that lies in Christian—I mean to say, ecclesiastical prejudice. Any such essential symbolism stands beyond the pale of all religion, all notions of cult, all history, all natural science, all experience of the world, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books and all Art—for his “wisdom” is precisely the complete ignorance[4] of the existence of such things. He has not even heard speak of _culture,_ he does not require to oppose it,—he does not deny it.... The same holds good of the state, of the whole of civil and social order, of work and of war—he never had any reason to deny the world, he had not the vaguest notion of the ecclesiastical concept “the world.” ... Denying is precisely what was quite impossible to him.—Dialectic is also quite absent, as likewise the idea that any faith, any “truth” can be proved by argument (—his proofs are inner “lights,” inward feelings of happiness and self-affirmation, a host of “proofs of power”—). Neither can such a doctrine contradict, it does not even realise the fact that there are or can be other doctrines, it is absolutely incapable of imagining a contrary judgment.... Wherever it encounters such things, from a feeling of profound sympathy it bemoans such “blindness,”—for it sees the “light,”—but it raises no objections. 33 The whole psychology of the “gospels” lacks the concept of guilt and punishment, as also that of reward. “Sin,” any sort of aloofness between God and man, is done away with,—_this is precisely what constitutes the “glad tidings”._ Eternal bliss is not promised, it is not bound up with certain conditions; it is the only reality—the rest consists only of signs wherewith to speak about it.... The results of such a state project themselves into a new practice of life, the actual evangelical practice. It is not a “faith” which distinguishes the Christians: the Christian acts, he distinguishes himself by means of a _different_ mode of action. He does not resist his enemy either by words or in his heart He draws no distinction between foreigners and natives, between Jews and Gentiles (“the neighbour” really means the co-religionist, the Jew). He is angry with no one, he despises no one. He neither shows himself at the tribunals nor does he acknowledge any of their claims (“Swear not at all”). He never under any circumstances divorces his wife, even when her infidelity has been proved.—All this is at bottom one principle, it is all the outcome of one instinct—