three of these are the most important. Once on a time men sacrificed
human beings to their God, and perhaps just those they loved the
best--to this category belong the firstling sacrifices of all primitive
religions, and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the
Mithra-Grotto on the Island of Capri, that most terrible of all Roman
anachronisms. Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, they sacrificed
to their God the strongest instincts they possessed, their "nature";
THIS festal joy shines in the cruel glances of ascetics and
"anti-natural" fanatics. Finally, what still remained to be sacrificed?
Was it not necessary in the end for men to sacrifice everything
comforting, holy, healing, all hope, all faith in hidden harmonies, in
future blessedness and justice? Was it not necessary to sacrifice God
himself, and out of cruelty to themselves to worship stone, stupidity,
gravity, fate, nothingness? To sacrifice God for nothingness--this
paradoxical mystery of the ultimate cruelty has been reserved for the
rising generation; we all know something thereof already.