The instinctive hatred of reality: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to pain and irritation--so great that merely to be "touched" becomes unendurable, for every sensation is too profound.
The instinctive exclusion of all aversion, all hostility, all bounds and distances in feeling: the consequence of an extreme susceptibility to pain and irritation--so great that it senses all resistance, all compulsion to resistance, as unbearable anguish (--that is to say, as harmful, as prohibited by the instinct of self-preservation), and regards blessedness (joy) as possible only when it is no longer necessary to offer resistance to anybody or anything, however evil or dangerous--love, as the only, as the ultimate possibility of life....
These are the two physiological realities upon and out of which the doctrine of salvation has sprung. I call them a sublime super-development of hedonism upon a thoroughly unsalubrious soil. What stands most closely related to them, though with a large admixture of Greek vitality and nerve-force, is epicureanism, the theory of salvation of paganism. Epicurus was a typical décadent: I was the first to recognize him.--The fear of pain, even of infinitely slight pain--the end of this can be nothing save a religion of love....
