The Dawn of Day · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
497.
THE PURIFYING EYE.—We have the best reason for speaking of “genius” in men—for example, Plato, Spinoza, and Goethe—whose minds appear to be but loosely linked to their character and temperament, like winged beings which easily separate themselves from them, and then rise far above them. On the other hand, those who never succeeded in cutting themselves loose from their temperament, and who knew how to give to it the most intellectual, lofty, and at times even cosmic expression (Schopenhauer, for instance) have always been very fond of speaking about their genius. These geniuses could not rise above themselves, but they believed that, fly where they would, they would always find and recover themselves—this is their “greatness,” and this can be greatness!—The others who are entitled to this name possess the pure and purifying eye which does not seem to have sprung out of their temperament and character, but separately from them, and generally in contradiction to them, and looks out upon the world as on a God whom it loves. But even people like these do not come into possession of such an eye all at once: they require practice and a preliminary school of sight, and he who is really fortunate will at the right moment also fall in with a teacher of pure sight. NEVER DEMAND!—You do not know him! it is true that he easily and readily submits both to men and things, and that he is kind to both—his only wish is to be left in peace—but only in so far as men and things do not _demand_ his submission. Any demand makes him proud, bashful, and warlike.
THE EVIL ONE.—“Only the solitary are evil!”—thus spake Diderot, and Rousseau at once felt deeply offended. Thus he proved that Diderot was right. Indeed, in society, or amid social life, every evil instinct is compelled to restrain itself, to assume so many masks, and to press itself so often into the Procrustean bed of virtue, that we are quite justified in speaking of the martyrdom of the evil man. In solitude, however, all this disappears. The evil man is still more evil in solitude—and consequently for him whose eye sees only a drama everywhere he is also more beautiful. AGAINST THE GRAIN.—A thinker may for years at a time force himself to think against the grain: that is, not to pursue the thoughts that spring up within him, but, instead, those which he is compelled to follow by the exigencies of his office, an established division of time, or any arbitrary duty which he may find it necessary to fulfil. In the long run, however, he will fall ill; for this apparently moral self-command will destroy his nervous system as thoroughly and completely as regular debauchery.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.