Tolstoi too, with a dash of grim humor, writes:
"To the flock of sheep, the sheep which is driven off every evening by the shepherd to a separate pen, and given extra food, and becomes twice as fat as the others, must seem to be a genius. The very fact that every evening this particular sheep, instead of going to the common fold, has a special pen and extra food, and that this sheep, this particular sheep, once fattened is killed for mutton, doubtless impresses the other sheep as a remarkable combination of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances. But if the sheep will only stop thinking that everything that happens to them results solely for the attainment of their sheepish welfare; if they grant that the events happening to them may have objects which they cannot comprehend, they will immediately perceive a unity and logic in what happened to the fattened sheep."[1]
From von Hartmann is taken the following paragraph:
"The means, by which a definite phase of the Idea comes at any given time into existence, are of two kinds, on the one hand the planting of an instinctive impulse in the masses, and on the other hand the production of a genius, who casts behind him what exists already, and carves out a new path. The obscure instinctive force, which from time to time impels masses of men, is seen in migrations, colonizations, crusades, and popular revolutions, religious, political, and social, and with truly demonic power conducts the people to an end unknown to themselves. Even when it itself seems to be 'des rechten Weges wohl bewusst,'[2] as a rule it has in view an end quite different from the end actually reached. Or again, when the masses are not moving blindly, and have before them a definite object, such purpose is generally worthless or perverse, while the true meaning of the uprising unfolds itself only after the disturbances have ceased. In the same way history, without any enkindling of the masses, but through the initiative of a few distinguished men, accomplishes results, which are a long
