In his polemic "On the Genealogy of Morals," Nietzsche launches a major, vigorous attack against the innocent deceit of his era, against the hypocrisy of nomenclature. He essentially writes a piece of "natural history of morality," primarily striving to uncover the causes of good and evil, and also intending to expose the stagnation of morality in the ascetic attitude as a form of deceptive idealism.