great man and only the great man, feels that he himself is in very truth a "man of destiny." And so it comes that great men are always more "superstitious" than average men. To sum up, I may say:
A man is himself important precisely in proportion that all things seem important to him.
In the course of further investigation this dictum will be seen to have a deep significance even apart from its bearing on theuniversality, comprehension, andcomparison exhibited by the genius.
The position of woman in these matters is not difficult to explain. A real woman never becomes conscious of a destiny, of her own destiny; she is not heroic; she fights most for her possessions, and there is nothing tragic in the struggle as her own fate is decided with the fate of her possessions.
Inasmuch as woman is without continuity, she can have no true reverence; as a fact, reverence is a purely male virtue. A man is first reverent about himself, and selfrespect is the first stage in reverence for all things. But it costs a woman very little to break off with her past; if the word irony could be fittingly used here, one might say that a man does not easily regard his past with irony and superiority as women appear to do—and not only after marriage.
Later on I shall show how women are exactly the opposite of that which reverence means. I would rather be silent about the reverence of widows.
The superstition of women is psychologically absolutely different from the superstitions of famous men.
The reverent relation to one's own past, which depends on a real continuity of memory, and which is possible only by comprehension, can be shown in relation to a still wider and deeper subject.
Whether a man has a real relationship to his own past or not, involves the question as to whether he has a desire for immortality, or if the idea of death is indifferent to him.
The desire for immortality is to-day, as a rule, treated shamefully, and in a very different spirit.
