and kindness; they take pleasure in the larger justice and in the practice of it.[1] They are counselors for troubled minds and consciences.[2] They rise to higher air, not occasionally but they live there; not so much strength as permanence of high sentiment marks them.[3]
In general a high self-control characterizes these men. They are many-sided, perhaps have the most varied powers, but these are harnessed together to an end. They are not impulsive beings, but collected, cool, reasonable; they do even heroic acts in this spirit, not blindly following feeling.[4] They like naïveté and naïve people, but as onlookers and higher beings: they find Faust as naïve as Gretchen.[5] Even giving one's life for something is not necessarily a mark of superiority—it may be from pity or from anger or from revenge; how many have sacrificed their life for pretty women—and even, what is worse, their health![6] i For in Nietzsche's eyes, greatness of soul is not to be separated from intellectual greatness. The really great look on "heroes, martyrs, geniuses, the inspired" as not "quiet, patient, fine, cold, slow, enough" for them.[7] j Philosophers are the greatest men. They are ever against mere impulse, and first and surface views—the natural antagonists of sensualism, whether in practice or as a theory.[8] Indeed, Nietzsche thinks that individuals generally are less likely to lose their balance and be insane than groups, parties, peoples, periods.[9]
Moreover, the great are happy in their lot, thankful for existence.[10] Though they may suffer—and capacity for suffering is a mark of greatness—they can also play and laugh, laugh at themselves and their failures, make jests of pathetic situations in which they find themselves. Indeed, it was man, the most
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 213.
- ↑ Werke, XIV, 414, § 298.
- ↑ Mixed Opinions etc., § 397; Beyond Good and Evil, § 72.
- ↑ Will to Power, §§ 883, 928; cf. Werke, XIII, 144, § 335; Dawn of Day, § 215.
- ↑ Will to Power, § 943; cf. the references to Faust, Werke, XIII, 335, § 830.
- ↑ Ibid., § 929.
- ↑ Will to Power, §§ 984, 993; cf. Werke, XI, 379-89, § 579.
- ↑ Beyond Good and Evil, § 14. Cf, two striking pictures of the philosopher, his experiences and manner of life, ibid., §§ 213, 292.
- ↑ Ibid., § 156.
- ↑ A man of genius is unendurable, unless he has two things besides: thankfulness and purity (ibid., § 74).
