When the _feeling of power_ suddenly seizes and overwhelms a man,--and this takes place in the case of all the great passions,--a doubt arises in him concerning his own person: he dare not think himself the cause of this astonishing sensation--and thus he posits a stronger person, a Godhead as its cause, 114-115 Religion has lowered the concept "man"; its ultimate conclusion is that all goodness, greatness, and truth are superhuman, and are only obtainable by the grace of God. 116 _In short:_ what is the price paid for the _improvement_ supposed to be due to morality?--The unhinging of _reason,_ the reduction of all motives to fear and hope (punishment and reward); _dependence_ upon the tutelage of priests, and upon a formulary exactitude which is supposed to express a divine will; the implantation of a "conscience" which establishes a false science in the place of experience and experiment: as though all one had to do or had not to do were predetermined--a kind of contraction of the seeking and striving spirit;--_in short:_ the worst _mutilation_ of man that can be imagined, and it is pretended that "the good man" is the result. 122-123 Paganism is that which says yea to all that is natural, it is innocence in being natural, "naturalness." _Christianity_ is that which says no to all that is natural, it is a certain lack of dignity in being natural; hostility to Nature. 127 _Christianity_ is a degenerative movement, consisting of all kinds of decaying and excremental elements: it is _not_ the expression of the downfall of a race, it is, from the root, an agglomeration of all the morbid elements which are mutually attractive and which gravitate to one another. It is therefore _not_ a national religion, _not_ determined by race: it appeals to the disinherited everywhere; it consists of a foundation of resentment against all that is successful and dominant: it is in need of a symbol which represents the damnation of everything successful and dominant. It is opposed to every form of _intellectual_ movement, to all philosophy: it takes up the cudgels for idiots, and utters a curse upon all intellect. Resentment against those who are gifted, learned, intellectually independent: in all these it suspects the element of success and domination. 130 All Christian "truth," is idle falsehood and deception, and is precisely the reverse of that which was at the bottom of the first Christian movement. 133 To be really Christian would mean to be absolutely indifferent to dogmas, cults, priests, church, and theology. 133 A God who died for our sins, salvation through faith, resurrection after death--all these things are the counterfeit coins of real-Christianity, for which that pernicious blockhead Paul must be held responsible. 138 Christianity has, from the first, always transformed the symbolical into crude realities: (1) The antitheses "true life" and "false life" were misunderstood and changed into "life here" and "life beyond."