27
The value of belief in suprahuman passions. The institution of marriage obstinately maintains the belief that love, though a passion, is yet capable of endurance; indeed, that enduring, lifelong love can be established as the rule. Through tenaciously adhering to a noble belief, despite the fact that it is very often and almost as a general rule refuted and thus constitutes a pia fraus16, marriage has bestowed upon love a higher nobility. All institutions which accord to a passion belief in its endurance and responsibility for its endurance, contrary to the nature of passion, have raised it to a new rank: and thereafter he who is assailed by such a passion no longer believes himself debased or endangered by it, as he formerly did, but enhanced in his own eyes and those of his equals. Think of institutions and customs which have created out of the fiery abandonment of the moment perpetual fidelity, out of the enjoyment of anger perpetual vengeance, out of despair perpetual mourning, out of a single and unpremeditated word perpetual obligation. This transformation has each time introduced a very great deal of hypocrisy and lying into the world: but each time too, and at this cost, it has introduced a new suprahuman concept which elevates mankind.
