ual, or
to any violation of nature. The thing responsible is _race_. The whole
of Judaism appears in Christianity as the art of concocting holy lies,
and there, after many centuries of earnest Jewish training and hard
practice of Jewish technic, the business comes to the stage of mastery.
The Christian, that _ultima ratio_ of lying, is the Jew all over
again--he is _threefold_ the Jew.... The underlying will to make use
only of such concepts, symbols and attitudes as fit into priestly
practice, the instinctive repudiation of every _other_ mode of thought,
and every other method of estimating values and utilities--this is not
only tradition, it is _inheritance_: only as an inheritance is it able
to operate with the force of nature. The whole of mankind, even the best
minds of the best ages (with one exception, perhaps hardly human--),
have permitted themselves to be deceived. The gospels have been read as
a _book of innocence_ ... surely no small indication of the high skill
with which the trick has been done.--Of course, if we could actually
_see_ these astounding bigots and bogus saints, even if only for an
instant, the farce would come to an end,--and it is precisely because
_I_ cannot read a word of theirs without seeing their attitudinizing
that _I have made an end of them_.... I simply cannot endure the way
they have of rolling up their eyes.--For the majority, happily enough,
books are mere _literature_.--Let us not be led astray: they say "judge
not," and yet they condemn to hell whoever stands in their way. In
letting God sit in judgment they judge themselves; in glorifying God
they glorify themselves; in _demanding_ that every one show the virtues
which they themselves happen to be capable of--still more, which they
_must_ have in order to remain on top--they assume the grand air of men
struggling for virtue, of men engaging in a war that virtue may prevail.
"We live, we die, we sacrifice ourselves _for the good_" (--"the truth,"
"the light," "the kingdom of God"): in point of fact, they simply do
what they cannot help doing. Forced, like hypocrites, to be sneaky, to
hide in corners, to slink along in the shadows, they convert their
necessity into a _duty_: it is on grounds of duty that they account for
their lives of humility, and that humility becomes merely one more proof
of their piety.... Ah, that humble, chaste, charitable brand of fraud!
"Virtue itself shall bear witness for us."... One may read the gospel