It should have been Nietzsche's. Why this antinomianism? Why
this eternal conflict of evil and good, of night and day, of sweet and
sour, of God and devil, of Ormuzd and Ahriman?"
The exotic names transposed his thoughts to another avenue. If Christ is
to come again, and the holy word explicitly states that He will, why not
Buddha? Why not Brahma? Why not ...? Again a hiatus. This time something
snapped in his head. He sank back in his chair. Buddha! Was there ever a
Buddha? And if there was not, was there ever such a personality as
Christ's? Scholar that he was he knew that myth-building was a pastime
for the Asiatic imagination, great, impure, mysterious Asia--Asia the
mother of all religions, the cradle of the human race. To deny the
objective existence of Christ would set at rest all his doubts, one
overwhelming doubt swallowing the minor doubts. He had never speculated
at length upon the Christ legend, for did not Renan, yes, that silky
heretic, believe in the personality of Jesus, believe and lovingly
portray it? The Nietzsche doctrine of the eternal recurrence had so
worked upon his sensitive mental apparatus that he could have almost
denied the existence of Christ rather than deny that our universe
repeats itself infinitely.
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