It is a comfort to me to know that over the smoke and filth of human baseness there is a _higher and brighter_ mankind, which, judging from their number, must be a small race (for everything that is in any way distinguished is _ipso facto_ rare). A man does not belong to this race because he happens to be more gifted, more virtuous, more heroic, or more loving than the men below, but because he is _colder, brighter, more far-sighted, and more lonely;_ because he endures, prefers, and even insists upon, loneliness as the joy, the privilege, yea, even the condition of existence; because he lives amid clouds and lightnings as among his equals, and likewise among sunrays, dewdrops, snowflakes, and all that which must needs come from the heights, and which in its course moves ever from heaven to earth. The desire to look aloft is not our desire.--Heroes, martyrs, geniuses, and enthusiasts of all kinds, are not quiet, patient, subtle, cold, or slow enough for us. 994. The absolute conviction that valuations above and below are different; that innumerable experiences are wanting to the latter: that when looking upwards from below misunderstandings are necessary. 995. How do men attain to great power and to great tasks? All the virtues and proficiences of the body and the soul are little by little laboriously acquired, through great industry, self-control, and keeping one's self within narrow bounds, through a frequent, energetic, and genuine repetition of the same work and of the same hardships; but there are men who are the heirs and masters of this slowly acquired and manifold treasure of virtues and proficiences because, owing to happy and reasonable marriages and also to lucky accidents, the acquired and accumulated forces of many generations, instead of being squandered and subdivided, have been assembled together by means of steadfast struggling and willing. And thus, in the end, a man appears who is such a monster of strength, that he craves for a monstrous task. For it is our power which has command of us: and the wretched intellectual play of aims and intentions and motivations lies only in the foreground--however much weak eyes may recognise the principal factors in these things. 990. The sublime man has the highest value, even when he is most delicate and fragile, because an abundance of very difficult and rare things have been reared through many generations and united in him. 997. I teach that there are higher and lower men, and that a single individual may under certain circumstances justify whole millenniums of existence --that is to say, a wealthier, more gifted, greater, and more complete man, as compared with innumerable imperfect and fragmentary men. 998. Away from rulers and rid of all bonds, live the highest men: and in the rulers they have their instruments. 999.