Note 24 — Chapter XXVI · THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE.

Faith does indeed make man happy; but thus much is certain: it infuses into him no really moral dispositions. If it ameliorate man, if it have moral dispositions as its consequence, this proceeds solely from the inward conviction of the irreversible reality of morals:—a conviction independent of religious faith. It is morality alone, and by no means faith, that cries out in the conscience of the believer: thy faith is nothing, if it does not make thee good. It is not to be denied that the assurance of eternal salvation, the forgiveness of sins, the sense of favour and release from all punishment, inclines man to do good. The man who has this confidence possesses all things; he is happy;24 he becomes indifferent to the good things of this world; no envy, no avarice, no ambition, no sensual desire, can enslave him; everything earthly vanishes in the prospect of heavenly grace and eternal bliss. But in him good works do not proceed from essentially virtuous dispositions. It is not love, not the object of love, man, the basis of all morality, which is the motive of his good works. No! he does good not for the sake of goodness itself, not for the sake of man, but for the sake of God;—out of gratitude to God, who has done all for him, and for whom therefore he must on his side do all that lies in his power. He forsakes sin, because it wounds God, his Saviour, his Benefactor.25 The idea of virtue is here the idea of compensatory sacrifice. God has sacrificed himself for man; therefore man must sacrifice himself to God. The greater the sacrifice the better the deed. The more anything contradicts man and Nature, the greater the abnegation, the greater is the virtue. This merely negative idea of goodness has been especially realised and developed by Catholicism. Its highest moral idea is that of sacrifice; hence the high significance attached to the denial of sexual love,—to virginity. Chastity, or rather virginity, is the characteristic virtue of the Catholic faith,—for this reason, that it has no basis in Nature. It is the most fanatical, transcendental, fantastical virtue, the virtue of supranaturalistic faith;—to faith, the highest virtue, but in itself no virtue at all. Thus faith makes that a virtue which intrinsically, substantially, is no virtue; it has therefore no sense of virtue; it must necessarily depreciate true virtue because it so exalts a merely apparent virtue, because it is guided by no idea but that of the negation, the contradiction of human nature.