ferent their sacrifice on altars to Gods commonly unknown, their bravery with unconcern for honor, their self-sufficiency which flows over and imparts of its joy to men and things.[1]
It follows that they are more or less solitary. If the rest of us admire them, it is because they are different from us, not like us—we have the sort of joy in them that we have in nature.[2] To a certain extent they wish to be by themselves—instincts of self-protection, of purity, tending that way. One accommodates oneself in the world[3]—as Emerson puts it, "we descend to meet"; in solitude, the soul and mind are easier upright and true. Away from the market and glory happens all that is great; away from the market-place have ever dwelt the inventors of new values.[4] Nietzsche quotes a Hindu saying: "As Brahma one lives alone; as a God in twos; as a villager in threes; where there are more, it is a noise and a tumult."[5] He speaks of the hundred deep solitudes one finds in a city like Venice—it was a part of the charm of that city for him, a "symbol for men of the future."[6] Solitude has practical limits, no doubt; if it is too great, one does not perpetuate oneself—the social many, kindred to one another, perpetuate themselves best, and that is why, perhaps, commonness preponderates in the world.[7] The great and singular hardly even make a class. They stand apart from one another, as well as from the crowd. They may mask themselves so well that, if they meet on the way, they scarcely know one another. They do not necessarily love one another, though they cannot fail in mutual respect. Nietzsche quotes a grim remark of Abbé Galiani, "Philosophers are not made for loving each other. Eagles do not fly in company. That has to be left to partridges and common birds.… To soar aloft and have claws—that is the lot of great geniuses."[8] Nor is there anything undesirable in this hostility—in it all their strength comes out.[9] Tyranny is another matter. When "originality" wishes to tyrannize, it lays its hand, Nietzsche says, on its own life-principle[10]—and I imagine he would have said the same of a "person." Even when the great agree, they
