And behold, the world became false precisely owing to the qualities which constitute its reality, namely, change, evolution, multifariousness, contrast, contradiction, war. And thenceforward the whole fatality was there.
1. How does one get rid of the false and merely apparent world? (it was the real and only one).
2. How does one become one's self as remote as possible from the world of appearance? (the concept of the perfect being as a contrast to the real being; or, more correctly still, as the contradiction of life....).
The whole direction of values was towards the slander of life; people deliberately confounded ideal dogmatism with knowledge in general: so that the opposing parties also began to reject science with horror.
Thus the road to science was doubly barred: first, by the belief in the real world; and secondly, by the opponents of this belief. Natural science and psychology were (1) condemned in their objects, (2) deprived of their artlessness....
Everything is so absolutely bound and related to everything else in the real world, that to condemn, or to think away anything, means to condemn and think away the whole. The words "this should not be," "this ought not to be," are a farce.... If one imagines the consequences, one would ruin the very source of Life by suppressing everything which is in any sense whatever dangerous or destructive. Physiology proves this much better!
We see how morality (a) poisons the whole concept of the world, (b) cuts off the way to science, (c) dissipates and undermines all real instincts (by teaching that their root is immoral).
We thus perceive a terrible tool of decadence at work, which succeeds in remaining immune, thanks to the holy names and holy attitudes it assumes.
585.