-This organization was strong enough to
withstand bad emperors: the accident of personality has nothing to do
with such things--the _first_ principle of all genuinely great
architecture. But it was not strong enough to stand up against the
_corruptest_ of all forms of corruption--against Christians.... These
stealthy worms, which under the cover of night, mist and duplicity,
crept upon every individual, sucking him dry of all earnest interest in
_real_ things, of all instinct for _reality_--this cowardly, effeminate
and sugar-coated gang gradually alienated all "souls," step by step,
from that colossal edifice, turning against it all the meritorious,
manly and noble natures that had found in the cause of Rome their own
cause, their own serious purpose, their own _pride_. The sneakishness of
hypocrisy, the secrecy of the conventicle, concepts as black as hell,
such as the sacrifice of the innocent, the _unio mystica_ in the
drinking of blood, above all, the slowly rekindled fire of revenge, of
Chandala revenge--all _that_ sort of thing became master of Rome: the
same kind of religion which, in a pre-existent form, Epicurus had
combatted. One has but to read Lucretius to know _what_ Epicurus made
war upon--_not_ paganism, but "Christianity," which is to say, the
corruption of souls by means of the concepts of guilt, punishment and
immortality.--He combatted the _subterranean_ cults, the whole of latent
Christianity--to deny immortality was already a form of genuine
_salvation_.--Epicurus had triumphed, and every respectable intellect in
Rome was Epicurean--_when Paul appeared_ ... Paul, the Chandala hatred
of Rome, of "the world," in the flesh and inspired by genius--the Jew,
the _eternal_ Jew _par excellence_.... What he saw was how, with the aid
of the small sectarian Christian movement that stood apart from Judaism,
a "world conflagration" might be kindled; how, with the symbol of "God
on the cross," all secret seditions, all the fruits of anarchistic
intrigues in the empire, might be amalgamated into one immense power.
"Salvation is of the Jews."--Christianity is the formula for exceeding
_and_ summing up the subterranean cults of all varieties, that of
Osiris, that of the Great Mother, that of Mithras, for instance: in his
discernment of this fact the genius of Paul showed itself. His instinct
was here so sure that, with reckless violence to the truth, he put the
ideas which lent fascination to every sort of Chandala r