To turn our attention towards the child, to encourage the development of its initiative, to impress it with a sentiment of its dignity, to preserve it from cowardice and falsehood, to make it observe the _pros_ and _cons_ of all social conceptions, to educate it for the struggle, that is the great work, scarcely yet begun, which awaits us. That will be the task of the nearest future if we will act logically and firmly. [Illustration] THE ANTICHRIST. From "The Antichrist," by Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Alexander Tille, translated by Thomas Common. Publishers: Macmillan & Co. New York. I MAKE war against this theological instinct: I have found traces of it everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is from the very beginning ambiguous and disloyal with respect to everything. The pathos which develops therefrom calls itself belief: the closing of the eye once for all with respect to one's self, so as not to suffer from the sight--of incurable falsity. A person makes for himself a morality, a virtue, a sanctity out of this erroneous perspective towards all things, he unites the good conscience to the _false_ mode of seeing,--he demands that no _other_ mode of perspective be any longer of value, after he has made his own sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation," and "eternity." I have digged out the theologist-instinct everywhere; it is the most diffused, the most peculiarly _subterranean_ form of falsity that exists on earth. What a theologian feels as true, _must_ needs be false: one has therein almost a criterion of truth. It is his most fundamental self-preservative instinct which forbids reality to be held in honor, or even to find expression on any point. As far as theologist-influence extends, the _judgment of value_ is turned right about, the concepts of "true" and "false" are necessarily reversed: what is most injurious to life is here called "true," what raises, elevates, affirms, justifies, and makes it triumph is called "false." * * *