cted right here that blessedness is not
demonstrated, it is merely _promised_: it hangs upon "faith" as a
condition--one _shall_ be blessed _because_ one believes.... But what of
the thing that the priest promises to the believer, the wholly
transcendental "beyond"--how is _that_ to be demonstrated?--The "proof
by power," thus assumed, is actually no more at bottom than a belief
that the effects which faith promises will not fail to appear. In a
formula: "I believe that faith makes for blessedness--_therefore_, it is
true."... But this is as far as we may go. This "therefore" would be
_absurdum_ itself as a criterion of truth.--But let us admit, for the
sake of politeness, that blessedness by faith may be demonstrated
(--_not_ merely hoped for, and _not_ merely promised by the suspicious
lips of a priest): even so, _could_ blessedness--in a technical term,
_pleasure_--ever be a proof of truth? So little is this true that it is
almost a proof against truth when sensations of pleasure influence the
answer to the question "What is true?" or, at all events, it is enough
to make that "truth" highly suspicious. The proof by "pleasure" is a
proof _of_ "pleasure"--nothing more; why in the world should it be
assumed that _true_ judgments give more pleasure than false ones, and
that, in conformity to some pre-established harmony, they necessarily
bring agreeable feelings in their train?--The experience of all
disciplined and profound minds teaches _the contrary_. Man has had to
fight for every atom of the truth, and has had to pay for it almost
everything that the heart, that human love, that human trust cling to.
Greatness of soul is needed for this business: the service of truth is
the hardest of all services.--What, then, is the meaning of _integrity_
in things intellectual? It means that a man must be severe with his own
heart, that he must scorn "beautiful feelings," and that he makes every
Yea and Nay a matter of conscience!--Faith makes blessed: _therefore_,
it lies....

51.

The fact that faith, under certain circumstances, may work for
blessedness, but that this blessedness produced by an _idee fixe_ by no
means makes the idea itself true, and the fact that faith actually moves
no mountains, but instead _raises them up_ where there were none before:
all this is made sufficiently clear by a walk through a _lunatic
asylum_. _Not_, of course, to a priest: for his instincts prompt him to
the lie that sickness is not sick