XVI
All this is so ... but only the transitory is beautiful, Shakspeare has said; and Nature herself, in the unceasing play of her rising and vanishing forms, does not shun beauty. Is it not she who sedulously adorns the most momentary of her offspring—the petals of the flowers, the wings of the butterfly—with such charming colours? Is it not she who imparts to them such exquisite outlines? It is not necessary for beauty to live forever in order to be immortal—one moment is sufficient for it. That is so; that is just, I grant you—but only in cases where there is no personality, where man is not, liberty is not: the faded wing of the butterfly comes back again, and a thousand years later, with the selfsame wing of the selfsame butterfly, necessity sternly and regularly and impartially fulfils its round ... but man does not repeat himself like the butterfly, and the work of his hands, his art, his free creation once destroyed, is annihilated forever.... To him alone is it given to “create” ... but it is strange and terrible to articulate: “We are creators ... for an hour,”—as there once was, they say, a caliph for an hour.—Therein lies our supremacy—and our curse: each one of these “creators” in himself—precisely he, not any one else, precisely that ego—seems to have been created with deliberate intent, on a plan previously designed; each one more or less dimly understands his significance, feels that he is akin to something higher, something eternal—and he lives, he is bound to live in the moment and for the moment.[33] Sit in the mud, my dear fellow, and strive toward heaven!—The greatest among us are precisely those who are the most profoundly conscious of all of that fundamental contradiction; but in that case the question arises,—are the words “greatest, great” appropriate?