Pity is opposed to the tonic passions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life: its action is depressing. A man loses power when he pities. By means of pity the drain on strength which suffering itself already introduces into the world is multiplied a thousandfold. 131 On the whole, pity thwarts the law of development which is the law of selection. It preserves that which is ripe for death, it fights in favour of the disinherited and the condemned of life. 131-132 This depressing and infectious instinct thwarts those instincts which aim at the preservation and enhancement of the value of life: by _multiplying_ misery quite as much as by preserving all that is miserable, it is the principal agent in promoting decadence. 132 That which a theologian considers true, _must_ of necessity be false: this furnishes almost the criterion of truth. It is his most profound self-preservative instinct which forbids reality ever to attain to honour in any way, or even to raise its voice. Whithersoever the influence of the theologian extends, _valuations_ are topsy-turvy, and the concepts "true" and "false" have necessarily changed places: that which is most deleterious to life, is here called "true," that which enhances it, elevates it, says Yea to it, justifies it and renders it triumphant, is called "false." 135 What is there that destroys a man more speedily than to work, think, feel, as an automaton of "duty," without internal promptings, without a profound personal predilection, without joy? This is the recipe _par excellence_ of decadence and even of idiocy. 137 In Christianity, neither morality nor religion comes in touch at all with reality. Nothing but imaginary _causes_ (God, the soul, the ego, spirit, free will--or even non-free will); nothing but imaginary _effects_ (sin, salvation, grace, punishment, forgiveness of sins). Imaginary beings are supposed to have intercourse (God, spirits, souls); imaginary Natural History (anthropocentric: total lack of the notion, "natural causes"); an imaginary _psychology_ (nothing but misunderstandings of self, interpretations of pleasant or unpleasant general feelings; for instance of the states of the _nervus sympathicus,_ with the help of the sign language of a religio-moral idiosyncrasy,--repentance, pangs of conscience, the temptation of the devil, the presence of God); an imaginary teleology (the Kingdom of God, the Last Judgment, Everlasting Life). 141-142 A proud people requires a God, unto whom it can _sacrifice_ things.... Religion, when restricted to these principles, is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence; for this he must have a God.--Such a God must be able to profit and to injure him, he must be able to act the friend and the foe. He must be esteemed for his good as well as for his evil qualities. 143