This relation is, however, manifested in the most curious manner in the man of genius. No one suffers so much as he with the people, and, therefore, for the people, with whom he lives. For, in a certain sense, it is certainly only “by suffering” that a man knows. If compassion is not itself clear, abstractly conceivable or visibly symbolic knowledge, it is, at any rate, the strongest impulse for the acquisition of knowledge. It is only by suffering that the genius understands men. And the genius suffers most because he suffers with and in each and all; but he suffers most through his understanding.
Although I tried to show in an earlier chapter that genius is the factor which primarily elevates man above the animals, and in connection with that fact that it is man alone who has a history (this being explained by the presence in all men of some degree of the quality of genius), I must return to that earlier side of my argument. Genius involves the living actuality of the intelligible subject. History manifests itself only as a social thing, as the “objective spirit,” the individuals as such playing no part in it, being, in fact, non-historical. Here we see the threads of our argument converging. If it be the case, and I do not think that I am wrong, that the timeless, human personality is the necessary condition of every real ethical relation to our fellow men, and if individuality is the necessary preliminary to the collective spirit, then it is clear why the “metaphysical animal” and the “political animal,” the possessor of genius and the maker of history, are one and the same, are humanity. And the old controversy is settled; which comes first, the individual or the community? Both must be equal and simultaneous.
I think that I have proved at every point that genius is simply the higher morality. The great man is not only the truest to himself, the most unforgetful, the one to whom errors and lies are most hateful and intolerable; he is also the most social, at the same time the most self-contained, and the most open man. The genius is altogether a higher form, not merely intellectually, but also morally. In his own person, the genius reveals the idea of mankind. He represents what man is; he is the subject whose object is the whole universe which he makes endure for all time.
Let there be no mistake. Consciousness and consciousness alone is in itself moral; all unconsciousness is immoral, and all immorality is unconscious. The “immoral genius,” the “great wicked man,” is, therefore, a mythical animal, invented by great men in certain moments of their lives as a possibility, in order (very much against the will of the Creator) to serve as a bogey for nervous and timid natures, with which they frighten themselves and other children. No criminal who prided himself in his deed would speak like Hagen in the “Götterdämmerung” over Siegfried’s dead body: “Ha, ha, I have slain him; I, Hagen, gave him his death blow.”
Napoleon and Bacon, who are given as counter-instances, were intellectually much over-rated or wrongly represented. And Nietzsche is the least reliable in these matters, when he begins to discuss the Borgia type. The conception of the diabolical, of the anti-Christ, of Ahriman, of the “radical evil in human nature,” is exceedingly powerful, yet it concerns genius only inasmuch as it is the opposite of it. It is a fiction, created in the hours in which great men have struggled against the evil in themselves.
Universal comprehension, full consciousness, and perfect timelessness are an ideal condition, ideal even for gifted men; genius is an innate imperative, which never becomes a fully accomplished fact in human beings. Hence it is that a man of genius will be the last man to feel himself in the position to say of himself: “I am a genius.” Genius is, in its essence, nothing but the full completion of the idea of a man, and, therefore, every man ought to have some quality of it, and it should be regarded as a possible principle for every one.
Genius is the highest morality, and, therefore, it is every one’s duty. Genius is to be attained by a supreme act of the will, in which the whole universe is affirmed in the individual. Genius is something which “men of genius” take upon themselves; it is the greatest exertion and the greatest pride, the greatest misery and the greatest ecstasy to a man. A man may become a genius if he wishes to.
But at once it will certainly be said: “Very many men would like very much to be ‘original geniuses,’” and their wish has no effect. But if these men who “would like very much” had a livelier sense of what is signified by their wish, if they were aware that genius is identical with universal responsibility—and until that is grasped it will only be a wish and not a determination—it is highly probable that a very large number of these men would cease to wish to become geniuses.
The reason why madness overtakes so many men of genius—fools believe it comes from the influence of Venus, or the spinal degeneration of neurasthenics—is that for many the burden becomes too heavy, the task of bearing the whole world on the shoulders, like Atlas, intolerable for the smaller, but never for the really mighty minds. But the higher a man mounts, the greater may be his fall; all genius is a conquering of chaos, mystery, and darkness, and if it degenerates and goes to pieces, the ruin is greater in proportion to the success. The genius which runs to madness is no longer genius; it has chosen happiness instead of morality. All madness is the outcome of the insupportability of suffering attached to all consciousness. Sophocles derived his idea that a man might wish to become mad for this reason, and lets Aias, whose mind finally gives way, give utterance to these words:
εν τω φρονειν γαρ μηδεν ἡδιστος βιος.