Harming with what is best in oneself. – At times our strengths propel us so far ahead that we can no longer stand our weaknesses and perish from them. We may even foresee this outcome and still will have it no other way. Thus we become hard against that within us that wants to be spared, and our greatness is also our mercilessness. Such an experience, for which we must in the end pay with our lives, is a parable for the whole effect of great human beings on others and on their age: precisely with what is best in them, with what only they can do, they destroy many who are weak, insecure, in the process of becoming, of willing, and thus they are harmful. It can even happen that, all in all, they are harmful only because what is best in them is accepted and as it were imbibed only by those whom it affects like an overly potent drink: they lose their mind and their selfishness; they become so intoxicated that they are bound to break their limbs on all the wrong paths down which their intoxication drives them.