immortality of the soul--_that is to say, the doctrine of "judgment"_.... 43. When the centre of gravity of life is placed, _not_ in life itself, but in "the beyond"--in _nothingness_--then one has taken away its centre of gravity altogether. The vast lie of personal immortality destroys all reason, all natural instinct--henceforth, everything in the instincts that is beneficial, that fosters life and that safeguards the future is a cause of suspicion. So to live that life no longer has any meaning: _this_ is now the "meaning" of life.... Why be public-spirited? Why take any pride in descent and forefathers? Why labour together, trust one another, or concern one's self about the common welfare, and try to serve it?... Merely so many "temptations," so many strayings from the "straight path."--"_One_ thing only is necessary".... That every man, because he has an "immortal soul," is as good as every other man; that in an infinite universe of things the "salvation" of _every_ individual may lay claim to eternal importance; that insignificant bigots and the three-fourths insane may assume that the laws of nature are constantly _suspended_ in their behalf--it is impossible to lavish too much contempt upon such a magnification of every sort of selfishness to infinity, to _insolence_. And yet Christianity has to thank precisely _this_ miserable flattery of personal vanity for its _triumph_--it was thus that it lured all the botched, the dissatisfied, the fallen upon evil days, the whole refuse and off-scouring of humanity to its side. The "salvation of the soul"--in plain English: "the world revolves around _me_."... The poisonous doctrine, "_equal_ rights for all," has been propagated as a Christian principle: out of the secret nooks and crannies of bad instinct Christianity has waged a deadly war upon all feelings of reverence and distance between man and man, which is to say, upon the first _prerequisite_ to every step upward, to every development of civilization--out of the _ressentiment_ of the masses it has forged its chief weapons against _us_, against everything noble, joyous and high-spirited on earth, against our happiness on earth.... To allow "immortality" to every Peter and Paul was the greatest, the most vicious outrage upon _noble_ humanity ever perpetrated.--_And_ let us not underestimate the fatal influence that Christianity has had, even upon politics! Nowadays no one has courage any more for special rights, for the right of dominion, for feelings of honourable pride in himself and his equals--for the _pathos of distance_.... Our politics is sick with this lack of courage!--The aristocratic attitude of mind has been undermined by the lie of the equality of souls; and if belief in the "privileges of the majority" makes and _will continue to make_ revolutions--it is Christianity, let us not doubt, and _Christian_ valuations, which convert every revolution into a carnival of blood and