Friedrich_Nietzsche - Untimely_Meditations_(Cambridge_Texts_in_the_History_of_Philosophy__1997)

Untimely Meditationssimilar wanderers on differing paths? The tremendous crowd thatpresses towards its goal along the first path understands by it therules and arrangements by means of which it itself is brought toorder and marches forward and through which all the solitary andrecalcitrant, all who are looking fo r higher and more remote goals,are excommunicated. For the smaller band on the other path aninstitution would have a quite different purpose to fulfil; it wants theprotection of a firm organization so as to prevent itself from beingwashed away and dispersed by that tremendous crowd, and so thatthe individuals that comprise it shall not die from prematureexhaustion or even become alienated from their great task. Theseindividuals have to complete their work - that is the sense of theirstaying together; and all who participate in the institution have,through continual purification and mutual support, to help to preparewithin themselves and around them for the birth of the geniusand the ripening of his work. Not a few, including some from theranks of the second- and third-rate talents, are destined for the taskof rendering this assistance and only tn subjection to such a destinydo they come to feel they have a duty and that their lives possesssignificance and a goal. Nowadays, however, it is precisely thesetalents who are diverted from their path and estranged from theirinstincts by the seductive voices of that modish 'culture'; the temptationis directed at their self-seeking impulses, at their weaknessesana vanities; it is to them precisely that the Zeitgeist whispersinsinuatingly: 'Follow me and do not go there! For there you are onlyservants, assistants, instruments, outshone by higher natures, neverhappy in being what you really are, pulled along in bonds, laid inchains, as slaves, indeed as automata; here with me you shall, as masters,enjoy your free personality, your talents may glitter by theirown light, you yourselves shall stand in the foremost rank, a tremendousfollowing will throng around you, and the public acclamationwill surely please you better than a noble assent bestowed from thecold ethereal heights of genius.' Even the best can succumb to suchenticements: and what is decisive here is hardly the rarity andstrength ofthe talent but rather the influence of a certain heroic basicdisposition and the degree of profound kinship and involvementwith the genius. For there do exist men who feel it as their own distresswhen they see the genius involved in toilsome struggle, or in dangerof destroying himself, or when the shortsighted greed of the state,the superficiality of the money-makers, the arid self-satisfaction ofthe scholars treat his work with indifference: and so I also hope there176