conceals the one divinely True in her beneath an ever growing heap of incredibilities commended to belief. Feeling this, she has always sought the aid of Art; who on her side has remained incapable of higher evolution so long as she must present that alleged reality of the symbol to the senses of the worshipper in the form of fetishes and idols, -- whereas she could only fulfil her true vocation when, by an ideal presentment of the allegoric figure, she led to apprehension of its inner kernel, the truth ineffably divine.” [1019W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 213]
[1020W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 213-214]
[P. 213] {FEUER} {SCHOP} “Now the deepest basis of every true religion we find in recognition of the frailty of this world, and the consequent charge to free ourselves therefrom. It is manifest that at all times it needed a superhuman effort to disclose this knowledge to men in a raw state of nature, the Folk in fact, and accordingly the most successful work of the religious Founder consisted in the invention of [P. 214] mythic allegories, by which the people might be led along the path of faith to practical observance of the lessons flowing from that root-knowledge. In this respect we can but regard it as a sublime distinction of the Christian religion, that it expressly claims to bare the deepest truth to the ‘poor in spirit,’ for their comfort and salvation; whereas the doctrine of the Brahmins was the exclusive property of ‘those who know’ – for which reason the ‘rich in spirit’ viewed the nature-ridden multitude as shut from possibility of knowledge and only arriving at insight into the nullity of the world by means of numberless rebirths. That there was a shorter road to salvation, the most enlightened of the ‘Reborn’ himself disclosed to the poor blind Folk … .” [1020W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 213-214]
[1021W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 215-216]
[P. 215] {FEUER} {anti-FEUER/NIET} {SCHOP} “Our best guide to an estimate of the belief in miracles will be the demand addressed to natural man that he should change his previous mode of viewing the world and its appearances as the most absolute of realities; for he now was to know this world as null, an optical delusion, and to seek the only Truth beyond it. If by a miracle we mean an incident that sets aside the laws of Nature; and if, after ripe deliberation, we recognise these laws as founded on our own power of perception, and bound inextricably with the functions of our brain: then belief in miracles must be comprehensible to us as an almost necessary consequence of the reversal of the ‘will to live,’ in defiance of all Nature. To the natural man this reversal of the Will is certainly itself the greatest miracle, for it implies an abrogation of the laws of Nature; that which has effected it must consequently be far above Nature, and of superhuman power, since he finds that union with It is longed for as the only object worth endeavour. It is this Other that Jesus told his poor of, as the ‘Kingdom of [P. 216] God,’ in opposition to the ‘kingdom of the world.’ “ [1021W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 215-216]
[1022W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 216]
[P. 216] {FEUER} {SCHOP} “Speaking of the ideal shape of the Greek statue, our great philosopher [Schopenhauer] finely says: It is as if the artist were showing Nature what she would, but never completely could; wherefore the artistic Ideal surpasses Nature.” [1022W-{6-8/80}Religion and Art: PW Vol. VI, p. 216]
