But you will reply that you reveal quite another man, a worthier, higher, greater, a man that is more man than that other. I will assume that you accomplish all that is possible to man, that you bring to pass what no other succeeds in. Wherein, then, does your greatness consist? Precisely in this, that you are more than other men (the "masses"), more than _men_ ordinarily are, more than "ordinary men"; precisely in your elevation above men. You are distinguished beyond other men not by being man, but because you are a "unique"[91] man. Doubtless you show what a man can do; but because you, a man, do it, this by no means shows that others, also men, are able to do as much; you have executed it only as a _unique_ man, and are unique therein.
It is not man that makes up your greatness, but you create it, because you are more than man, and mightier than other--men.
It is believed that one cannot be more than man. Rather, one cannot be less!
It is believed further that whatever one attains is good for Man. In so far as I remain at all times a man--or, like Schiller, a Swabian; like Kant, a Prussian; like Gustavus Adolphus, a near-sighted person--I certainly become by my superior qualities a notable man, Swabian, Prussian, or near-sighted person. But the case is not much better with that than with Frederick the Great's cane, which became famous for Frederick's sake.
To "Give God the glory" corresponds the modern "Give Man the glory." But I mean to keep it for myself.
Criticism, issuing the summons to man to be "human," enunciates the necessary condition of sociability; for only as a man among men is one _companionable_. Herewith it makes known its _social_ object, the establishment of "human society."
Among social theories criticism is indisputably the most complete, because it removes and deprives of value everything that _separates_ man from man: all prerogatives, down to the prerogative of faith. In it the love-principle of Christianity, the true social principle, comes to the purest fulfilment, and the last possible experiment is tried to take away exclusiveness and repulsion from men: a fight against egoism in its simplest and therefore hardest form, in the form of singleness,[92] exclusiveness, itself.