Men of action, famous politicians and generals, may possess a few traits resembling genius (particularly a specially good knowledge of men and an enormous capacity for remembering people). The psychology of such traits will be dealt with later; they are confused with genius only by those whom the externals of greatness dazzle. The man of genius almost typically renounces such external greatness because of the real greatness within him. The really great man has the strongest sense of values; the distinguished general is absorbed by the desire for power. The former seeks to link power with real value; the latter desires that power itself should be valued. Great generals and great politicians, like the bird Phoenix, are born out of fiery chaos and like it disappear again in chaos. The great emperor or the great demagogue is the only man who lives entirely in the present; he does not dream of a more beautiful, better future; his mind does not dwell on his own past which has already passed, and so in the two ways most possible to man, he does not transcend time, but lives only in the moment. The great genius does not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman takes its direction and its termination. And so the great emperor is no more than a phenomenon of nature, whereas the genius is outside nature and is an incorporation of the mind. The works of men of action crumble at the death of their authors, if indeed they have not already decayed, or they survive only a brief time leaving no traces behind them except what the chronicles record as having been done and later undone. The emperor creates no works that survive time, passing into eternity; such creations come from genius. It is the genius in reality and not the other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is outside and unconditioned by history. The great man has a history, the emperor is only a part of history. The great man transcends time; time creates and time destroys the emperor.
The great man of science, unless he is also a philosopher
