s now an end of tedium--but of other things also! Woman
was the _second_ mistake of God.--"Woman is in her essence a serpent,
Hera"--every priest knows that: "from woman comes _all_ the mischief in
the world"--every priest knows that likewise. _Consequently_, _science_
also comes from her.... Only through woman did man learn to taste of the
tree of knowledge.--What had happened? The old God was seized by a
mortal terror. Man himself had become his _greatest_ mistake, he had
created a rival, science makes _godlike_; it is at an end with priests
and Gods, if man becomes scientific!--_Moral_: science is the thing
forbidden in itself--it alone is forbidden. Science is the _first_ sin,
the germ of all sin, _original_ sin. _This alone is morality._--"Thou
shalt _not_ know:"--the rest follows therefrom.--By his mortal terror
God was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one _defend_ one's
self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer:
away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to
thoughts,--all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man _shall_ not think--and
the "priest in himself" contrives distress, death, the danger of life in
pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all
_sickness_,--nothing but expedients in the struggle against science!
Distress does not _permit_ man to think.... And nevertheless! frightful!
the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the
Gods,--what to do!--The old God contrives _war_, he separates the
peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another
(the priests have always had need of war ...). War, among other things,
a great disturber of science!--Incredible! Knowledge, the _emancipation
from the priest_, augments even in spite of wars.--And a final
resolution is arrived at by the old God: "man has become
scientific,--_there is no help for it, he must be drowned!_" ...

* * *

--I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the
_entire_ psychology of the priest.--The priest knows only one great
danger: that is science,--the sound concept of cause and effect. But
science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,--one
must have _superfluous_ time, one must have _superfluous_ intellect in
order to "perceive" ... _Consequently_ man must be made
unfortunate,--this has at all times been the logic of the priest.--One
makes out _what_ h