_Actual_ life is nothing more than an illusion (that is to say, a deception, an insanity). The whole of struggling, fighting, and real existence--so full of light and shade, is only bad and false: everybody's duty is to be _delivered_ from it. "Man, innocent, idle, immortal, and happy"--this concept, which is the object of the "most supreme desires," must be criticised before anything else. Why should guilt, work, death, and pain (_and,_ from the Christian point of view, also _knowledge_ ...) be _contrary_ to all supreme desires?--The lazy Christian notions: "blessedness," "innocence," "immortality." 225. The eccentric concept "holiness" does not exist--"God" and "man" have not been divorced from each other. "Miracles" do not exist--such spheres do not exist: the only one to be considered is the "intellectual" (that is to say, the symbolically-psychological). As decadence: a counterpart to "Epicureanism." ... Paradise according to Greek notions was only "Epicurus' Garden." A life of this sort lacks a purpose: it _strives after_ nothing;--a form of the "Epicurean gods"--there is no longer any reason to aim at anything,--not even at having children:--everything has been done. 226. They despised the body: they did not reckon with it: nay, more--they treated it as an enemy. It was their delirium to think that a man could carry a "beautiful soul" about in a body that was a cadaverous abortion.... In order to inoculate others with this insanity they had to present the concept "beautiful soul" in a different way, and to transvalue the natural value, until, at last, a pale, sickly, idiotically exalted creature, something angelic, some extreme perfection and transfiguration was declared to be the higher man. 227. Ignorance in matters psychological.--The Christian has no nervous system;--contempt for, and deliberate and wilful turning away from, the demands of the body, and the _naked_ body; it is assumed that all this is in keeping with man's nature, and _must perforce work the ultimate good of the soul_;--all functions of the body are systematically reduced to moral values; illness itself is regarded as determined by morality, it is held to be the result of sin, or it is a trial or a state of salvation, through which man becomes more perfect than he could become in a state of health (Pascal's idea); under certain circumstances, there are wilful attempts at inducing illness. 228.