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In comparison with a genius, that is, with a being who either engenders or gives birth, taking both words in their highest sense - the scholar, the average scientific man, always has something of the old maid about him, for, like the old maid, he doesn't understand the two most valuable things men do. In fact, for both scholars and old maids we concede, as if by way of compensation, that they are respectable - in their cases we stress respectability - and yet having to make this concession gives us the same sense of irritation. Let's look more closely: What is the scientific man? To begin with, a man who is not a noble type. He has the virtues of a man who is not distinguished, that is, a type of person who is not a ruler, not authoritative, and also not self-sufficient. He has diligence, a patient endorsement of position and rank, equanimity about and moderation in his abilities and needs. He has an instinct for people like him and for what people like him require, for example, that bit of independence and green meadows without which there is no peace in work, that demand for honour and acknowledgement (which assumes, first and foremost, recognition and the ability to be recognized -), that sunshine of a good name, that constant stamp of approval of his value and his utility, which is necessary to overcome again and again the inner suspicion at the bottom of the hearts of all dependent men and herd animals. The scholar also has, as stands to reason, the illnesses and bad habits of a non-noble variety: he is full of petty jealousy and has a lynx eye for the baseness in those natures whose heights are impossible for him to attain. He is trusting, only, however, as an individual who lets himself go but does not let himself flow. With a person who is like a great stream he just stands there all the colder and more enclosed - his eye is then like a smooth, reluctant lake in which there is no longer any ripple of delight or sympathy. The worst and most dangerous thing of which a scholar is capable he gets from his instinctive sense of the mediocrity of his type, from that Jesuitry of mediocrity, which spontaneously works for the destruction of the uncommon man and seeks to break every arched bow or - even better! - to relax it. That is, to unbend it, with consideration, of course, naturally with a flattering hand - to unbend it with trusting sympathy: that is the essential art of Jesuitry, which has always understood how to introduce itself as a religion of pity.-