These people, possessed of an inflexible will to assert themselves, and who, once they had lost all natural hold on life, and had long existed without any right to existence, still knew how to prevail by means of hypotheses which were as unnatural as they were imaginary (calling themselves the chosen people, the community of saints, the people of the promised land, and the "Church"): these people made use of their _pia fraus_ with such skill, and with such "clean consciences," that one cannot be too cautious when they preach morality. When Jews step forward as the personification of innocence, the danger must be great. While reading the New Testament a man should have his small fund of intelligence, mistrust, and wickedness constantly at hand. People of the lowest origin, partly mob, outcasts not only from good society, but also from respectable society; grown away from the _atmosphere_ of culture, and free from discipline; ignorant, without even a suspicion of the fact that conscience can also rule in spiritual matters; in a word--the Jews: an instinctively crafty people, able to create an advantage, a means of _seduction_ out of every conceivable hypothesis of superstition, even out of ignorance itself. 200. I regard Christianity as the most fatal and seductive lie that has ever yet existed--as the greatest and most _impious lie_: I can discern the last sprouts and branches of its ideal beneath every form of disguise, I decline to enter into any compromise or false position in reference to it--I urge people to declare open war with it. The _morality of paltry people_ as the measure of all things: this is the most repugnant kind of degeneracy that civilisation has ever yet brought into existence. And this _kind of ideal_ is hanging still, under the name of "God," over men's heads!! 201. However modest one's demands may be concerning intellectual cleanliness, when one touches the New Testament one cannot help experiencing a sort of inexpressible feeling of discomfort; for the unbounded cheek with which the least qualified people will have their say in its pages, in regard to the greatest problems of existence, and claim to sit in judgment on such matters, exceeds all limits. The impudent levity with which the most unwieldy problems are spoken of here (life, the world, God, the purpose of life), as if they were not problems at all, but the most simple things which these little bigots _know all about_!!! 202.