Page:Nietzsche the thinker.djvu/413

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"PERSONS," OR GREAT MEN
397

revival of, or rather reversion to, the intellectual atmosphere that existed before the age of varying individuals; it flattens, levels men—tends to give them but one set of eyes, while the glory and privilege of man among the animals has been that there are no eternal, i.e., unchanging, horizons and perspectives for him.[1] In accordance with this strong feeling Nietzsche expresses the hope that joy in foreign originality, without desire to ape it, will some day be the mark of a new culture.[2] As for himself, he wants to help all who seek an ideal pattern for their lives simply by showing how to do it; and his greatest joy is in encountering individual patterns that are not like his own. "The Devil take all imitators and followers and eulogists and wonderers and self-surrenderers!"[3]

  1. Joyful Science, § 143; cf. Zarathustra, III, viii, § 2.
  2. Werke, XI, 240, § 199.
  3. Ibid., XI, 242, § 202.