together in the same individual—Nietzsche could point to but one instance in the nineteenth century, Mazzini.[1] "Good" differs from "great" because in the great man [as such] the specific qualities of life in general, such as wrong, deception, exploitation, reach their maximum—although when they have been overpowering, their essential nature is not perceived and they are then construed as "good"—Carlyle being an instance of this type of interpreter.[2] "The high individual gives himself on occasion all the rights the state assumes—the right to kill, to annihilate, to play the spy, etc."; men of this type have committed all crimes—whether legally so or not, depending on the temper of the times.[3] The crimes need not be obvious animal ones, but more subtle, such as treachery, apostasy, denial; higher natures none the less commit them.[4] "The great are not understood: they forgive themselves every crime, but no weakness."[5] In other words, they have and make their own law, and this is what makes them great—and dreaded. Nietzsche quotes a Chinese proverb, "The great man is a public misfortune"—and he thinks that it is not so paradoxical as it sounds. At bottom all civilizations have, he says, this deep anxiety about the "great man," though the Chinese alone confess it—and they arrange their institutions "so that he shall arise as seldom, and grow up under as unfavorable conditions, as possible: what wonder! The small have looked out for themselves, for the small!"[6] I need not now develope the compensatory thought of the ultimate beneficence of great men; it has been already stated, and will be and more fully again—I simply note the evil aspect which for the time being, as Nietzsche thinks, they almost inevitably wear. "As man is something less than the animal and something more (Unthier und Überthier), the higher man is something less and something more than man (Unmensch und Übermensch): so do things go together. With every growth of man in the direction of what is great and high he grows also in the direction of what is deep and fearful; the one result should not be desired without the other—or, rather, the more
