273.  A man who strives after great things, looks upon every one whom he encounters on his way either as a means of advance, or a delay and hindrance—­or as a temporary resting-place.  His peculiar lofty Bounty to his fellow-men is only possible when he attains his elevation and dominates.  Impatience, and the consciousness of being always condemned to comedy up to that time—­for even strife is a comedy, and conceals the end, as every means does—­spoil all intercourse for him; this kind of man is acquainted with solitude, and what is most poisonous in it.

274.  The problem of those who wait.—­Happy chances are necessary, and many incalculable elements, in order that a higher man in whom the solution of a problem is dormant, may yet take action, or “break forth,” as one might say—­at the right moment.  On an average it does not happen; and in all corners of the earth there are waiting ones sitting who hardly know to what extent they are waiting, and still less that they wait in vain.  Occasionally, too, the waking call comes too late—­the chance which gives “permission” to take action—­when their best youth, and strength for action have been used up in sitting still; and how many a one, just as he “sprang up,” has found with horror that his limbs are benumbed and his spirits are now too heavy!  “It is too late,” he has said to himself—­and has become self-distrustful and henceforth for ever useless.—­In the domain of genius, may not the “Raphael without hands” (taking the expression in its widest sense) perhaps not be the exception, but the rule?—­Perhaps genius is by no means so rare:  but rather the five hundred hands which it requires in order to tyrannize over the [Greek inserted here], “the right time”—­in order to take chance by the forelock!

275.  He who does not wish to see the height of a man, looks all the more sharply at what is low in him, and in the foreground—­ and thereby betrays himself.

276.  In all kinds of injury and loss the lower and coarser soul is better off than the nobler soul:  the dangers of the latter must be greater, the probability that it will come to grief and perish is in fact immense, considering the multiplicity of the conditions of its existence.—­In a lizard a finger grows again which has been lost; not so in man.—­

277.  It is too bad!  Always the old story!  When a man has finished building his house, he finds that he has learnt unawares something which he ought absolutely to have known before he—­ began to build.  The eternal, fatal “Too late!” The melancholia of everything completed!—­