Macmillan

and
This
and
6o BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
respectto "great"and "small": perhapshe will find that
the New Testament,the book of grace, stillappealsmore
to his heart (thereis much of the odour of the genuine,
tender,stupidbeadsman and petty soul in it). To have
bound up this New Testament (a kind of rococo of taste in
every respect)alongwith the Old Testament into one book,
as the "Bible,"as "The Book in Itself,"is perhaps the
greatestaudacityand "sin agains the Spirit" which literary
Europe has upon its conscience.
I
Why Atheism nowadays? "The father" in God is thoi
oughly refuted;equallyso "the judge,""the rewarder."
53
Also his "free will": he does not hear "
even if he did,
he would not know how to help. The worst is that he
seems incapableof communicating himself clearly;is he
uncertain? "
and
is what I have made out (by questioning
listening at a varietyof conversations)to be the cause
of the decline of European theism;it appears to me that
though the
religious instinct is in vigorousgrowth,"
the theisticsatisfactionwith profounddistrust.
it rejects
What does all modem philosophymainly do? Since
Descartes
"
basis
indeed more in defiance of him than on the
of his
"
procedure an
attentat has been made on the
part of all philosophers on the old conceptionof the soul,
under the guiseof a criticism of the subjectand predicate
"
conception that is to say, an attentat on the fundamental
of Christian doctrine. Modern philosophy,
presupposition
as epistemological scepticism, is secretlyor openly anti !"!