ks); in brief, he let it be
known just _what he wanted_, what "the will of God" was.... From this
time forward things were so arranged that the priest became
_indispensable everywhere_; at all the great natural events of life, at
birth, at marriage, in sickness, at death, not to say at the
"_sacrifice_" (that is, at meal-times), the holy parasite put in his
appearance, and proceeded to _denaturize_ it--in his own phrase, to
"sanctify" it.... For this should be noted: that every natural habit,
every natural institution (the state, the administration of justice,
marriage, the care of the sick and of the poor), everything demanded by
the life-instinct, in short, everything that has any value _in itself_,
is reduced to absolute worthlessness and even made the _reverse_ of
valuable by the parasitism of priests (or, if you chose, by the "moral
order of the world"). The fact requires a sanction--a power to _grant
values_ becomes necessary, and the only way it can create such values is
by denying nature.... The priest depreciates and desecrates nature: it
is only at this price that he can exist at all.--Disobedience to God,
which actually means to the priest, to "the law," now gets the name of
"sin"; the means prescribed for "reconciliation with God" are, of
course, precisely the means which bring one most effectively under the
thumb of the priest; he alone can "save".... Psychologically considered,
"sins" are indispensable to every society organized on an ecclesiastical
basis; they are the only reliable weapons of power; the priest _lives_
upon sins; it is necessary to him that there be "sinning".... Prime
axiom: "God forgiveth him that repenteth"--in plain English, _him that
submitteth to the priest_.

27.

Christianity sprang from a soil so corrupt that on it everything
natural, every natural value, every _reality_ was opposed by the deepest
instincts of the ruling class--it grew up as a sort of war to the death
upon reality, and as such it has never been surpassed. The "holy
people," who had adopted priestly values and priestly names for all
things, and who, with a terrible logical consistency, had rejected
everything of the earth as "unholy," "worldly," "sinful"--this people
put its instinct into a final formula that was logical to the point of
self-annihilation: as _Christianity_ it actually denied even the last
form of reality, the "holy people," the "chosen people," _Jewish_
reality itself. The phenomenon is of the