The unholiness of Christian means is caught _in flagranti,_ if only the end aspired to by Christianity be compared with that of the Law-Book of Manu; if only these two utterly opposed aims be put under a strong light The critic of Christianity simply cannot avoid making Christianity _contemptible._—A Law-Book like that of Manu comes into being like every good law-book: it epitomises the experience, the precautionary measures, and the experimental morality of long ages, it settles things definitely, it no longer creates. The prerequisite for a codification of this kind, is the recognition of the fact that the means which procure authority for a _truth_ to which it has cost both time and great pains to attain, are fundamentally different from those with which that same truth would be proved. A law-book never relates the utility, the reasons, the preliminary casuistry, of a law: for it would be precisely in this way that it would forfeit its imperative tone, the “thou shalt,” the first condition of its being obeyed. The problem lies exactly in this.—At a certain stage in the development of a people, the most far-seeing class within it (that is to say, the class that sees farthest backwards and forwards), declares the experience of how its fellow-creatures ought to live—_can_ live—to be finally settled. Its object is, to reap as rich and as complete a harvest as possible, in return for the ages of experiment and _terrible_ experience it has traversed. Consequently, that which has to be avoided, above all, is any further experimentation, the continuation of the state when values are still fluid, the testing, choosing, and criticising of values _in infinitum. _ Against all this a double wall is built up: in the first place, _Revelation,_ which is the assumption that the rationale of every law is not human in its origin, that it was not sought and found after ages of error, but that it is divine in its origin, completely and utterly without a history, gift, a miracle, a mere communication.... And secondly, _tradition,_ which is the assumption that the law has obtained since the most primeval times, that it is impious and a crime against one’s ancestors to attempt to doubt it. The authority of law is established on the principles: God _gave_ it, the ancestors _lived_ it.—The superior reason of such a procedure lies in the intention to draw consciousness off step by step from that mode of life which has been recognised as correct (_i.e., proved_ after enormous and carefully examined experience), so that perfect automatism of the instincts may be attained,—this being the only possible basis of all mastery of every kind of perfection in the Art of Life. To draw up a law-book like Manu’s, is tantamount to granting a people mastership for the future, perfection for the future,—the right to aspire to the highest Art of Life. _To that end it must be made unconscious;_ this is the object of every holy