112

On viewing certain ancient sacrificial utensils. The combination of farce, even obscenity, with religious feeling, shows us how some feelings are disappearing: the sensibility that this is a possible mixture is vanishing; we understand only historically that it once existed, in festivals of Demeter and Dionysos, at Christian passion plays and mystery plays. But even we are still familiar with the sublime in league with the burlesque, for example, the sentimental blended with the ludicrous---and this a later age will perhaps no longer understand.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Human, All Too Human
Section Three: Religious Life - Aphorism # 112

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