religious basis
of life. On this account an imitation of antiquity is a false tendency .
the betrayers or the betrayed are the philologists who still think of
such a thing. We live in a period when many different conceptions of
life are to be found: hence the present age is instructive to an unusual
degree; and hence also the reason why it is so ill, since it suffers
from the evils of all its tendencies at once. The man of the future .
the European man.

164

The German Reformation widened the gap between us and antiquity: was it
necessary for it to do so? It once again introduced the old contrast of
"Paganism" and "Christianity"; and it was at the same time a protest
against the decorative culture of the Renaissance--it was a victory
gained over the same culture as had formerly been conquered by early
Christianity.

In regard to "worldly things," Christianity preserved the grosser views
of the ancients. All the nobler elements in marriage, slavery, and the
State are unchristian. It _required_ the distorting characteristics of
worldliness to prove itself.

165

The connection between humanism and religious rationalism was emphasised
as a Saxonian trait by Kochly: the type of this philologist is Gottfried
Hermann.[13]

166

I understand religions as narcotics: but when they are given to such
nations as the Germans, I think they are simply rank poison.

167

All religions are, in the end, based upon certain physical assumptions,
which are already in existence and adapt the religions to their needs .
for example, in Christianity, the contrast between body and soul, the
unlimited importance of the earth as the "world," the marvellous
occurrences in nature. If once the opposite views gain the mastery--for
instance, a strict law of nature, the helplessness and superfluousness
of all gods, the strict conception of the soul as a bodily process--all
is over. But all Greek culture is based upon such views.

168

When we look from the character and culture of the Catholic Middle Ages
back to the Greeks, we see them resplendent indeed in the rays of higher
humanity; for, if we have anything to reproach these Greeks with, we
must reproach the Middle Ages with it also to a much greater extent. The
worship of the ancients at the time of the Renaissance was therefore
quite honest and proper. We have carried matters further in one
particular point, precisely in connection with that dawning ray of
light. We hav