--I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the _entire_ psychology of the priest.--The priest knows only one great danger: that is science,--the sound concept of cause and effect. But science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,--one must have _superfluous_ time, one must have _superfluous_ intellect in order to "perceive" ... _Consequently_ man must be made unfortunate,--this has at all times been the logic of the priest.--One makes out _what_ has only thereby come into the world in accordance with this logic:--"sin".... The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," have been devised _in opposition_ to science,--_in opposition_ to a severance of man from the priest.... Man is _not_ to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is _not_ to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is not to look at all, he is to _suffer_.... And he is so to suffer as to need the priest always. _A Saviour is needed._--The concepts of guilt and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," and of "forgiveness"--_lies_ through and through, and without any psychological reality--have been contrived to destroy the _causal sense_ in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!--And _not_ an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most ignoble instincts! A _priest's_ attack! A _parasite's_ attack! A vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be brought about by the conceptual spectres of superstition, by "God," by "spirits," by "souls," as mere "moral" consequences, as reward, punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of perception has been destroyed--_the greatest crime against mankind has been committed._ Sin, repeated once more, this form of human self-violation _par excellence_, has been invented for the purpose of making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility of man; the priest _rules_ by the invention of sin.-- * * *