The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
995.
How do men attain to great power and to great tasks? All the virtues and proficiences of the body and the soul are little by little laboriously acquired, through great industry, self-control, and keeping one's self within narrow bounds, through a frequent, energetic, and genuine repetition of the same work and of the same hardships; but there are men who are the heirs and masters of this slowly acquired and manifold treasure of virtues and proficiences because, owing to happy and reasonable marriages and also to lucky accidents, the acquired and accumulated forces of many generations, instead of being squandered and subdivided, have been assembled together by means of steadfast struggling and willing. And thus, in the end, a man appears who is such a monster of strength, that he craves for a monstrous task. For it is our power which has command of us: and the wretched intellectual play of aims and intentions and motivations lies only in the foreground--however much weak eyes may recognise the principal factors in these things. The sublime man has the highest value, even when he is most delicate and fragile, because an abundance of very difficult and rare things have been reared through many generations and united in him. I teach that there are higher and lower men, and that a single individual may under certain circumstances justify whole millenniums of existence --that is to say, a wealthier, more gifted, greater, and more complete man, as compared with innumerable imperfect and fragmentary men.
Away from rulers and rid of all bonds, live the highest men: and in the rulers they have their instruments. _The order of rank:_ he who _determines_ values and leads the will of millenniums, and does this by leading the highest natures--he _is the highest man._ 1000. I fancy I have divined some of the things that lie hidden in the soul of the highest man; perhaps every man who has divined so much must go to ruin: but he who has seen the highest man must do all he can to make him _possible._ Fundamental thought: we must make the future the standard of all our valuations--and not seek the laws for our conduct behind us. 1001. Not "mankind," but _Superman_ is the goal! 1002. "Come l'uom s'eterna...."--_Inf._ xv. 85.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.