NA'TURE AND MAN 93 



even keep silent about some of them: namely men who lack 

 everything, except that they have too much of one thing — 

 men who are nothing more than a big eye or a big mouth, or 

 a big belly, or something else big, — reversed cripples I call 

 such men." 



'' And — I could not trust mine eyes, but looked again and 

 again, and said at last ' That is an ear ! An ear as big as a 

 man! ' I looked still more attentively — and actually there 

 did move under the ear something that was pitiably small and 

 poor and slim. And in truth this immense ear was perched 

 on a small thin stalk — the stalk, however, was a man. A 

 person putting a glass to his eyes could even recognize further 

 a small envious countenance, and also that a bloated soullet 

 dangled at the stalk. The people told me, however, that the 

 big ear was not only a man, but a great man, a genius. But 

 I never believed the people when they spake of great 



men." 



'' Verily, my friends, I walk amongst men as amongst the 

 fragments and hmbs of human beings! A seer, a purposer, 

 a creator, a future itself, and a bridge to the future — and alas ! 

 also, as it were, a cripple on this bridge: all that is Zara- 

 thustra." 



" Not the height, it is the declivity that is terrible! " ^ 



Man is the blind giant of the will guided, but not completely 

 or directly controlled, by the seeing cripple of the intellect 

 perched upon his shoulder. In partnership they will go far 

 and accomplish much. But do not most of us go through life 

 scarred, maimed, crippled or '^ reversed cripples "? Man 

 will surely come; he is coming, he has certainly not yet ar- 

 rived. 



The evolution of man resolves itself finally into a series of 

 discoveries, of his finding more and more in a Nature which 

 is trebly or tenfold masked, and of which we still know very 

 little. The whole process is a tendency or urge toward higher 

 and finer powers still only crudely expressed even by man. 



For millions of years on this old earth Nature busied her- 



102. 



