ates of
consciousness, faith of a sort, the acceptance, for example, of anything
as true--as every psychologist knows, the value of these things is
perfectly indifferent and fifth-rate compared to that of the instincts:
strictly speaking, the whole concept of intellectual causality is false.
To reduce being a Christian, the state of Christianity, to an acceptance
of truth, to a mere phenomenon of consciousness, is to formulate the
negation of Christianity. _In fact, there are no Christians._ The
"Christian"--he who for two thousand years has passed as a Christian--is
simply a psychological self-delusion. Closely examined, it appears
that, _despite_ all his "faith," he has been ruled _only_ by his
instincts--and _what instincts_!--In all ages--for example, in the case
of Luther--"faith" has been no more than a cloak, a pretense, a _curtain_
behind which the instincts have played their game--a shrewd _blindness_
to the domination of _certain_ of the instincts.... I have already
called "faith" the specially Christian form of _shrewdness_--people
always _talk_ of their "faith" and _act_ according to their
instincts.... In the world of ideas of the Christian there is nothing
that so much as touches reality: on the contrary, one recognizes
an instinctive _hatred_ of reality as the motive power, the only motive
power at the bottom of Christianity. What follows therefrom? That even
here, in _psychologicis_, there is a radical error, which is to say one
conditioning fundamentals, which is to say, one in _substance_. Take
away one idea and put a genuine reality in its place--and the whole of
Christianity crumbles to nothingness!--Viewed calmly, this strangest of
all phenomena, a religion not only depending on errors, but inventive
and ingenious _only_ in devising injurious errors, poisonous to life
and to the heart--this remains a _spectacle for the gods_--for those
gods who are also philosophers, and whom I have encountered, for
example, in the celebrated dialogues at Naxos. At the moment when their
_disgust_ leaves them (--and us!) they will be thankful for the
spectacle afforded by the Christians: perhaps because of _this_ curious
exhibition alone the wretched little planet called the earth deserves a
glance from omnipotence, a show of divine interest.... Therefore, let us
not underestimate the Christians: the Christian, false _to the point of
innocence_, is far above the ape--in its application to the Christians a
well-known t