"The radical transformation of life, the great metamorphosis I aspired to, could not be realized in reality because the crowds were gregarious, they could not exist without a shepherd, and they would not send him away except to put themselves under the tutelage of another. I should no longer hope for the social Muspell from whose flames the heroic youth of the unique one would be born, but rather consider anarchy as the eternal revolt of the irreducible individual against all societies that succeed in history. I had to understand that the Promethean exception is destined to fight not only the states and the authorities but also the conservative instinct of the crowds lying in a millennium-old habit of laziness. I had to-in the extreme resolution of my tragic despair-accept this eternal struggle of the reprobate against everyone and become intoxicated with the nepenthe that drips from its bosom."