Chapter 36 Chapter 02 "Guilty", "Conscience Condemnation" and Others (19)

There is no doubt that conscience is a disease, but it is a disease like pregnancy.Let us now look for the conditions which bring the disease to its most severe and most dire stage.We shall see how it came about in the first place, and it will take a long breath to finish, and first we must recall the aforementioned arguments.The private law relationship between the debtor and his creditors, which has long been a topic, is now interpreted once again, and in a way that invites historical attention and thought, as a relationship perhaps most incomprehensible to us moderns, That is to say it is interpreted as the relationship between modern humans and their ancestors.In primitive tribes—and we are speaking of ancient times—each new generation recognizes a legal duty (which is by no means merely a bond of affection, Although we cannot unfoundedly deny that this bond has existed since the beginning of human history).Early societies assumed that the human race could only be continued through the sacrifices and successes of their ancestors, which required sacrifices and successes in return.Thus a debt is admitted, and the debt continues to grow, because the ancestors, who survived as mighty spirits, did not cease in their power to extend new favors and advance new payments to their posterity.Is it free?But in that cruel, "soul-poor" age, nothing was free.So how do you pay them off?Repayment is made in sacrifices (initially offering them food for the lowest understanding), in celebrations, in shrines, in worship, and above all in obedience.Speaking of obedience, this is because all the customs established by the ancestors also become the regulations and commands of their descendants.But can people pay off this debt?Here the doubts remain, and the doubts are growing, that from time to time it indiscriminately compels major compensatory measures to pay the "creditors" at some hefty price, most famously the sacrifice of the firstborn, which is blood, It's human blood.According to this logic, the fear of the ancestors and their might, the sense of their debt, necessarily grew with the power of the tribe itself; the more victorious, independent, respected and feared the tribe itself, the more This kind of fear and debt awareness of ancestors grows more and more, and there is no counterexample!Every step of a tribe's decline, every unfortunate misstep, every symptom of degeneration, every symptom of impending disintegration always lessens the tribe's fear of its ancestral spirits, lessens its intelligence, foresight, and strength. evaluation of.This crude logic leads in the end to nothing but the conclusion that the ancestor of the most powerful tribe must at last be conceived by growing fear as a giant, and finally be thrust back into the shadow of an eerie, incomprehensible god. Go: the ancestor inevitably becomes a god in the end.Perhaps this is the origin of the gods, that is to say, from fear! ... If anyone finds it necessary to add "Of filial piety too!" his assertion will hardly be justified by the long early stages of human development, much less by the middle stages of human development, when the noble races, who have in fact paid back with interest to their creators, their ancestors (whether they be heroes or gods) all the qualities which in the meantime have been clearly possessed by them, the noble quality.Later we will see the aristocratization and "ennobling" of the gods (this is of course not the same thing as their "sanctification"), but for now let us conclude the whole process of the development of the sense of debt.