274

The problem for those who wait .- For a higher man in whom the solution to a problem lies asleep, strokes of luck and all sorts of unpredictable things are necessary for him to swing into action at just the right time -"for an eruption," as we could say. Ordinarily it does not happen, and in all the corners of the earth sit people waiting, who hardly know to what extent they are waiting, but even less that they are waiting in vain. From time to time the call to wake up, that chance which provides the "permission" for action comes too late - at a time when the best youth and power for action have already been used up in sitting still. And many a man, in the very moment he "sprang up," has found to his horror that his limbs have gone to sleep and his spirit is already too heavy! "It is too late," he says to himself, having lost faith in himself, and is now forever useless. - In the realm of the genius, could "Raphael without hands," taking that phrase in the widest sense, perhaps not be the exception but the rule?2 - Genius is perhaps not really so rare, but the five hundred hands needed to tyrannize the kairos, "the right time," to seize chance by the forelock!

2. . . . Raphael (1483-1520): major Italian painter of the Renaissance, who died at age thirty-seven.
Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil
Part IX - Aphorism # 274

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