_The faculty of reproduction_, objectified in the cellular tissue of plants, constitutes the chief characteristic of plants and the vegetative element in Man. Where we find it predominant to excess in human beings, we assume them to be phlegmatic, dull, indolent, obtuse (Bœotians); though this assumption does not always meet with confirmation. _Irritability_, objectified in the muscular tissue, constitutes the chief characteristic of Animals and the animal element in Man. Where it predominates to excess, dexterity, strength, bravery, that is, fitness for bodily exertion and for war, is usually to be found (Spartans). Nearly all warm-blooded animals and even insects far surpass Man in irritability. It is by irritability that animals are most vividly conscious of their existence; wherefore they exult in manifesting it. There is even still a trace of that exultation perceptible in Man, in dancing. _Sensibility_, objectified in the nerves, is Man's chief characteristic, and constitutes what is properly human in him. In this no animal can in the remotest degree compare with Man. Where it predominates to excess, it produces _genius_ (Athenians). Accordingly a man of genius is in a higher degree a _man_. This explains why some men of genius have been unwilling to recognise other men, with their monotonous physiognomies and universal stamp of commonplace mediocrity, as human beings: for in them they did not find their equals and naturally came to the erroneous conclusion that their own was the normal standard. Diogenes sought for men with a lantern in this sense;--in that work of genius, the Koheleth (Ecclesiastes) it is said:[209] "_One_ man among a thousand have I found, but one woman among all those have I not found;" and Gracian in his Criticon--perhaps the grandest and most beautiful allegory ever written--says: "But what was strangest of all, in the whole country, even in the most populous cities, they did not meet with a single _man_; on the contrary these cities were inhabited by lions, tigers, leopards, wolves, foxes, apes, oxen, asses, pigs,--nowhere was there a man! They only made out after a time that the few existing human beings, in order to hide themselves and not to witness what was going on, had retired to those desert places which ought to have been the dwellings of wild beasts." The same reason indeed accounts for the peculiar inclination of all men of genius for solitude, to which they are driven by their difference from the rest, and for which their own inner wealth qualifies them. For, with humanity it is as with diamonds, the extraordinarily great ones alone are fitted to be _solitaires_, while those of ordinary size have to be set in clusters to produce any effect. [209] Ecclesiastes, ch. 7, v. 28.