ption, not on the way of virtue, but
on a path of their own; and they are saved, not by works, but by
faith.

Men of no genius whatever cannot bear solitude: they take no pleasure
in the contemplation of nature and the world. This arises from the
fact that they never lose sight of their own will, and therefore
they see nothing of the objects of the world but the bearing of such
objects upon their will and person. With objects which have no such
bearing there sounds within them a constant note: _It is nothing to
me_, which is the fundamental base in all their music. Thus all things
seem to them to wear a bleak, gloomy, strange, hostile aspect. It is
only for their will that they seem to have any perceptive faculties at
all; and it is, in fact, only a moral and not a theoretical tendency,
only a moral and not an intellectual value, that their life possesses.
The lower animals bend their heads to the ground, because all that
they want to see is what touches their welfare, and they can never
come to contemplate things from a really objective point of view. It
is very seldom that unintellectual men make a true use of their erect
position, and then it is only when they are moved by some intellectual
influence outside them.

The man of intellect or genius, on the other hand, has more of the
character of the eternal subject that knows, than of the finite
subject that wills; his knowledge is not quite engrossed and
captivated by his will, but passes beyond it; he is the son, _not of
the bondwoman, but of the free_. It is not only a moral but also
a theoretical tendency that is evinced in his life; nay, it might
perhaps be said that to a certain extent he is beyond morality. Of
great villainy he is totally incapable; and his conscience is less
oppressed by ordinary sin than the conscience of the ordinary man,
because life, as it were, is a game, and he sees through it.

The relation between _genius_ and _virtue_ is determined by the
following considerations. Vice is an impulse of the will so violent
in its demands that it affirms its own life by denying the life of
others. The only kind of knowledge that is useful to the will is the
knowledge that a given effect is produced by a certain cause. Genius
itself is a kind of knowledge, namely, of ideas; and it is a knowledge
which is unconcerned with any principle of causation. The man who is
devoted to knowledge of this character is not employed in the business
of the will. Nay,