497.
The Purifying Eye.—We have the best reason for speaking of “genius” in men—for example, Plato, Spinoza, and Goethe—whose minds appear to be but loosely linked to their character and temperament, like winged beings which easily separate themselves from them, and then rise far above them. On the other hand, those who never succeeded in cutting themselves loose from their temperament, and who knew how to give to it the most intellectual, lofty, and at times even cosmic expression (Schopenhauer, for instance) have always been very fond of speaking about their genius.
These geniuses could not rise above themselves, but they believed that, fly where they would, they would always find and recover themselves—this is their “greatness,” and this can be greatness!—The [pg 348] others who are entitled to this name possess the pure and purifying eye which does not seem to have sprung out of their temperament and character, but separately from them, and generally in contradiction to them, and looks out upon the world as on a God whom it loves. But even people like these do not come into possession of such an eye all at once: they require practice and a preliminary school of sight, and he who is really fortunate will at the right moment also fall in with a teacher of pure sight.