Connected with this is the discernment that every judgment which I pass upon an object is the _creature_ of my will; and that discernment again leads me to not losing myself in the _creature_, the judgment, but remaining the _creator_, the judger, who is ever creating anew. All predicates of objects are my statements, my judgments, my--creatures. If they want to tear themselves loose from me and be something for themselves, or actually overawe me, then I have nothing more pressing to do than to take them back into their nothing, _i. e._ into me the creator. God, Christ, trinity, morality, the good, etc., are such creatures, of which I must not merely allow myself to say that they are truths, but also that they are deceptions. As I once willed and decreed their existence, so I want to have license to will their non-existence too; I must not let them grow over my head, must not have the weakness to let them become something "absolute," whereby they would be eternalized and withdrawn from my power and decision. With that I should fall a prey to the _principle of stability_, the proper life-principle of religion, which concerns itself with creating "sanctuaries that must not be touched," "eternal truths,"--in short, that which shall be "sacred,"--and depriving you of what is _yours_. The object makes us into possessed men in its sacred form just as in its profane; as a supersensuous object, just as it does as a sensuous one. The appetite or mania refers to both, and avarice and longing for heaven stand on a level. When the rationalists wanted to win people for the sensuous world, Lavater preached the longing for the invisible. The one party wanted to call forth _emotion_, the other _motion_, activity. The conception of objects is altogether diverse, even as God, Christ, the world, etc., were and are conceived of in the most manifold wise. In this every one is a "dissenter," and after bloody combats so much has at last been attained, that opposite views about one and the same object are no longer condemned as heresies worthy of death. The "dissenters" reconcile themselves to each other. But why should I only dissent (think otherwise) about a thing? why not push the thinking otherwise to its last extremity, _viz._, that of no longer having any regard at all for the thing, and therefore thinking its nothingness, crushing it? Then the _conception_ itself has an end, because there is no longer anything to conceive of. Why am I to say, let us suppose, "God is not Allah, not Brahma, not Jehovah, but--God"; but not, "God is nothing but a deception"? Why do people brand me if I am an "atheist"? Because they put the creature above the creator ("They honor and serve the creature more than the Creator"[224]) and require a _ruling object_, that the subject may be right _submissive_. I am to bend _beneath_ the absolute, I _ought_ to.