961.
I will endeavour to see at which periods in history great men arise.
The significance of despotic moralities that have lasted a long time:
they strain the bow, provided they do not break it.
962.
A great man,--a man whom Nature has built up and invented in a grand
style,--What is such a man? _First,_ in his general course of action
his consistency is so broad that owing to its very breadth it can be
surveyed only with difficulty, and consequently misleads; he possesses
the capacity of extending his will over great stretches of his life,
and of despising and rejecting all small things, whatever most
beautiful and "divine" things of the world there may be among them.
_Secondly,_ he is _colder, harder, less cautious and more free from
the fear of "public opinion";_ he does not possess the virtues which
are compatible with respectability and with being respected, nor any
of those things which are counted among the "virtues of the herd." If
he is unable to _lead_, he walks alone; he may then perchance grunt
at many things which he meets on his way. _Thirdly_, he asks for no
"compassionate" heart, but servants, instruments; in his dealings with
men his one aim is _to make_ something out of them. He knows that he
cannot reveal himself to anybody: he thinks it bad taste to become
familiar; and as a rule he is not familiar when people think he is.
When he is not talking to his soul, he wears a mask. He would rather
lie than tell the truth, because lying requires more spirit and _will_.
There is a loneliness within his heart which neither praise nor blame
can reach, because he is his own judge from whom is no appeal.
963.
The great man is necessarily a sceptic (I do not mean to say by this
that he must appear to be one), provided that greatness consists in
this: to _will_ something great, together with the means thereto.
Freedom from any kind of conviction is a factor in his _strength
of will_. And thus it is in keeping with that "enlightened form of
despotism" which every great passion exercises. Such a passion enlists
intellect in its service; it even has the courage for unholy means;
it creates without hesitation; it allows itself convictions, it even
_uses_ them, but it never submits to them. The need of faith and
of anything unconditionally negative or affirmative is a proof of
weakness; all weakness is weakness of will. The man of faith, the
believer, is necessarily an inferior species of man. From this it
follows that "all freedom of spirit," _i.e._ instinctive scepticism, is
the prerequisite of greatness.
964.
The great man is conscious of his power over a people, and of the fact
that he coincides temporarily with a people or with a century--this
_magnifying_ of his self-consciousness as _causa_ and _voluntas_
is _misunderstood_ as "altruism": he feels driven to _means_ of
communication: all great men are _inventive_ in such means. They want
to form great communities in their own image; they would fain give
multiformity and disorder definite shape; it stimulates them to behold
chaos.
The misunderstanding of love. There is a _slavish_ love which
subordinates itself and gives itself away--which idealises and deceives
itself; there is a _divine_ species of love which despises and loves at
the same time, and which _remodels_ and _elevates_ the thing it loves.
The object is to attain that enormous _energy of greatness_ which can
model the man of the future by means of discipline and also by means
of the annihilation of millions of the bungled and botched, and which
can yet avoid _going to ruin_ at the sight of the suffering _created_
thereby, the like of which has never been seen before.
965.
The revolution, confusion, and distress of whole peoples is in my
opinion of less importance than _the misfortunes which attend great
individuals in their development._ We must not allow ourselves to be
deceived: the many misfortunes of all these small folk do not together
constitute a sum-total, except in the feelings of _mighty_ men.--To
think of one's self in moments of great danger, and to draw ones own
advantage from the calamities of thousands in the case of the man
who differs very much from the common ruck--may be a sign of a great
character which is able to master its feeling of pity and justice.
966.
In contradistinction to the animal, man has developed such a host
of _antagonistic_ instincts and impulses in himself, that he has
become master of the earth by means of this synthesis.--Moralities
are only the expression of local and limited _orders of rank in_ this
multifarious world of instincts which prevent man from perishing
through their _antagonism._ Thus a masterful instinct so weakens and
subtilises the instinct which opposes it that it becomes an _impulse_
which provides the _stimulus_ for the activity of the principal
instinct.
The highest man would have the greatest multifariousness in his
instincts, and he would _possess_ these in the relatively strongest
degree in which he is able to endure them. As a matter of fact,
wherever the plant, man, is found strong, mighty instincts are to be
found opposing each other (_e.g._ Shakespeare), but they are subdued.
967.
Would one not be justified in reckoning all great men among the
_wicked?_ This is not so easy to demonstrate in the case of
individuals. They are so frequently capable of masterly dissimulation
that they very often assume the airs and forms of great virtues. Often,
too, they seriously reverence virtues, and in such a way as to be
passionately hard towards themselves; but as the result of cruelty.
Seen from a distance such things are liable to deceive. Many, on the
other hand, misunderstand themselves; not infrequently, too, a great
mission will call forth great qualities, _e.g._ justice. The essential
fact is: the greatest men may also perhaps have great virtues, but then
they also have the opposites of these virtues. I believe that it is
precisely out of the presence of these opposites and of the feelings
they suscitate, that the great man arises,--for the great man is the
broad arch which spans two banks lying far apart.
968.
In _great men_ we find the specific qualities of life in their highest
manifestation: injustice, falsehood, exploitation. But inasmuch as
their effect has always been _overwhelming,_ their essential nature has
been most thoroughly misunderstood, and interpreted as goodness. The
type of such an interpreter would be Carlyle.[5]
[Footnote 5: This not only refers to _Heroes and Hero-Worship,_
but doubtless to Carlyle's prodigious misunderstanding of Goethe a
misunderstanding which still requires to be put right by a critic
untainted by Puritanism.--Tr.]
969.
Generally speaking, everything _is worth no more and no less than one
has paid for it._ This of course does not hold good in the case of an
isolated individual; the great capacities of the individual have no
relation whatsoever to that which he has done, sacrificed, and suffered
for them. But if one should examine the previous history of his race
one would be sure to find the record of an extraordinary storing up and
capitalising of power by means of all kinds of abstinence, struggle,
industry, and determination. It is because the great man has cost so
much, and not because he stands there as a miracle, as a gift from
heaven, or as an accident, that he became great: "Heredity" is a false
notion. A man's ancestors have always paid the price of what he is.
970.
_The danger of modesty._ To adapt ourselves too early to duties,
societies, and daily schemes of work in which accident may have placed
us, at a time when neither our powers nor our aim in life has stepped
peremptorily into our consciousness; the premature certainty of
conscience and feeling of relief and of sociability which is acquired
by this precocious, modest attitude, and which appears to our minds
as a deliverance from those inner and outer disturbances of our
feelings--all this pampers and keeps a man down in the most dangerous
fashion imaginable. To learn to respect things which people about us
respect, as if we had no standard or right of our own to determine
values; the strain of appraising things as others appraise them,
_counter_ to the whisperings of our inner taste, which also has a
conscience of its own, becomes a terribly subtle kind of constraint:
and if in the end no explosion takes place which bursts all the bonds
of love and morality at once, then such a spirit becomes withered,
dwarfed, feminine, and objective. The reverse of this is bad enough,
but still it is better than the foregoing: to suffer from one's
environment, from its praise just as much as from its blame; to be
wounded by it and to fester inwardly without betraying the fact; to
defend one's self involuntarily and suspiciously against its love; to
learn to be silent, and perchance to conceal this by talking; to create
nooks and safe, lonely hiding-places where one can go and take breath
for a moment, or shed tears of sublime comfort--until at last one has
grown strong enough to say: "What on earth have I to do with you?" and
to go _one's_ way alone.
971.
Those men who are in themselves destinies, and whose advent is the
advent of fate, the whole race of _heroic_ bearers of burdens: oh!
how heartily and gladly would they have respite from themselves for
once in a while!--how they crave after stout hearts and shoulders, that
they might free themselves, were it but for an hour or two, from that
which oppresses them! And how fruitlessly they crave! ... They wait;
they observe all that passes before their eyes: no man even cometh nigh
to them with a thousandth part of their suffering and passion, no man
guesseth to what end they have waited.... At last, at last, they learn
the first lesson of their life: to wait no longer; and forthwith they
learn their second lesson: to be affable, to be modest; and from that
time onwards to endure everybody and every kind of thing--in short, to
endure still a little more than they had endured theretofore.