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peal to immense opposing forces, in order to thwart this
natural, all-too-natural PROGRESSUS IN SIMILE, the
evolution of man to the similar, the ordinary, the average,
the gregarious —to the IGNOBLE!—

269. The more a psychologist—a born, an unavoidable
psychologist and soul-diviner—turns his attention to the
more select cases and individuals, the greater is his dan-
ger of being suffocated by sympathy: he NEEDS sternness
and cheerfulness more than any other man. For the cor-
ruption, the ruination of higher men, of the more unusually
constituted souls, is in fact, the rule: it is dreadful to have
such a rule always before one’s eyes. The manifold torment
of the psychologist who has discovered this ruination, who
discovers once, and then discovers ALMOST repeatedly
throughout all history, this universal inner ‘desperateness’
of higher men, this eternal ‘too late!’ in every sense—may
perhaps one day be the cause of his turning with bitterness
against his own lot, and of his making an attempt at self-de-
struction—of his ‘going to ruin’ himself. One may perceive
in almost every psychologist a tell-tale inclination for de-
lightful intercourse with commonplace and well-ordered
men; the fact is thereby disclosed that he always requires
healing, that he needs a sort of flight and forgetfulness,
away from what his insight and incisiveness—from what
his ‘business’—has laid upon his conscience. The fear of
his memory is peculiar to him. He is easily silenced by the
judgment of others; he hears with unmoved countenance
how people honour, admire, love, and glorify, where he has

Beyond Good and Evil