92 THE COMING OF MAN 



intellect and no feeling, completely blind. Head and heart 

 rarely balance. 



This is due partly to heredity increased by early nurture 

 or neglect and the environment of youth and maturity, partly 

 to our own negligence or perversity. The result is lack of 

 symmetry, balance and control; of Engkrateia, inward 

 strength. 



Burn sulphur, niter and charcoal separately and you get 

 mainly a bad odor. Combine them thoroughly in proper pro- 

 portion, put them in a gun-barrel, ram down a bullet; then take 

 care how you aim. Something will happen. 



We very rarely see the result of high, symmetrical, complete 

 development of all the powers of the mind in a single indi- 

 vidual, like Socrates or Lincoln. There is nothing about them 

 which sticks out conspicuously and attracts our notice; their 

 greatness is concealed by their symmetry. Long after their 

 death we begin to appreciate them. They form what Heine 

 has called '' the apostolic succession of great souls, the only 

 people in the world who ever see anything as it is," and who 

 understand its meaning. These men show us what man can be 

 and will be. They live, and are more than irrefutable argu- 

 ments for immortality: they are samples and illustrations of 

 it. They cannot die, though they may belong to the noble 

 army of martyrs. Nature will some day produce a race of 

 such men, if there is any logic in evolution. She will not be 

 balked. 



We are all more or less crippled by our weakest spot, our 

 undeveloped or disused powers. They avenge themselves on 

 us for our neglect by remaining mainly to plague us. But 

 some of us reserve for ourselves an even worse fate. Said 

 Zarathustra to the cripples on the bridge who begged him to 

 heal them: " It is the smallest thing to me, since I have been 

 amongst men, to see one person lacking an eye, another an 

 ear, and a third a leg; and that others have lost the tongue or 

 the nose or the head." 



" I see and have seen worse things, and divers things so 

 hideous that I should neither like to speak of all matters, nor 



