starting-point of each of these sublime religions, is unintelligible to the so-called ‘Free-thinker,’ who will neither allow to existing Churches a right to the adjudgment of sin, nor to the State a warrant to declare certain actions as criminal. Though both rights may be open to question, it would none the less be wrong to extend that doubt to the core of Religion itself; since it surely must be admitted in general that, not the religions themselves are to be blamed for their fall, but rather the fall of mankind, as traceable in history, has brought their ruin in its train; for we see this Fall of Man proceeding with so marked a nature-necessity, that it could but carry with itself each effort to arrest it.” [1027W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 225]
[1028W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 226]
[P. 226] {FEUER} {anti-FEUER/NIET} {SCHOP} “ …. that teaching [The BrahmicDoctrine of the sinfulness of killing living creatures and eating animal flesh] had its origin in recognition of the unity of all that lives, and of the illusion of our physical senses which dress this unity in guise of infinitely complex multitude and absolute diversity. It was thus the result of a profound metaphysical insight, and when the Brahmin pointed to the manifold appearances of the animate world, and said ‘This is thyself!’ there woke in us the consciousness that in sacrificing one of our fellow-creatures we mangled and devoured ourselves. That the beasts are only distinguished from man by the grade of their mental faculties; that what precedes all intellectual equipment, what desires and suffers, is the same Will-to-live in them as in the most reason-gifted man; that this one Will it is, which strives for peace and freedom amid our world of changing forms and transitory semblances; and finally, that this assuagement of tumultuous longing can only be won by the most scrupulous practice of gentleness and sympathy toward all that lives, -- upon this the religious conscience of the Brahmin and Buddhist has stood firm as a rock till this day.” [1028W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 226]
[1029W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 229-230]
[P. 229] {anti-FEUER} “ … to highly-gifted stocks, though the Good fell hard, the Beautiful was easy. In full avowal of the Will-to-live, the Greek mind did not indeed avoid the awful side of life, but turned this very knowledge to a matter of artistic contemplation: it saw the terrible with wholest truth, but this truth itself became the spur to a re-presentment whose very truthfulness was beautiful. In the workings of the Grecian spirit we thus are made spectators of a kind of pastime, a play in whose vicissitudes the joy of Shaping seeks to counteract the awe of Knowing. Content with this, rejoicing in the semblance, since it has banned therein its truthfulness of knowledge, it asks not after the goal of Being, and like the Parsee creed it leaves the fight of Good and Evil undecided; willing to pay for a lovely life by death, it merely strives to beautify death also.
{FEUER} {SCHOP} We have called this a pastime, in a higher sense, namely a play of the Intellect in its release from the Will, which [P. 230] now only serves for self-mirroring, -- the pastime of the over-rich in spirit. But the trouble of the constitution of the World is this: all steps in evolution of the utterances of the Will, from the reaction of primary elements, through all the lower organisations, right up to the richest human intellect, stand side by side in space and time, and
