.” I have already indicated in the previous essay the origin of this feeling⁠—as a piece of animal psychology and nothing else: we were thus confronted with the feeling of “guilt,” in its crude state, as it were. It was first in the hands of the priest, real artist that he was in the feeling of guilt, that it took shape⁠—oh, what a shape! “Sin”⁠—for that is the name of the new priestly version of the animal “bad-conscience” (the inverted cruelty)⁠—has up to the present been the greatest event in the history of the diseased soul: in “sin” we find the most perilous and fatal masterpiece of religious interpretation. Imagine man, suffering from himself, some way or other but at any rate physiologically, perhaps like an animal shut up in a cage, not clear as to the why and the wherefore! imagine him in his desire for reasons⁠—reasons bring relief⁠—in his desire again for remedies, narcotics at last, consulting one, who knows even the occult⁠—and see, lo and behold, he gets a hint from his wizard, the ascetic priest, his first hint on the “cause” of his trouble: he must search for it in himself