thereafter he became ever thinner and paler--became the "ideal," became "pure spirit," became "the absolute," became "the thing-in-itself."... _The collapse of a god_: he became a "thing-in-itself." 18. The Christian concept of a god--the god as the patron of the sick, the god as a spinner of cobwebs, the god as a spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts that has ever been set up in the world: it probably touches low-water mark in the ebbing evolution of the god-type. God degenerated into the _contradiction of life_. Instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yea! In him war is declared on life, on nature, on the will to live! God becomes the formula for every slander upon the "here and now," and for every lie about the "beyond"! In him nothingness is deified, and the will to nothingness is made holy!... 19. The fact that the strong races of northern Europe did not repudiate this Christian god does little credit to their gift for religion--and not much more to their taste. They ought to have been able to make an end of such a moribund and worn-out product of the _decadence_. A curse lies upon them because they were not equal to it; they made illness, decrepitude and contradiction a part of their instincts--and since then they have not managed to _create_ any more gods. Two thousand years have come and gone--and not a single new god! Instead, there still exists, and as if by some intrinsic right,--as if he were the _ultimatum_ and _maximum_ of the power to create gods, of the _creator spiritus_ in mankind--this pitiful god of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid image of decay, conjured up out of emptiness, contradiction and vain imagining, in which all the instincts of _decadence_, all the cowardices and wearinesses of the soul find their sanction!-- 20.