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Their talents are the most rare, in a certain sense the most unnatural and at the same time exclusive and hostile even toward kindred talents. The wall of their self-sufficiency must be of diamond, if it is not to be demolished and broken, for everything is in motion against them. Their journey to immortality is more cumbersome and impeded than any other and yet nobody can believe more firmly than philosopher that they will attain the goal by that journey because they do not know where they are to stand if not on the widely spread wings of all time; for the disregard of everything present and momentary lies in the essence of the great philosophic nature. They have truth; the wheel of time may roll whither it pleases, never can it escape from truth.
No paramount feeling of compassionate agitation, no desire to help, heal and save emanates from him. He is a star without an atmosphere. His eye, directed blazingly inwards, looks outward, for appearance's sake only, extinct and icy. All around him, immediately upon the citadel of his pride beat the waves of folly and perversity: with loathing that turns away from them. But people with a feeling heart would also shun such a Gorgon monster as cast out of brass; within an out-of-the-way sanctuary, among the statues of gods, by the side of cold composedly-sublime architecture such a being may appear more comprehensible.
For the world needs truth eternally, therefore she needs also Heraclitus eternally: although he has no need of her. What does his fame matter to him? Fame with "mortals ever flowing on!" as he exclaims scornfully. His fame is of concern to humans, not to himself; the immortality of mankind needs him, not he the immortality of the man Heraclitus. That which he beheld, the doctrine of the Law in Becoming, and of the Play in Necessity, must henceforth be beheld eternally: he has raised the curtain of this greatest stage-play. (emphasis mine)
Heraclitus was proud; and if it comes to pride with a philosopher then it is a great pride. His work never refers him to a "public," the applause of the masses and the hailing chorus of contemporaries. To wander lonely along one's path belongs to the nature of the philosopher. Their talents are the most rare, in a certain sense the most unnatural and at the same time exclusive and hostile even toward kindred talents. The wall of their self-sufficiency must be of diamond, if it is not to be demolished and broken, for everything is in motion against them. Their journey to immortality is more cumbersome and impeded than any other and yet nobody can believe more firmly than philosopher that they will attain the goal by that journey because they do not know where they are to stand if not on the widely spread wings of all time; for the disregard of everything present and momentary lies in the essence of the great philosophic nature. They have truth; the wheel of time may roll whither it pleases, never can it escape from truth. It is important to hear that such humans have lived. Never for example would one be able to imagine the pride of Heraclitus as an idle possibility. In itself every endeavor after knowledge seems by its nature to be eternally unsatisfied and unsatisfactory. Therefore nobody unless instructed by history will like to believe in such a royal self-esteem and conviction of being the only wooer of truth. Such people live in their own solar systems one has to look for them there. A Pythagoras, an Empedocles treated themselves too with a superhuman esteem, yea, with almost religious awe; but the tie of sympathy united with the great conviction of the metempsychosis and the unity of everything living, led them back to other humans, for their welfare and salvation. Of that feeling of solitude, however, which permeated the Ephesian recluse of the Artemis Temple, one can only divine something, when growing benumbed in the wildest mountain desert. No paramount feeling of compassionate agitation, no desire to help, heal and save emanates from him. He is a star without an atmosphere. His eye, directed blazingly inwards, looks outward, for appearance's sake only, extinct and icy. All around him, immediately upon the citadel of his pride beat the waves of folly and perversity: with loathing that turns away from them. But people with a feeling heart would also shun such a Gorgon monster as cast out of brass; within an out-of-the-way sanctuary, among the statues of gods, by the side of cold composedly-sublime architecture such a being may appear more comprehensible. As human among humans Heraclitus was incredible; and though he was seen paying attention to the play of noisy children, even then he was reflecting upon what never humans thought of on such an occasion: the play of the great world-child, Zeus. He had no need of people, not even for his discernments. He was not interested in all that which one might perhaps ascertain from them, and in what the other sages before him had been endeavoring to ascertain. He spoke with disdain of such questioning, collecting, in short "historic" humans. "I sought and investigated myself," he said, with a word by which one designates the investigation of an oracle; as if he and no one else were the true fulfiller and achiever of the Delphic precept: "Know thyself."
What he learned from this oracle, he deemed immortal wisdom, and eternally worthy of explanation, of unlimited effect even in the distance, after the model of the prophetic speeches of the Sibyl. It is sufficient for the latest mankind: let the latter have that expounded to her, as oracular sayings, which he like the Delphic god " neither enunciates nor conceals." Although it is proclaimed by him, "without smiles, finery and the scent of ointments," but rather as with "foaming mouth," it must forceits way through the millenniums of the future. For the world needs truth eternally, therefore she needs also Heraclitus eternally: although he has no need of her. What does his fame matter to him? Fame with "mortals ever flowing on!" as he exclaims scornfully. His fame is of concern to humans, not to himself; the immortality of mankind needs him, not he the immortality of the man Heraclitus. That which he beheld, the doctrine of the Law in Becoming, and of the Play in Necessity, must henceforth be beheld eternally: he has raised the curtain of this greatest stage-play.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Available online at: http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/ptra.htm
PDF of Maximilian A. Mügge translation available at
http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021569151
It is found on page 71 of the above book.
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