The concept value itself regarded as a cause: first standpoint. The ideal granted all attributes, conferring honour: second standpoint. 573. The idea of the "true world" or of "God" as absolutely spiritual, intellectual, and good, is an _emergency measure_ to the extent to which the _antagonistic_ instincts are all-powerful.... Moderation and existing humanity is reflected exactly in the humanisation of the gods. The Greeks of the strongest period, who entertained no fear whatever of themselves, but on the contrary were pleased with themselves, brought down their gods to all their emotions. The spiritualisation of the idea of God is thus very far from being a sign of _progress_: one is heartily conscious of this when one reads Goethe--in his works the vaporisation of God into virtue and spirit is felt as being upon a lower plane. 574. The nonsense of all metaphysics shown to reside in the derivation of the conditioned out of the unconditioned. It belongs to the nature of thinking that it adds the unconditioned to the conditioned, that it invents it--just as it thought of and invented the "ego" to cover the multifariousness of its processes i it measures the world according to a host of self-devised measurements--according to its fundamental fictions "the unconditioned," "end and means," "things," "substances," and according to logical laws, figures, and forms. There would be nothing which could be called knowledge, if thought did not first so _re-create_ the world into "things" which are in its own image. It is only _through_ thought that there is _untruth._ The _origin_ of thought, like that of _feelings,_ cannot be traced: but that is _no_ proof of its primordiality or absoluteness! It simply shows that we cannot get _behind it,_ because we have nothing else save thought and feeling. 575. To know is to _point to past experience:_ in its nature it is a _regressus in infinitum._ That which halts (in the face of a so-called _causa prima_ or the unconditioned, etc.) is _laziness,_ weariness. 576. _Concerning the psychology of metaphysics_--the influence of fear. That which has been most feared, the cause of the _greatest suffering_ (lust of power, voluptuousness, etc.), has been treated with the greatest amount of hostility by men, and eliminated from the "real" world. Thus the _passions_ have been step by step _struck out,_ God posited as the opposite of evil--that is to say, reality is conceived to be the _negation of the passions and the emotions_ (i.e. _nonentity_). _Irrationality,_ impulsive action, accidental action, is, moreover, hated by them (as the cause of incalculable suffering). _Consequently_ they denied this element in the absolute, and interpreted it as absolute "rationality" and "conformity of means to ends."