Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: The Moral Ideal§340 The more concealed forms of the cult of Christian moral ideal. The insipid and cowardly concept “Nature” invented by Nature enthusiasts ( -— without any knowledge whatsoever of the terrible, the implacable and the cynical element in even “the most beautiful” aspects), a kind of attempt at reading the moral and Christian notion of “humanity” into Nature; Rousseau’s concept of Nature, for instance, which took for granted that “Nature” meant freedom, goodness, innocence, equity, justice, an idyl, was nothing more at bottom than the cult of Christian morality. We should collect passages from the poets in order to see what they admired, in lofty mountains, for instance. What Goethe had to do with them -— why he admired Spinoza -— Absolute ignorance concerning the presuppositions of this cult -—
The insipid and cowardly concept “Man” a la Comte and Stuart Mill, perhaps the subject of a cult -— This is only the Christian moral ideal again under another name -— Refer also to the freethinkers Guyau for example.
The insipid and cowardly concept “Art” which is held to mean sympathy with all suffering and with everything malformed and ill-constituted (the same thing happens to history cf. Thierry’s): again it is the cult of the Christian moral ideal.
And now, as to the whole socialistic ideal: it is nothing but a clumsy misunderstanding of the Christian moral ideal.