—Our age is proud of its historical sense: how could it allow itself to be convinced of the nonsensical idea that at the beginning Christianity consisted only of the _clumsy fable of the thaumaturgist and of the Saviour,_ and that all its spiritual and symbolic side was only developed later? On the contrary: the history of Christianity—from the death on the cross onwards—is the history of a gradual and ever coarser misunderstanding of an original symbolism. With every extension of Christianity over ever larger and ruder masses, who were ever less able to grasp its first principles, the need of _vulgarising and barbarising it_ increased proportionately—it absorbed the teachings and rites of all the _subterranean_ cults of the _imperium Romanum,_ as well as the nonsense of every kind of morbid reasoning. The fatal feature of Christianity lies in the necessary fact that its faith had to become as morbid, base and vulgar as the needs to which it had to minister were morbid, base and vulgar. _Morbid barbarism_ at last braces itself together for power in the form of the Church—the Church, this deadly hostility to all honesty, to all loftiness of the soul, to all discipline of the mind, to all frank and kindly humanity.—_Christian_ and _noble_ values: only we spirits _who have become free have_ re-established this contrast in values which is the greatest that has ever existed on earth!— 38 —I cannot, at this point, stifle a sigh. There are days when I am visited by a feeling blacker than the blackest melancholy—the _contempt of man._ And in order that I may leave you in no doubt as to what I despise, _whom_ I despise: I declare that it is the man of to-day, the man with whom I am fatally contemporaneous. The man of to-day, I am asphyxiated by his foul breath.... Towards the past, like all knights of knowledge, I am profoundly tolerant,—that is to say, I exercise a sort of _generous_ self-control: with gloomy caution I pass through whole millennia of this mad-house world, and whether it be called “Christianity,” “Christian Faith,” or “Christian Church,” I take care not to hold mankind responsible for its mental disorders. But my feeling suddenly changes, and vents itself the moment I enter the modern age, _our_ age. Our age _knows...._ That which formerly was merely morbid, is now positively indecent It is indecent nowadays to be a Christian. _And it is here that my loathing begins._ I look about me: not a word of what was formerly known as “truth” has remained standing; we can no longer endure to hear a priest even pronounce the word “truth.” Even he who makes but the most modest claims upon truth, _must_ know at present, that a theologian, a priest, or a pope, not only errs but actually _ties,_ with every word that he utters,—and that he is no longer able to lie from “innocence,” from “ignorance.” Even the priest knows quite as well as everybody else does that there is no longer any “God,” any “sinner” or any “Saviour,” and that “free