reeks scepticism was also
occasionally called ephecticism.

[25] A reference to the University of Tuebingen and its famous school of
Biblical criticism. The leader of this school was F. C. Baur, and one of
the men greatly influenced by it was Nietzsche's pet abomination, David
F. Strauss, himself a Suabian. _Vide_ Sec. 10 and Sec. 28.

53.

--It is so little true that _martyrs_ offer any support to the truth of
a cause that I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything
to do with the truth at all. In the very tone in which a martyr flings
what he fancies to be true at the head of the world there appears so low
a grade of intellectual honesty and such _insensibility_ to the problem
of "truth," that it is never necessary to refute him. Truth is not
something that one man has and another man has not: at best, only
peasants, or peasant-apostles like Luther, can think of truth in any
such way. One may rest assured that the greater the degree of a man's
intellectual conscience the greater will be his modesty, his
_discretion_, on this point. To _know_ in five cases, and to refuse,
with delicacy, to know anything _further_.... "Truth," as the word is
understood by every prophet, every sectarian, every free-thinker, every
Socialist and every churchman, is simply a complete proof that not even
a beginning has been made in the intellectual discipline and
self-control that are necessary to the unearthing of even the smallest
truth.--The deaths of the martyrs, it may be said in passing, have been
misfortunes of history: they have _misled_.... The conclusion that all
idiots, women and plebeians come to, that there must be something in a
cause for which any one goes to his death (or which, as under primitive
Christianity, sets off epidemics of death-seeking)--this conclusion has
been an unspeakable drag upon the testing of facts, upon the whole
spirit of inquiry and investigation. The martyrs have _damaged_ the
truth.... Even to this day the crude fact of persecution is enough to
give an honourable name to the most empty sort of sectarianism.--But
why? Is the worth of a cause altered by the fact that some one had laid
down his life for it?--An error that becomes honourable is simply an
error that has acquired one seductive charm the more: do you suppose,
Messrs. Theologians, that we shall give you the chance to be martyred
for your lies?--One best disposes of a cause by respectfully putting it
on ice--that is also