crime! Christianity is a revolt of all creatures that creep on the ground against everything that is _lofty_: the gospel of the "lowly" _lowers_.... 44. --The gospels are invaluable as evidence of the corruption that was already persistent _within_ the primitive community. That which Paul, with the cynical logic of a rabbi, later developed to a conclusion was at bottom merely a process of decay that had begun with the death of the Saviour.--These gospels cannot be read too carefully; difficulties lurk behind every word. I confess--I hope it will not be held against me--that it is precisely for this reason that they offer first-rate joy to a psychologist--as the _opposite_ of all merely naive corruption, as refinement _par excellence_, as an artistic triumph in psychological corruption. The gospels, in fact, stand alone. The Bible as a whole is not to be compared to them. Here we are among Jews: this is the _first_ thing to be borne in mind if we are not to lose the thread of the matter. This positive genius for conjuring up a delusion of personal "holiness" unmatched anywhere else, either in books or by men; this elevation of fraud in word and attitude to the level of an _art_--all this is not an accident due to the chance talents of an individual, or to any violation of nature. The thing responsible is _race_. The whole of Judaism appears in Christianity as the art of concocting holy lies, and there, after many centuries of earnest Jewish training and hard practice of Jewish technic, the business comes to the stage of mastery. The Christian, that _ultima ratio_ of lying, is the Jew all over again--he is _threefold_ the Jew.... The underlying will to make use only of such concepts, symbols and attitudes as fit into priestly practice, the instinctive repudiation of every _other_ mode of thought, and every other method of estimating values and utilities--this is not only tradition, it is _inheritance_: only as an inheritance is it able to operate with the force of nature. The whole of mankind, even the best minds of the best ages (with one exception, perhaps hardly human--), have permitted themselves to be deceived. The gospels have been read as a _book of innocence_ ... surely no small indication of the high skill with which the trick has been done.--Of course, if we could actually _see_ these astounding bigots and bogus saints, even if only for an instant, the farce would come to an end,--and it is precisely because _I_ cannot read a word of theirs without seeing their attitudinizing that _I have made an end of them_.... I simply cannot endure the way they have of rolling up their eyes.--For the majority, happily enough, books are mere _literature_.--Let us not be led astray: they say "judge not," and yet they condemn to hell whoever stands in their way. In letting God sit in judgment they judge themselves; in glorifying God they glorify themselves; in _demanding_ that every one show the virtues