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“ On the origin of religion.— In the same way as today the uneducated man believes that anger is the cause of his being angry, spirit the cause of his thinking, soul the cause of his feeling—in short, just as there is still thoughtlessly posited a mass of psychological entities that are supposed to be causes—so, at a yet more naive stage, man explained precisely the same phenomena with the aid of psychological personal entities. Those conditions that seemed to him strange, thrilling, overwhelming, he interpreted as obsession and enchantment by the power of a person. (Thus the Christian, the most naive and backward species of man today, traces hope, repose, the feeling of “redemption,” back to psychological inspiration by God: to him, as essentially suffering and disturbed type, the feeling of happiness, resignation and repose naturally seems stranger and in need of explanation.) Among intelligent, strong, and vigorous races it is mainly the epileptic who inspires the conviction that a strong power is here at work; but every related condition of subjection, e.g., that of the inspired man, of the poet, of the great criminal, of passions such as love and revenge, also leads to the invention of extra-human powers. A condition is made concrete in a person, and when it overtakes us is thought to be effected by that person. In other words: In the psychological concept of God, a condition, in order to appear as effect, is personified as cause.
The psychological logic is this: When a man is suddenly and overwhelmingly suffused with the feeling of power—and this is what happens with all great affects—it raises in him a doubt about his own person: he does not dare to think himself the cause of this astonishing feeling—and so he posits a stronger person, a divinity, to account for it.
In summa: the origin of religion lies in extreme feelings of power which, because they are strange, take men by surprise: and like a sick man who, feeling one his limbs uncommonly heavy, comes to the conclusion another man is lying on top of him, the naive homo religiousus divides himself into several persons. Religion is a case of “alteration de la personalite.” A sort of feeling of fear and terror at oneself— But also a feeling of extraordinary happiness and exaltation— Among the sick the feeling of health is sufficient to inspire belief in God, in the nearness of God.
— Nietzsche, The Will to Power



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