"I ask you to review and scrutinize whatever is natural — all the actions and desires of the purely natural man: you will find nothing but frightfulness. Everything beautiful and natural is the result of reason and calculation. Crime, of which the human animal has learned the taste in his mother’s womb, is natural by origin. Virtue, on the other hand, is artificial, supernatural, since at all times and in all places gods and prophets have been needed to teach it to animalized humanity, man being powerless to discover it by himself. Evil happens without effort, naturally, fatally; Good is always the product of some art. All that I am saying about Nature as a bad counselor in moral matters, and about Reason as a true redeemer and reformer, can be applied to the realm of Beauty."