y secured for him the conquest of that entire Empire; and he thus
became--though leaving the form of the constitution--the autocrat of the
State. What secured for him the execution of a design, which in the
first instance was of negative import--the autocracy of Rome--was,
however, at the same time an independently necessary feature in the
history of Rome and of the world. It was not, then, his private gain
merely, but an unconscious impulse that occasioned the accomplishment of
that for which the time was ripe. Such are all great historical men,
whose own particular aims involve those large issues which are the will
of the World-Spirit. They may be called heroes, inasmuch as they have
derived their purposes and their vocation, not from the calm, regular
course of things, sanctioned by the existing order, but from a concealed
fount--one which has not attained to phenomenal, present existence--from
that inner Spirit, still hidden beneath the surface, which, impinging on
the outer world as on a shell, bursts it in pieces, because it is
another kernel than that which belonged to the shell in question. They
are men, therefore, who appear to draw the impulse of their life from
themselves, and whose deeds have produced a condition of things and a
complex of historical relations which appear to be only their own
interest and their own work.

Such individuals had no consciousness of the general Idea they were
unfolding, while prosecuting their aims; on the contrary, they were
practical, political men. But, at the same time, they were thinking men,
who had an insight into the requirements of the time--_what was ripe
for development_. This was the very truth for their age, for their
world--the species next in order, so to speak, and which was already
formed in the womb of time. It was theirs to know this nascent
principle, the necessary, directly sequent step in progress, which their
world was to take, to make this their aim, and to expend their energy in
promoting it. World-historical men--the heroes of an epoch--must,
therefore, be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their
words are the best of that time. Great men have formed purposes to
satisfy themselves, not others. Whatever prudent designs and counsels
they might have learned from others would be the more limited and
inconsistent features in their career; for it was they who best
understood affairs, from whom others learned, and approved, or at least
acquies