The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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_Sainte-Beuve._—There is naught of man in him; he is full of petty spite towards all virile spirits. He wanders erratically; he is subtle, inquisitive, a little bored, for ever with his ear to key-holes,—at bottom a woman, with all woman’s revengefulness and sensuality. As a psychologist he is a genius of slander; inexhaustively rich in means to this end; no one understands better than he how to introduce a little poison into praise. In his fundamental instincts he is plebeian and next of kin to Rousseau’s resentful spirit: consequently he is a Romanticist—for beneath all romanticism Rousseau’s instinct for revenge grunts and frets. He is a revolutionary, but kept within bounds by “funk.” He is embarrassed in the face of everything that is strong (public opinion, the Academy, the court, even Port Royal). He is embittered against everything great in men and things, against everything that believes in itself. Enough of a poet and of a female to be able to feel greatness as power; he is always turning and twisting, because, like the proverbial worm, he constantly feels that he is being trodden upon. As a critic he has no standard of judgment, no guiding principle, no backbone. Although he possesses the tongue of the Cosmopolitan libertine which can chatter about a thousand things, he has not the courage even to acknowledge his _libertinage._ As a historian he has no philosophy, and lacks the power of philosophical vision,—hence his refusal to act the part of a judge, and his adoption of the mask of “objectivity” in all important matters. His attitude is better in regard to all those things in which subtle and effete taste is the highest tribunal: in these things he really does have the courage of his own personality—he really does enjoy his own nature—he actually is a _master,_—In some respects he is a prototype of Baudelaire.
“_The Imitation of Christ_” is one of those books which I cannot even take hold of without physical loathing: it exhales a perfume of the eternally feminine, which to appreciate fully one must be a Frenchman or a Wagnerite. This saint has a way of speaking about love which makes even Parisiennes feel a little curious.—I am told that that _most intelligent_ of Jesuits, Auguste Comte, who wished to lead his compatriots back to Rome by the circuitous route of science, drew his inspiration from this book. And I believe it: “The religion of the heart.”
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.