Christianity has the instinct of a hunter for finding out all those who may by hook or by crook be driven to despair--only a very small number of men can be brought to this despair. Christianity lies in wait for such as those, and pursues them. 65 The "demon" Eros becomes an object of greater interest to mankind than all the angels and saints put together, thanks to the mysterious Mumbo-Jumboism of the Church in all things erotic: it is due to the Church that love stories, even in our own time, have become the one common interest which appeals to all classes of people--with an exaggeration which would be incomprehensible to antiquity, and which will not fail to provoke roars of laughter in coming generations. 78 It is only those who never--or always--attend church that underestimate the dishonesty with which this subject is still dealt in Protestant pulpits; in what a clumsy fashion the preacher takes advantage of his security from interruption; how the Bible is pinched and squeezed; and how the people are made acquainted with every form of _the art of false reading._ 85 Christianity wants blindness and frenzy and an eternal swan-song above the waves under which reason has been drowned!... 90 What if God were not exactly truth, and if this were proved? And if he were instead of vanity, the desire for power, the ambitious, the fear, and the enraptured and terrified folly of mankind?... 93 One Becomes Moral--but not because one is moral! Submission to morals may be due to slavishness or vanity, egoism or resignation, dismal fanaticism or thoughtlessness. It may, again, be an act of despair, such as submission to the authority of a ruler; but there is nothing moral about it _per se._ 97 Morals are constantly undergoing changes and transformations, occasioned by successful crimes. 97 I deny morality in the same way as I deny alchemy, _i.e.,_ I deny its hypotheses; but I do not deny that there have been alchemists who believed in these hypotheses and based their actions upon them. I also deny immorality--not that innumerable people feel immoral, but that there is any true reason why they should feel so, should not, of course, deny--unless I were a fool--that many actions which are called immoral should be avoided and resisted; and in the same way that many which are called moral should be performed and encouraged; but I hold that in both cases these actions should be performed from motives other than those which have prevailed up to the present time. We must learn anew in order that at last, perhaps very late in the day, we may be able to do something more: feel anew. 100