from free thought: by the notion of a universal degeneration which has affected even the framework of Character.
57
‘’Other fears, other guarantees.’’—Christianity had attached to life an altogether new and unbounded riskiness, thereby creating new guarantees, enjoyments, recreations, and valuations of all things. Our century denies this riskiness, and does so on conscientious grounds: and yet it clings to the old habits of Christian guarantees, Christian enjoyment, recreation, valuation.It even introduces them into its noblest arts and philosophy. How feeble and worn, low imperfect and clumsy, how arbitrarily fanatic, and—above all—how vague must all this appear, now that the horrible contrast, the ever-present anxiety of the Christian with regard to his eternal welfare, has been removed!
58
‘’Christianity and the passions.’’—There is a great popular protest against philosophy traceable in Christianity: the good sense of the ancient sages had weaned mankind from the passions, Christianity wants to reestablish them. For this purpose it dispossesses virtue, such as it has been understood by the philosophersnamely, as the victory of reason over passion —of all moral value; it brushes aside rationality and calls upon
