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The apostate of the free spirit. Who could possibly feel an aversion for pious people strong in their faith? To the contrary, do we not regard them with a silent respect and take pleasure in them, with a profound regret that these excellent people do not feel as we do? But whence comes that sudden deep repugnance without apparent cause which we feel for him who once had all freedom of spirit and in the end became 'a believer'? If we recall it, it is as if we had beheld some disgusting sight which we want to expunge from our soul as quickly as we can! Would we not turn our back even upon the person we most revered if he became suspicious to us in this respect? And not at all on account of a moral prejudice, but out of a sudden disgust and horror! Why do we feel so strongly about it? Perhaps we shall be given to understand that at bottom we are not altogether sure of ourselves? That we planted thorn-bushes of the most pointed contempt around us in good time, so that at the decisive moment, when old age has made us weak and forgetful, we should not be able to climb out over our own contempt? Quite honestly, this supposition is erroneous, and he who makes it knows nothing of that which moves and determines the free spirit: how little contemptible does he find his changes of opinion in themselves! How greatly, on the contrary, does he honour in the capacity to change his opinions a rare and high distinction, especially when it extends into old age! And his ambition (not his pusillanimity) reaches up even to the forbidden fruits of spernere se sperni and spernere se ipsum26: certainly he does not feel in the face of these things the fear experienced by the vain and complacent! Besides which, he counts the theory of the innocence of all opinions as being as well founded as the theory of the innocence of all actions: how then could he appear before the apostate of spiritual freedom in the role of judge and hangman! The sight of him would, rather, touch him as the sight of someone with a repulsive disease touches a physician: physical disgust at something fungous, mollified, bloated, suppurating, momentarily overpowers reason and the will to help. It is in this way that our goodwill is overcome by the idea of the tremendous dishonesty which must have prevailed in the apostate of the free spirit: by the idea of a general degeneration reaching even into the skeleton of his character.
