The _Superman_ I have at heart; _that_ is the first and only thing to me--and _not_ man: not the neighbor, not the poorest, not the sorriest, not the best.... In that ye have despised, ye higher men, that maketh me hope.... In that ye have despaired, there is much to honor. For ye have not learned to submit yourselves, ye have not learned petty policy. For to-day have the petty people become master; they all preach submission, and humility, and policy, and diligence, and consideration, and the long _et cetera_ of petty virtues. These masters of to-day--surpass them, O my brethren--these petty people: they are the Superman's greatest danger![2] [Footnote 2: _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ (Macmillan edition), pp. 351-52.] It need scarcely be noted that even if the genius or Superman were justified, as this philosophy insists, on ruthlessly asserting his priority, it is a dangerous procedure to identify one's ambitions with one's desserts. As already noted, a flamboyant assurance of one's own importance is sometimes a ludicrous symptom of the reverse. The more legitimate manifestation of strong individualism in action or opinion is in the case of deeply conscientious natures, who will not compromise by a hair's breadth from what they conceive to be the right. The fanatic is seldom an appealing character, but he is a type that enforces admiration. Of such unflinching insistence are martyrs and great leaders made. There are in every community men who will regard it as treachery to their highest ideals to compromise at all from the inviolable principles to which they feel themselves committed. Such men are difficult to deal with in human situations involving cooeperation and compromise, and they exhibit frequently a rigid austerity, bitterness, and hate that do not readily win sympathy. But it is to such men as these that many religious and social reforms owe their initiation. Bertrand Russell, who, whether one agrees with him or not, exhibits a puritanical devotion to his social beliefs, has finely described the type: The impatient idealist--and without some impatience a man will hardly prove effective--is almost sure to be led into hatred by the oppositions and disappointments which he encounters in his endeavors to bring happiness to the world. The more certain he is of the purity of his motives and the truth of his gospel, the more indignant will he become when his teaching is rejected.... The intense faith which enables him to withstand persecution for the sake of his beliefs makes him consider these beliefs so luminously obvious that any thinking man who rejects them must be dishonest and must be actuated by some sinister motive of treachery to the cause.[1] [Footnote 1: Russell: _Proposed Roads to Freedom_, pp. xiii-xiv.]