Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely MeditationsIIIlack of character and strength masquerading as strength and character,this defectiveness in wisdom with the affectation of superiorityand mature experience - all this, in fact, is what I hate in this book. IfI thought that young men could endure such a book, even treasureit, I would sadly renounce all hope for their future. This confessionof a pitiful, hopeless and truly contemptible philistinism presentsitself as an expression of the views of those many thousands of'we'sof whom Strauss speaks, and these 'we's are in turn the fathers of thecoming generation! These are gruesome presuppositions for anyonewho wants to assist the coming generation to that which the presentdoes not possess - to a truly German culture. To such a one theground seems strewn with ashes and all the stars appear obscured;every dead tree, every desolate field cries to him: Unfruitful! Lost!Here there will be no more spring! He has to feel as the youthfulGoethe felt when he looked into the sad atheistical twilight of the Systemede fa nature: the book seemed to him so Cimmerian, so stagnant, sodead, that it cost him an effort to endure its proximity, and heshuddered in its presence as in the presence of a ghost. ::