The Antichrist Read Online Free Page B

of research and the perceptions of the mind as victories that human understanding has gained over the eternally secret wisdom of the Infinite. As a tiny pebble to a mighty boulder, so does our ability to discover and invent compare with the wisdom of the Power that rules over us. For we have, as an example, conquered the air (for the moment), but this does not allow us to fly up to Heaven. Not only has it been ordained, as the proverb goes, that trees cannot reach Heaven, neither can men visit it. And never will we see a pilot harness the power that resides in an angel’s wings. Yes, one could say that Heaven becomes ever higher and ever further away from earth the higher and further we fly. And when we have reached the so-called stratosphere we have done nothing other than transport our earthly selves to a sphere that so far no earthly inhabitant has reached. We have lifted the earth upwards, so to speak; however, in no way have we brought Heaven downwards. And if we were able to climb even higher, to some unnamed planet, Heaven would recede even further away. (Let us take all this as a parable. Let us say that it is the nature of God’s fathomless wisdom that it remains unfathomable.) Oh, we have no idea what is above andwhat is below! We are so blind! And although we point upwards in ‘blind faith’ as we refer to God, there may be no such thing as above. And the folly of those who believe they have discovered the emptiness of Heaven because during their flight into the stratosphere they searched but found no God would be a hundred times greater than is the blindness of those believers who point upwards when they name the origin and the source of their faith. What is ‘above’? What is ‘below’? Alas, the world is populated with nothing but blind people! These blind are also confused! Many of them say that they are wise because they found knowledge in a place that other blind men, with no thirst for knowledge, showed them. And since a segment of those without sight declared that God is ‘above’, another portion of the blind make their way ‘above’ and, having not seen God, come back and say that He is not there. The reason that they do not see Him, however, is that they are blind. If they could see there wouldn’t be any need for them to make their way along the path that their blind brothers have showed them! One cannot see God with one’s physical eyes! One cannot smell God with one’s physical nose! One cannot hear God with one’s physical ears! One cannot feel God with one’s physical hands! For He has, and by no means without reason, given us only five senses. Had He wished that we should know Him during the span of our earthly life He would have granted us not five but a thousand senses. But He has given us no more than five! Perhaps so that we may not be capable of knowing Him in our lifetime.
    And now, arrogant as we are, many among us believe that we can deny Him because we are powerless to know Him. We therefore take revenge for His severity. If He withholds the grace of knowing him, we say that He doesn’t exist.
    Among us, the common blind, are those who are speciallyblind, those to whom one cannot explain the difference between night and day.
    How could we have so misused our reason? And how is it that this, a gift from God, as mentioned, the unique and last memory of Paradise Lost, has led us to folly and the vice of arrogant behaviour, to blasphemous and false views?
    It was in no way foolish, reckless or arrogant to use our faculties of reason, as I have said earlier, but in the course of its application a power that we cannot perceive with the help of our five senses has forced itself between us and the grace of reason that is our heritage; and thus the blessing became a curse. When we believed that we were capable of thinking clearly and logically, we were already confused. And, truly, it was not with the type of confusion that