30.
The instinctive hatred of reality: the consequence of an
extreme susceptibility to pain and irritation—so great that merely to be
“touched” becomes unendurable, for every sensation is too
profound.
The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all hostility, all
bounds and distances in feeling: the consequence of an extreme
susceptibility to pain and irritation—so great that it senses all
resistance, all compulsion to resistance, as unbearable anguish (—that
is to say, as harmful, as prohibited by the instinct of
self-preservation), and regards blessedness (joy) as possible only when it
is no longer necessary to offer resistance to anybody or anything, however
evil or dangerous—love, as the only, as the ultimate possibility
of life. . .
These are the two physiological realities upon and out of
which the doctrine of salvation has sprung. I call them a sublime
super-development of hedonism upon a thoroughly unsalubrious soil. What
stands most closely related to them, though with a large admixture of
Greek vitality and nerve-force, is epicureanism, the theory of salvation
of paganism. Epicurus was a typical decadent: I was the first to
recognize him.—The fear of pain, even of infinitely slight pain—the end
of this can be nothing save a religion of love. . . .