aviour, or even
to believe his tale that he suffered from this hallucination
himself--this would be a genuine _niaiserie_ in a psychologist. Paul
willed the end; _therefore_ he also willed the means.... What he himself
didn't believe was swallowed readily enough by the idiots among whom he
spread _his_ teaching.--What _he_ wanted was power; in Paul the priest
once more reached out for power--he had use only for such concepts,
teachings and symbols as served the purpose of tyrannizing over the
masses and organizing mobs. _What_ was the only part of Christianity
that Mohammed borrowed later on? Paul's invention, his device for
establishing priestly tyranny and organizing the mob: the belief in the
immortality of the soul--_that is to say, the doctrine of
"judgment"_....

43.

When the centre of gravity of life is placed, _not_ in life itself, but
in "the beyond"--in _nothingness_--then one has taken away its centre of
gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all
reason, all natural instinct--henceforth, everything in the instincts
that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is
a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning:
_this_ is now the "meaning" of life.... Why be public-spirited? Why take
any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one
another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to
serve it?... Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the
"straight path."--"_One_ thing only is necessary".... That every man,
because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that
in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of _every_ individual
may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the
three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly
_suspended_ in their behalf--it is impossible to lavish too much
contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to
infinity, to _insolence_. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely
_this_ miserable flattery of personal vanity for its _triumph_--it was
thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon
evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side.
The "salvation of the soul"--in plain English: "the world revolves
around _me_."... The poisonous doctrine, "_equal_ rights for all," has
been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret n