When a people is on the road to ruin; when it feels its belief in a future, its hope of freedom vanishing for ever; when it becomes conscious of submission as the most useful quality, and of the virtues of the submissive as self-preservative measures, then its God must also modify himself. He then becomes a tremulous and unassuming sneak; he counsels "peace of the soul," the cessation of all hatred, leniency and "love" even towards friend and foe. He is for ever moralising, he crawls into the heart of every private virtue, becomes a God for everybody. 143 The Christian concept of God--God as the deity of the sick, God as a spider, God as a spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts of God that has ever been attained on earth. Maybe it represents the low-water mark in the evolutionary ebb of the godlike type. God degenerated into the _contradiction of life,_ instead of being its transfiguration and eternal Yea! With God war is declared on life, nature, and the will to life! God is the formula for every calumny of this world and for every lie concerning a beyond! 146 Christianity aims at mastering _beasts of prey;_ its expedient is to make them _ill,_--to render feeble is the Christian recipe for taming, for "civilisation." 151 If _faith_ is above all necessary, then reason, knowledge, and scientific research must be brought into evil repute: the road to truth becomes the _forbidden_ road.--Strong _hope_ is a much greater stimulant of life than any single realised joy could be. Sufferers must be sustained by a hope which no actuality can contradict,--and which cannot ever be realised: the hope of another world. (Precisely on account of this power that hope has of making the unhappy linger on, the Greeks regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most _mischievous_ evil: it remained behind in Pandora's box.) In order that _love_ may be possible, God must be a person. In order that the lowest instincts may also make their voices heard God must be young. For the ardour of the women a beautiful saint, and for the ardour of the men a Virgin Mary has to be pressed into the foreground. All this on condition that Christianity wishes to rule over a certain soil, on which Aphrodisiac or Adonis cults had already determined the _notion_ of a cult. To insist upon _chastity_ only intensifies the vehemence and profundity of the religious instinct--it makes the cult warmer, more enthusiastic, more soulful.--Love is the state in which man sees things most widely different from what they are. The force of illusion reaches its zenith here, as likewise the sweetening and transfiguring power. When a man is in love he endures more than at other times; he submits to everything. The thing was to discover a religion in which it was possible to love: by this means the worst in life is overcome--it is no longer even seen.--So much for three Christian virtues Faith, Hope, and Charity: I call them the three Christian _precautionary measures._ 152-153