II
And yet the concrete results of Nietzsche's facing of reality, with no aid or comfort from art or metaphysical faith, are not pleasant for most of us to contemplate—were not indeed pleasant at the start for him.[1] How gladly, he says, should we exchange false ideas about a God who requires good of us, who sees whatever we do or think, who loves us and wishes our best good in all adversity, for truths that were equally salutary, quieting, and beneficent! But they are not to be had; philosophy at best gives us metaphysical plausibilities, and these at bottom are just as untrue. There is no way of going back to the old ideas without soiling the intellectual conscience. It is a painful situation, but without pain one cannot lead and teach humanity, and woe to him who aspires to do this and has not his conscience pure![2] h This does not mean that Nietzsche is without appreciation of the services of religion in the past. He speaks of the deep indebtedness of music (Palestrina and Bach) to religion, notes the impossibility of the blossoming of another art like that of the "Divine Comedy," Raphael's paintings, Michael Angelo's frescoes, Gothic cathedrals, and does not regret that he lingered a while in the precincts of metaphysics and metaphysical art, and comes into the purely scientific camp a little later than some of his contemporaries.[3] All the same, religion and artist-metaphysics are now past for him. i One must have loved religion and art, he declares, as one loves mother and nurse—otherwise one cannot become wise; but one must also be able to see beyond them, to grow away from them—if one remains under their ban, one does not understand them.[4] The simple faith that all goes well for us under a loving God, so that there is no occasion to take life hard or complain, is the best and most vital remainder of the Christian movement, but with it Christianity passes into a gentle moralism—really it is the euthanasia of Christianity.[5] So confident, settled is his
