg 064] 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 pessimistic 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 rôle 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 apparently detracts from his own worth, there nevertheless remains a kind of joyfulness, paternal love, and paternal pride, which compensates man—more than compensates man—for everything.
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Hatred of One's Neighbour.—Supposing that we felt towards our neighbour as he does himself—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 [pg 065] 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.
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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 everybody into despair. He failed: to his second despair.
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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 therefore 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.