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.