Great men, like great ages, are explosive material, in which a stupendous amount of power is accumulated; the first conditions of their existence are always historical and physiological; they are the outcome of the fact that for long ages energy has been collected, hoarded up, saved up and preserved for their use, and that no explosion has taken place. When the tension in the bulk has become sufficiently excessive, the most fortuitous stimulus suffices in order to call "genius," "great deeds," and momentous fate into the world. 101-102 The criminal type is the type of the strong man and unfavourable conditions, a strong man made sick. He lacks the wild and savage state, a form of nature and existence which is freer and more dangerous, in which everything that constitutes the shield and the sword in the instinct of the strong man, takes a place by right. Society puts a ban upon his virtues; the most spirited instincts inherent in him immediately become involved with the depressing passions, with suspicion, fear and dishonour. But this is almost the recipe for physiological degeneration. When a man has to do that which he is best suited to do, which he is most fond of doing, not only clandestinely, but also with long suspense, caution and ruse, he becomes anæmic; and inasmuch as he is always having to pay for his instincts in the form of danger, persecution and fatalities, even his feelings begin to turn against these instincts--he begins to regard them as fatal. It is society, our tame, mediocre, castrated society, in which an untutored son of nature who comes to us from his mountains or from his adventures at sea, must necessarily degenerate into a criminal. Or almost necessarily: for there are cases in which such a man shows himself to be stronger than society: the Corsican Napoleon is the most celebrated case of this. 103-104 As long as the _priest_ represented the highest type of man, every valuable kind of man was depreciated.... The time is coming--this I guarantee--when he will pass as the _lowest_ type, as our Chandala, as the falsest and most disreputable kind of man. 105 Everything good is an inheritance: that which is not inherited is imperfect, it is simply a beginning. 107 Christianity with its contempt of the body is the greatest mishap that has ever befallen mankind. 108 I also speak of a "return to nature," although it is not a process of going back but of going up--up into lofty, free and even terrible nature and naturalness; such a nature as can play with great tasks and _may_ play with them. 108