e been the most potent of all the forces which
have hitherto operated upon mankind. The more similar, the more ordinary
people, have always had and are still having the advantage; the more
select, more refined, more unique, and difficultly comprehensible, are
liable to stand alone; they succumb to accidents in their isolation, and
seldom propagate themselves. One must appeal to immense opposing forces,
in order to thwart this natural, all-too-natural PROGRESSUS IN SIMILE,
the evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average, the
gregarious--to the IGNOBLE--!

269. The more a psychologist--a born, an unavoidable psychologist
and soul-diviner--turns his attention to the more select cases and
individuals, the greater is his danger of being suffocated by sympathy:
he NEEDS sternness and cheerfulness more than any other man. For
the corruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually
constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have such a
rule always before one's eyes. The manifold torment of the psychologist
who has discovered this ruination, who discovers once, and then
discovers ALMOST repeatedly throughout all history, this universal
inner "desperateness" of higher men, this eternal "too late!" in every
sense--may perhaps one day be the cause of his turning with
bitterness against his own lot, and of his making an attempt at
self-destruction--of his "going to ruin" himself. One may perceive
in almost every psychologist a tell-tale inclination for delightful
intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered men; the fact is thereby
disclosed that he always requires healing, that he needs a sort
of flight and forgetfulness, away from what his insight and
incisiveness--from what his "business"--has laid upon his conscience.
The fear of his memory is peculiar to him. He is easily silenced by the
judgment of others; he hears with unmoved countenance how people honour,
admire, love, and glorify, where he has PERCEIVED--or he even conceals
his silence by expressly assenting to some plausible opinion. Perhaps
the paradox of his situation becomes so dreadful that, precisely
where he has learnt GREAT SYMPATHY, together with great CONTEMPT, the
multitude, the educated, and the visionaries, have on their part learnt
great reverence--reverence for "great men" and marvelous animals, for
the sake of whom one blesses and honours the fatherland, the earth, the
dignity of mankind, and one's own self, to who