author - "Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche"
to one of them publicly was already sufficient to set him off as one in imminent need of psychiatrical attention. Belief in them had become a mark of inferiority, like the allied belief in madstones, magic and apparitions.
But though the theology of Christianity had thus sunk to the lowly estate of a mere delusion of the rabble, propagated on that level by the ancient caste of sacerdotal parasites, the ethics of Christianity continued to enjoy the utmost acceptance, and perhaps even more acceptance than ever before. It seemed to be generally felt, in fact, that they simply must be saved from the wreck--that the world would vanish into chaos if they went the way of the revelations supporting them. In this fear a great many judicious men joined, and so there arose what was, in essence, an absolutely new Christian cult--a cult, to wit, purged of all the supernaturalism superimposed upon the older cult by generations of theologians, and harking back to what was conceived to be the pure ethical doc
ting that all philosophers, in so far as they have beendogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terribleseriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usuallypaid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemlymethods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowedherself to be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands withsad and discouraged mien--IF, indeed, it stands at all! For thereare scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lieson the ground--nay more, that it is at its last gasp. But tospeak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that alldogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusiveand decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noblepuerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when itwill be once and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed forthe basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices asthe dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps some popularsuperstition of imm
to one of them publicly was already sufficient to set him off as one in imminent need of psychiatrical attention. Belief in them had become a mark of inferiority, like the allied belief in madstones, magic and apparitions.
But though the theology of Christianity had thus sunk to the lowly estate of a mere delusion of the rabble, propagated on that level by the ancient caste of sacerdotal parasites, the ethics of Christianity continued to enjoy the utmost acceptance, and perhaps even more acceptance than ever before. It seemed to be generally felt, in fact, that they simply must be saved from the wreck--that the world would vanish into chaos if they went the way of the revelations supporting them. In this fear a great many judicious men joined, and so there arose what was, in essence, an absolutely new Christian cult--a cult, to wit, purged of all the supernaturalism superimposed upon the older cult by generations of theologians, and harking back to what was conceived to be the pure ethical doc
ting that all philosophers, in so far as they have beendogmatists, have failed to understand women--that the terribleseriousness and clumsy importunity with which they have usuallypaid their addresses to Truth, have been unskilled and unseemlymethods for winning a woman? Certainly she has never allowedherself to be won; and at present every kind of dogma stands withsad and discouraged mien--IF, indeed, it stands at all! For thereare scoffers who maintain that it has fallen, that all dogma lieson the ground--nay more, that it is at its last gasp. But tospeak seriously, there are good grounds for hoping that alldogmatizing in philosophy, whatever solemn, whatever conclusiveand decided airs it has assumed, may have been only a noblepuerilism and tyronism; and probably the time is at hand when itwill be once and again understood WHAT has actually sufficed forthe basis of such imposing and absolute philosophical edifices asthe dogmatists have hitherto reared: perhaps some popularsuperstition of imm