Thirdly: their domain of power must be very extensive, in order that its control may escape the notice of those they subject: they must know the penal code of the life beyond--of the life "after death,"--and, of course, the means whereby the road to blessedness may be discovered. They have to put the notion of a natural course of things out of sight, but as they are intelligent and thoughtful people, they are able to _promise_ a host of effects, which they naturally say are conditioned by prayer or by the strict observance of their law. They can, moreover, _prescribe_ a large number of things which are exceedingly reasonable --only they must not point to experience or empiricism as the source of this wisdom, but to revelation or to the fruits of the "most severe exercises of penance." The _holy lie,_ therefore, applies principally to the _purpose_ of an action (the natural purpose, reason, is made to vanish: a moral purpose, the observance of some law, a service to God, seems to be the purpose): to the _consequence_ of an action (the natural consequence is interpreted as something supernatural, and, in order to be on surer ground, other incontrollable and supernatural consequences are foretold). In this way the concepts _good_ and _evil_ are created, and seem quite divorced from the natural concepts: "useful," "harmful," "life-promoting," "life-retarding,"--indeed, inasmuch as _another_ life is imagined, the former concepts may even be _antagonistic_ to Nature's concepts of good and evil. In this way, the proverbial concept "conscience" is created: an inner voice, which, though it makes itself heard in regard to every action, does not measure the worth of that action according to its results, but according to its conformity or non-conformity to the "law." The holy lie therefore invented: (1) a _god_ who _punishes_ and _rewards,_ who recognises and carefully observes the law-book of the priests, and who is particular about sending them into the world as his mouthpieces and plenipotentiaries; (2) an _After Life,_ in which, alone, the great penal machine is supposed to be active--to this end the _immortality of the soul_ was invented; (3) a _conscience in man,_ understood as the knowledge that good and evil are permanent values--that God himself speaks through it, whenever its counsels are in conformity with priestly precepts; (4) _Morality_ as the denial of all natural processes, as the subjection of all phenomena to a moral order, as the interpretation of all phenomena as the effects of a moral order of things (that is to say, the concept of punishment and reward), as the only power and only creator of all transformations; (5) _Truths_ given, revealed, and identical with the teaching of the priests: as the condition to all salvation and happiness in this and the next world.