priests) had to be _determined_--and to this end they had to have a "revelation." In plain English, a gigantic literary fraud had to be perpetrated, and "holy scriptures" had to be concocted--and so, with the utmost hierarchical pomp, and days of penance and much lamentation over the long days of "sin" now ended, they were duly published. The "will of God," it appears, had long stood like a rock; the trouble was that mankind had neglected the "holy scriptures".... But the "will of God" had already been revealed to Moses.... What happened? Simply this: the priest had formulated, once and for all time and with the strictest meticulousness, what tithes were to be paid to him, from the largest to the smallest (--not forgetting the most appetizing cuts of meat, for the priest is a great consumer of beefsteaks); in brief, he let it be known just _what he wanted_, what "the will of God" was.... From this time forward things were so arranged that the priest became _indispensable everywhere_; at all the great natural events of life, at birth, at marriage, in sickness, at death, not to say at the "_sacrifice_" (that is, at meal-times), the holy parasite put in his appearance, and proceeded to _denaturize_ it--in his own phrase, to "sanctify" it.... For this should be noted: that every natural habit, every natural institution (the state, the administration of justice, marriage, the care of the sick and of the poor), everything demanded by the life-instinct, in short, everything that has any value _in itself_, is reduced to absolute worthlessness and even made the _reverse_ of valuable by the parasitism of priests (or, if you chose, by the "moral order of the world"). The fact requires a sanction--a power to _grant values_ becomes necessary, and the only way it can create such values is by denying nature.... The priest depreciates and desecrates nature: it is only at this price that he can exist at all.--Disobedience to God, which actually means to the priest, to "the law," now gets the name of "sin"; the means prescribed for "reconciliation with God" are, of course, precisely the means which bring one most effectively under the thumb of the priest; he alone can "save".... Psychologically considered, "sins" are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest _lives_ upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be "sinning".... Prime axiom: "God forgiveth him that repenteth"--in plain English, _him that submitteth to the priest_. 27.