All this is so ... but only the transitory is beautiful, Shakspeare has
said; and Nature herself, in the unceasing play of her rising and
vanishing forms, does not shun beauty. Is it not she who sedulously
adorns the most momentary of her offspring--the petals of the flowers,
the wings of the butterfly--with such charming colours? Is it not she
who imparts to them such exquisite outlines? It is not necessary for
beauty to live forever in order to be immortal--one moment is sufficient
for it. That is so; that is just, I grant you--but only in cases where
there is no personality, where man is not, liberty is not: the faded
wing of the butterfly comes back again, and a thousand years later, with
the selfsame wing of the selfsame butterfly, necessity sternly and
regularly and impartially fulfils its round ... but man does not repeat
himself like the butterfly, and the work of his hands, his art, his free
creation once destroyed, is annihilated forever.... To him alone is it
given to “create” ... but it is strange and terrible to articulate: “We
are creators ... for an hour,”--as there once was, they say, a caliph
for an hour.--Therein lies our supremacy--and our curse: each one of
these “creators” in himself--precisely he, not any one else, precisely
that ego--seems to have been created with deliberate intent, on a plan
previously designed; each one more or less dimly understands his
significance, feels that he is akin to something higher, something
eternal--and he lives, he is bound to live in the moment and for the
moment.[33] Sit in the mud, my dear fellow, and strive toward
heaven!--The greatest among us are precisely those who are the most
profoundly conscious of all of that fundamental contradiction; but in
that case the question arises,--are the words “greatest, great”
appropriate?