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58. Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or
semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its
favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for its soft
placidity called "prayer," the state of perpetual readiness for the
"coming of God"), I mean the idleness with a good conscience, the
idleness of olden times and of blood, to which the aristocratic
sentiment that work is DISHONOURING--that it vulgarizes body and
soul--is not quite unfamiliar? And that consequently the modern, noisy,
time-engrossing, conceited, foolishly proud laboriousness educates
and prepares for "unbelief" more than anything else? Among these, for
instance, who are at present living apart from religion in Germany, I
find "free-thinkers" of diversified species and origin, but above all
a majority of those in whom laboriousness from generation to generation
has dissolved the religious instincts; so that they no longer know what
purpose religions serve, and only note their existence in the world
with a kind of dull astonishment. They feel themselves already fully
occupied, these good people, be it by their business or by their
pleasures, not to mention the "Fatherland," and the newspapers, and
their "family duties"; it seems that they have no time whatever left
for religion; and above all, it is not obvious to them whether it is a
question of a new business or a new pleasure--for it is impossible, they
say to themselves, that people should go to church merely to spoil
their tempers. They are by no means enemies of religious customs;
should certain circumstances, State affairs perhaps, require their
participation in such customs, they do what is required, as so many
things are done--with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without
much curiosity or discomfort;--they live too much apart and outside
to feel even the necessity for a FOR or AGAINST in such matters. Among
those indifferent persons may be reckoned nowadays the majority of
German Protestants of the middle classes, especially in the great
laborious centres of trade and commerce; also the majority of laborious
scholars, and the entire University personnel (with the exception of
the theologians, whose existence and possibility there always gives
psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve). On the part of
pious, or merely church-going people, there is seldom any idea of HOW
MUCH good-will, one might say arbitrary will, is now necessary for a
German scholar to take the problem of religion seriously; his whole
profession (and as I have said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness, to
which he is compelled by his modern conscience) inclines him to a
lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards religion, with which is
occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the "uncleanliness" of spirit
which he takes for granted wherever any one still professes to belong
to the Church. It is only with the help of history (NOT through his own
personal experience, therefore) that the scholar succeeds in bringing
himself to a respectful seriousness, and to a certain timid deference
in presence of religions; but even when his sentiments have reached the
stage of gratitude towards them, he has not personally advanced one
step nearer to that which still maintains itself as Church or as piety;
perhaps even the contrary. The practical indifference to religious
matters in the midst of which he has been born and brought up, usually
sublimates itself in his case into circumspection and cleanliness, which
shuns contact with religious men and things; and it may be just the
depth of his tolerance and humanity which prompts him to avoid the
delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings with it.--Every age has
its own divine type of naivete, for the discovery of which other ages
may envy it: and how much naivete--adorable, childlike, and boundlessly
foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in
his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the
unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the
religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and
ABOVE which he himself has developed--he, the little arrogant dwarf
and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of "ideas," of
"modern ideas"!

59. Whoever has seen deeply into the world has doubtless divined what
wisdom there is in the fact that men are superficial. It is their
preservative instinct which teaches them to be flighty, lightsome, and
false. Here and there one finds a passionate and exaggerated adoration
of "pure forms" in philosophers as well as in artists: it is not to be
doubted that whoever has NEED of the cult of the superficial to that
extent, has at one time or another made an unlucky dive BENEATH it.
Perhaps there is even an order of rank with respect to those burnt
children, the born artists who find the enjoyment of life only in trying
to FALSIFY its image (as if taking wearisome revenge on it), one might
guess to what degree life has disgusted them, by the extent to which
they wish to see its image falsified, attenuated, ultrified, and
deified,--one might reckon the homines religiosi among the artists, as
their HIGHEST rank. It is the profound, suspicious fear of an incurable
pessimism which compels whole centuries to fasten their teeth into a
religious interpretation of existence: the fear of the instinct which
divines that truth might be attained TOO soon, before man has become
strong enough, hard enough, artist enough.... Piety, the "Life in God,"
regarded in this light, would appear as the most elaborate and
ultimate product of the FEAR of truth, as artist-adoration
and artist-intoxication in presence of the most logical of all
falsifications, as the will to the inversion of truth, to untruth at
any price. Perhaps there has hitherto been no more effective means of
beautifying man than piety, by means of it man can become so artful, so
superficial, so iridescent, and so good, that his appearance no longer
offends.

60. To love mankind FOR GOD'S SAKE--this has so far been the noblest and
remotest sentiment to which mankind has attained. That love to mankind,
without any redeeming intention in the background, is only an ADDITIONAL
folly and brutishness, that the inclination to this love has first to
get its proportion, its delicacy, its gram of salt and sprinkling
of ambergris from a higher inclination--whoever first perceived
and "experienced" this, however his tongue may have stammered as it
attempted to express such a delicate matter, let him for all time be
holy and respected, as the man who has so far flown highest and gone
astray in the finest fashion!

61. The philosopher, as WE free spirits understand him--as the man of
the greatest responsibility, who has the conscience for the general
development of mankind,--will use religion for his disciplining and
educating work, just as he will use the contemporary political
and economic conditions. The selecting and disciplining
influence--destructive, as well as creative and fashioning--which can be
exercised by means of religion is manifold and varied, according to the
sort of people placed under its spell and protection. For those who are
strong and independent, destined and trained to command, in whom the
judgment and skill of a ruling race is incorporated, religion is
an additional means for overcoming resistance in the exercise of
authority--as a bond which binds rulers and subjects in common,
betraying and surrendering to the former the conscience of the latter,
their inmost heart, which would fain escape obedience. And in the
case of the unique natures of noble origin, if by virtue of superior
spirituality they should incline to a more retired and contemplative
life, reserving to themselves only the more refined forms of government
(over chosen disciples or members of an order), religion itself may
be used as a means for obtaining peace from the noise and trouble of
managing GROSSER affairs, and for securing immunity from the UNAVOIDABLE
filth of all political agitation. The Brahmins, for instance, understood
this fact. With the help of a religious organization, they secured to
themselves the power of nominating kings for the people, while their
sentiments prompted them to keep apart and outside, as men with a higher
and super-regal mission. At the same time religion gives inducement and
opportunity to some of the subjects to qualify themselves for future
ruling and commanding the slowly ascending ranks and classes, in which,
through fortunate marriage customs, volitional power and delight in
self-control are on the increase. To them religion offers sufficient
incentives and temptations to aspire to higher intellectuality, and to
experience the sentiments of authoritative self-control, of silence, and
of solitude. Asceticism and Puritanism are almost indispensable means of
educating and ennobling a race which seeks to rise above its hereditary
baseness and work itself upwards to future supremacy. And finally, to
ordinary men, to the majority of the people, who exist for service and
general utility, and are only so far entitled to exist, religion gives
invaluable contentedness with their lot and condition, peace of heart,
ennoblement of obedience, additional social happiness and sympathy,
with something of transfiguration and embellishment, something of
justification of all the commonplaceness, all the meanness, all
the semi-animal poverty of their souls. Religion, together with the
religious significance of life, sheds sunshine over such perpetually
harassed men, and makes even their own aspect endurable to them, it
operates upon them as the Epicurean philosophy usually operates upon
sufferers of a higher order, in a refreshing and refining manner,
almost TURNING suffering TO ACCOUNT, and in the end even hallowing and
vindicating it. There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity
and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate
themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby
to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it
difficult enough to live--this very difficulty being necessary.