The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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_Progress in my sense._—I also speak of a “return to nature,” although it is not a process of going back but of going up—up into lofty, free and even terrible nature and naturalness; such a nature as can play with great tasks and _may_ play with them.... To speak in a _parable._ Napoleon was an example of a “return to nature,” as I understand it (for instance _in rebus tacticis,_ and still more, as military experts know, in strategy). But Rousseau—whither did he want to return? Rousseau this first modern man, idealist and _canaille_ in one person; who was in need of moral “dignity,” in order even to endure the sight of his own person,—ill with unbridled vanity and wanton self-contempt; this abortion, who planted his tent on the threshold of modernity, also wanted a “return to nature”; but, I ask once more, whither did he wish to return? I hate Rousseau, even _in_ the Revolution itself: the latter was the historical expression of this hybrid of idealist and _canaille._ The bloody farce which this Revolution ultimately became, its “immorality,” concerns me but slightly; what I loathe however is its Rousseauesque _morality_—the so-called “truths” of the Revolution, by means of which it still exercises power and draws all flat and mediocre things over to its side. The doctrine of equality! ... But there is no more deadly poison than this; for it _seems_ to proceed from the very lips of justice, whereas in reality it draws the curtain down on all justice.... “To equals equality, to unequals inequality”—that would be the real speech of justice and that which follows from it “Never make unequal things equal.” The fact that so much horror and blood are associated with this doctrine of equality, has lent this “modern idea” _par excellence_ such a halo of fire and glory, that the Revolution as a drama has misled even the most noble minds.—That after all is no reason for honouring it the more.—I can see only one who regarded it as it should be regarded—that is to say, with _loathing;_ I speak of Goethe.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.