Doubt as Sin

Linked from Essay III, Section 13: "That this ideal acquired such power and ruled over men as imperiously as we find it in history,... expresses a great fact: the sickliness... of the tamed man...."

Many sick people have always been among the poetizers and God-cravers; furiously they hate the lover of knowledge and that youngest among the virtues, which is called "honesty." They always look backward toward the dark ages; then, indeed, delusion and faith were another matter; the rage of reason was godlikeness, and doubt was sin."

"On the Afterworldly," from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin, 1978: 33.

Reader's Notes

• Find the connection between the hatred of honesty by the "God-cravers" and Nietzsche's discussion of an "honest lie" and the "free spirits" of Essay III.

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