ced in, their policy. For that Spirit which had taken this fresh
step in history is the inmost soul of all individuals, but in a state of
unconsciousness which the great men in question aroused. Their fellows,
therefore, follow these soul-leaders; for they feel the irresistible
power of their own inner Spirit thus embodied. If we go on to cast a
look at the fate of these world-historical persons, whose vocation it
was to be the agents of the World-Spirit, we shall find it to have been
no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was
labor and trouble; their whole nature was naught else but their
master-passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty
husks from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are
murdered, like Caesar; transported to St. Helena, like Napoleon. This
fearful consolation--that historical men have not enjoyed what is called
happiness, and of which only private life (and this may be passed under
various external circumstances) is capable--this consolation those may
draw from history who stand in need of it; and it is craved by envy,
vexed at what is great and transcendent, striving, therefore, to
depreciate it and to find some flaw in it. Thus in modern times it has
been demonstrated _ad nauseam_ that princes are generally unhappy on
their thrones; in consideration of which the possession of a throne is
tolerated, and men acquiesce in the fact that not themselves but the
personages in question are its occupants. The free man, we may observe,
is not envious, but gladly recognizes what is great and exalted, and
rejoices that it exists.

It is in the light of those common elements which constitute the
interest and therefore the passions of individuals that these historical
men are to be regarded. They are great men, because they willed and
accomplished something great--not a mere fancy, a mere intention, but
whatever met the case and fell in with the needs of the age. This mode
of considering them also excludes the so-called "psychological" view,
which, serving the purpose of envy most effectually, contrives so to
refer all actions to the heart, to bring them under such a subjective
aspect, that their authors appear to have done everything under the
impulse of some passion, mean or grand, some morbid craving, and, on
account of these passions and cravings, to have been immoral men.
Alexander of Macedon partly subdued Greece, and then Asia; therefore he
was poss