The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
881.
_Concerning the order of rank._--What is it that constitutes the _mediocrity_ of the typical man? That he does not understand that things necessarily have _their other side;_ that he combats evil conditions as if they could be dispensed with, that he will not take the one with the other; that he would fain obliterate and erase the _specific character of a thing,_ of a circumstance, of an age, and of a person, by calling only a portion of their qualities good, and suppressing the remainder. The "desirability" of the mediocre is that which we others combat: their _ideal_ is something which shall no longer contain anything harmful, evil, dangerous, questionable, and destructive. We recognise the reverse of this: that with every growth of man his other side must grow as well; that the highest man, if such a concept be allowed, would be that man who would represent _the antagonistic character of existence_ most strikingly, and would be its glory and its only justification.... Ordinary men may only represent a small corner and nook of this natural character; they perish the moment the multifariousness of the elements composing them, and the tension between their antagonistic traits, increases: but this is the prerequisite for greatness in man. That man should become better and at the same time more evil, is my formula for this inevitable fact.
The majority of people are only piecemeal and fragmentary examples of man: only when all these creatures are jumbled together does one whole man arise Whole ages and whole peoples in this sense, have a fragmentary character about them; it may perhaps be part of the economy of human development that man should develop himself only piecemeal. But, for this reason, one should not forget that the only important consideration is the rise of the synthetic man; that inferior men, and by far the great majority of people, are but rehearsals and exercises out of which here and there a whole man may arise; a man who is a human milestone, and who indicates how far mankind has advanced up to a certain point. Mankind does not advance in a straight line,--often a type is attained which is again lost (for instance, with all the efforts of three hundred years, we have not reached the men of the Renaissance again, and in addition to this we must not forget that the man of the Renaissance was already behind his brother of classical antiquity). The superiority of the Greek and the man of the Renaissance is recognised, but people would like to produce them without the conditions and causes of which they were the result. _"Purification of taste"_ can only be the result of the _strengthening_ of the type. Our society to-day represents only the cultivating systems, the cultivated man is _lacking._ The great _synthetic man,_ in whom the various forces for attaining a purpose are correctly harnessed together, is altogether wanting. The specimen we possess is the _multifarious_ man, the most interesting form of chaos that has ever existed: but _not_ the chaos _preceding_ the creation of the world, but that following it: _Goethe_ as the most beautiful expression of the type (_completely and utterly un-Olympian_!)[3]
Handel, Leibniz, Goethe, and Bismarck, are characteristic of the _strong German type._ They lived with equanimity, surrounded by contrasts. They were full of that agile kind of strength which cautiously avoids convictions and doctrines, by using the one as a weapon against the other, and reserving absolute freedom for themselves. Of this I am convinced, that if the rise of great and rare men had been made dependent upon the voices of the multitude (taking for granted, of course, that the latter knew the qualities which belong to greatness, and also the price that all greatness pays for its self-development), then there would never have been any such thing as a great man! The fact that things pursue their course _independently_ of the voice of the many, is the reason why, a few astonishing things have taken place on earth.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.