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36.
--We free spirits--we are the first to have the necessary prerequisite to understanding what nineteen centuries have misunderstood--that instinct and passion for integrity which makes war upon the "holy lie" even more than upon all other lies. . . Mankind was unspeakably far from our benevolent and cautious neutrality, from that discipline of the spirit which alone makes possible the solution of such strange and subtle things: what men always sought, with shameless egoism, was their own advantage therein; they created the church out of denial of the Gospels. . . . Whoever sought for signs of an ironical divinity`s hand in the great drama of existence would find no small indication thereof in the stupendous question-mark that is called Christianity. That mankind should be on its knees before the very antithesis of what was the origin, the meaning and the law of the Gospels--that in the concept of the "church" the very things should be pronounced holy that the "bearer of glad tidings" regards as beneath him and behind him--it would be impossible to surpass this as a grand example of world-historical irony--
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