Passionate. Quite unconsciously they lived in such a way as to procreate genius. Enemies of shyness and dulness. Pain. Injudicious actions. The nature of their intuitive insight into misery, despite their bright and genial temperament. Profoundness in their apprehension and glorifying of everyday things (fire, agriculture). Mendacious, unhistorical. The significance of the πὁλις in culture instinctively recognised, favourable as a centre and periphery for great men (the facility of surveying a community, and also the possibility of addressing it as a whole). Individuality raised to the highest power through the πὁλις. Envy, jealousy, as among gifted people.
108
The Greeks were lacking in sobriety and caution. Over-sensibility, abnormally active condition of the brain and the nerves; impetuosity and fervour of the will.
109
"Invariably to see the general in the particular is the distinguishing characteristic of genius," says Schopenhauer. Think of Pindar, &c.—"Σωφροσὑιη," according to Schopenhauer, has its roots in the clearness with which the Greeks saw into themselves and into the world at large, and thence became conscious of themselves.
The "wide separation of will and intellect" indicates the genius, and is seen in the Greeks.
"The melancholy associated with genius is due to the fact that the will to live, the more clearly it is illuminated by the contemplating intellect, appreciates all the more clearly the misery of its condition," says Schopenhauer. Cf. the Greeks.
110
The moderation of the Greeks in their sensual luxury, eating, and drinking, and their pleasure therein; the Olympic plays and their worship . that shows what they were.
In the case of the genius, "the intellect will point out the faults which are seldom absent in an instrument that is put to a use for which it was not intended."