296.
The great crimes in psychology:—
(1) That all pain and unhappiness should have been falsified by being associated with what is wrong (guilt). (Thus pain was robbed of its innocence.)
(2) That all strong emotions (wantonness, voluptuousness, triumph, pride, audacity, knowledge, assurance, and happiness in itself) were branded as sinful, as seductive, and as suspicious.
(3) That feelings of weakness, inner acts of cowardice, lack of personal courage, should have decked themselves in the most beautiful words, and have been taught as desirable in the highest degree.
(4) That greatness in man should have been given the meaning of disinterestedness, self-sacrifice for another's good, for other people; that even in the scientist and the artist, the elimination of the individual personality is presented as the cause of the greatest knowledge and ability.
(5) That love should have been twisted round to mean submission (and altruism), whereas it is in reality an act of appropriation or of bestowal, resulting in the last case from a superabundance in the wealth of a given personality. Only the wholest people can love; the disinterested ones, the "objective" ones, are the worst lovers (just ask the girls!). This principle also applies to the love of God or of the "home country": a man must be able to rely absolutely upon himself. (Egotism may be regarded as the pre-eminence of the ego, altruism as the pre-eminence of others.)
(6) Life regarded as a punishment (happiness as a means of seduction); the passions regarded as devilish; confidence in one's self as godless.
The whole of psychology is a psychology of obstacles, a sort of barricade built out of fear; on the one hand we find the masses (the botched and bungled, the mediocre) defending themselves, by means of it, against the strong (and finally destroying them in their growth ...); on the other hand, we find all the instincts with which these classes are best able to prosper, sanctified and alone held in honour by them. Let anyone examine the Jewish priesthood.
297.