"For man is made of common clay, And custom is his nurse."
Every great man must often be only the individual, have only himself in view, and that means he must be small Upon this depends the very true remark, that no man is a hero to his valet, and not upon the fact that the valet cannot appreciate the hero; which Goethe, in the "Wahlverwandhschaften" (vol. ii. chap. 5), serves up as an idea of Ottilie's.
Genius is its own reward: for the best that one is, one must necessarily be for oneself. "Whoever is born with a talent, to a talent, finds in this his fairest existence," says Goethe. When we look back at a great man of former times, we do not think, "How happy is he to be still admired by all of us!" but, "How happy must he have been in the immediate enjoyment of a mind at the surviving traces of which centuries revive themselves!" Not in the fame, but in that whereby it is attained, lies the value, and in the production of immortal children the pleasure. Therefore those who seek to show the vanity of posthumous fame from the fact that he who obtains it knows nothing of it, may be compared to the wiseacre who very learnedly tried to demonstrate to the man who cast envious glances at a heap of oyster-shells in his neighbour's yard the absolute uselessness of them.
According to the exposition of the nature of genius which has been given, it is so far contrary to nature, inasmuch as it consists in this, that the intellect, whose real destination is the service of the will, emancipates itself from this service in order to be active on its own account. Accordingly genius is an intellect which has become untrue to its destination. Upon this depend the disadvantages connected with it, for the consideration of which we shall now prepare the way by comparing genius with the less decided predominance of the intellect.
The intellect of the normal man, strictly bound to the service of the will, and therefore really only occupied
