Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free SpiritsNietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Human beings
is involuntarily believed that the religious tinted sections of a
philosophy are better attested than the others, but the case is at
bottom just the opposite: there is simply the inner wish that it may be
so, that the thing which beautifies may also be true. This wish leads us
to accept bad grounds as good.
132
=Of the Christian Need of Salvation.=--Careful consideration must render
it possible to propound some explanation of that process in the soul of
a Christian which is termed need of salvation, and to propound an
explanation, too, free from mythology: hence one purely psychological.
Heretofore psychological explanations of religious conditions and
processes have really been in disrepute, inasmuch as a theology calling
itself free gave vent to its unprofitable nature in this domain; for its
principal aim, so far as may be judged from the spirit of its creator,
Schleier-macher, was the preservation of the Christian religion and the
maintenance of the Christian theology. It appeared that in the
psychological analysis of religious "facts" a new anchorage and above
all a new calling were to be gained. Undisturbed by such predecessors,
we venture the following exposition of the phenomena alluded to. Man is
conscious of certain acts which are very firmly implanted in the general
course of conduct: indeed he discovers in himself a predisposition to
such acts that seems to him to be as unalterable as his very being. How
gladly he would essay some other kind of acts which in the general
estimate of conduct are rated the best and highest, how gladly he would
welcome the consciousness of well doing which ought to follow unselfish
motive! Unfortunately, however, it goes no further than this longing:
the discontent consequent upon being unable to satisfy it is added to
all other kinds of discontent which result from his life destiny in
particular or which may be due to so called bad acts; so that a deep
depression ensues accompanied by a desire for some physician to remove
it and all its causes.--This condition would not be found so bitter if
the individual but compared himself freely with other men: for then he
would have no reason to be discontented with himself in particular as he
is merely bearing his share of the general burden of human discontent
and incompleteness. But he compares himself with a being who alone must
be capable of the conduct that is called unegoistic and of an enduring
consciousness of unselfish motive, with God. It is because he gazes into
this clear mirror, that his own self seems so extraordinarily distracted
and so troubled. Thereupon the thought of that being, in so far as it
flits before his fancy as retributive justice, occasions him anxiety. In
every conceivable small and great experience he believes he sees the
anger of the being, his threats, the very implements and manacles of his
judge and prison. What succors him in this danger, which, in the
prospect of an eternal duration of punishment, transcends in hideousness
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