we call Eros an enemy? The sexual feelings have that in common with those of pity and worship that one being gratifies another by his own enjoyment—we do not too often meet with such a benevolent arrangement in nature. And we actually revile it and spoil it by an evil conscience! We associate the procreation of man with an evil conscience ! The final outcome of this diabolisation of Eros is a farce: gradually Eros, the "devil," became more interesting to mankind than all the angels and saints taken together, thanks to the mysterious mummery of the Church in all things erotic: she has brought it about that, even in our own time, the love story has become the one real interest that binds all classes together—with all exaggeration which the ancients could not comprehend and which will be succeeded by peals of laughter in years to come. All our poetry and thoughts, from the highest to the lowest, are marked, and more than marked, by the extravagant importance with which the love story there appears as the main story : on this account posterity may perhaps come to the conclusion that the whole inheritance of Christian culture is stamped by narrowness and Madness.
77
‘’On mental agonics.’’—In our days everybody loudly cries out at any torture someborly might inflict on another's body: the indignation against a man who