165

The connection between humanism and religious rationalism was emphasised
as a Saxonian trait by Kochly: the type of this philologist is Gottfried
Hermann.[13]


166

I understand religions as narcotics: but when they are given to such
nations as the Germans, I think they are simply rank poison.


167

All religions are, in the end, based upon certain physical assumptions,
which are already in existence and adapt the religions to their needs .
for example, in Christianity, the contrast between body and soul, the
unlimited importance of the earth as the "world," the marvellous
occurrences in nature. If once the opposite views gain the mastery--for
instance, a strict law of nature, the helplessness and superfluousness
of all gods, the strict conception of the soul as a bodily process--all
is over. But all Greek culture is based upon such views.


168

When we look from the character and culture of the Catholic Middle Ages
back to the Greeks, we see them resplendent indeed in the rays of higher