The idealist, like the ecclesiastic, carries all sorts of lofty concepts in his hand and not only in his hand!); he launches them with benevolent contempt against understanding, the senses, honor, good living, science he sees such things as beneath him, as pernicious and seductive forces, on which the soul soars as a pure thing in itself as if humility, chastity, poverty, in a word, holiness had not already done much more damage to life than all imaginable horrors and vices.