"Signs" and "miracles" are not believed; only a "Providence" stands in need of such things. There is no help to be found either in prayer or asceticism or in "vision." If all these things constitute religion, then there is no more religion for me.
My religion, if I can still apply this name to something, lies in the work of breeding genius . from such training everything is to be hoped. All consolation comes from art. Education is love for the offspring; an excess of love over and beyond our self-love. Religion is "love beyond ourselves." The work of art is the model of such a love beyond ourselves, and a perfect model at that.
186
The stupidity of the will is Schopenhauer's greatest thought, if thoughts be judged from the standpoint of power. We can see in Hartmann how he juggled away this thought. Nobody will ever call something stupid—God.
187
This, then, is the new feature of all the future progress of the world · men must never again be ruled over by religious conceptions. Will they be any worse? It is not my experience that they behave well and morally under the yoke of religion; I am not on the side of Demopheles[14] The fear of a beyond, and then again the fear of divine punishments will hardly have made men better.
188
Where something great makes its appearance and lasts for a relatively long time, we may premise a careful breeding, as in the case of the Greeks. How did so many men become free among them? Educate educators! But the first educators must educate themselves! And it is for these that I write.
189
The denial of life is no longer an easy matter: a man may become a hermit or a monk—and what is thereby denied! This conception has now become deeper . it is above all a discerning denial, a denial based upon the will to be just; not an indiscriminate and wholesale denial.