The execution of such aims, which have value and significance for the most distant times, usually brings little reward to the man who champions them and rarely finds understanding among the great masses, who for the moment have more understanding for beer and milk regulations than for farsighted plans for the future, whose realization can only occur far hence, and whose benefits will be reaped only by posterity.
Thus, from a certain vanity, which is always a cousin of stupidity, the great mass of politicians will keep far removed from all really weighty plans for the future, in order not to lose the momentary sympathy of the great mob. The success and significance of such a politician lie then exclusively in the present, and do not exist for posterity. But small minds are little troubled by this; they are content.
With the theoretician conditions are different. His importance lies almost always solely in the future, for not seldom he is what is described by the world as ‘unworldly.’ For if the art of the politician is really the art of the possible, the theoretician is one of those of whom it can be said that they are pleasing to the gods only if they demand and want the impossible. He will almost always have to renounce the recognition of the present, but in return, provided his ideas are immortal, will harvest the fame of posterity.
In long periods of humanity, it may happen once that the politician is wedded to the theoretician. The more profound this fusion, however, the greater are the obstacles opposing the work of the politician. He no longer works for necessities which will be understood by the first best shopkeeper, but for aims which only the fewest comprehend. Therefore, his life is torn by love and hate. The protest of the present which does not understand the man, struggles with the recognition of posterity for which he works.
For the greater a man’s works for the future, the less the present can comprehend them; the harder his fight, and the rarer success. If, however, once in centuries success does come to a man, perhaps in his latter days a faint beam of his coming glory may shine upon him. To be sure, these great men are only the Marathon runners of history; the laurel wreath of the present touches only the brow of the dying hero.
Among them must be counted the great warriors in this world who, though not understood by the present, are nevertheless prepared to carry the fight for their ideas and ideals to their end. They are the men who someday will be closest to the heart of the people; it almost seems as though every individual feels the duty of compensating in the past for the sins which the present once committed against the great.Their life and work are followed with admiring gratitude and emotion, and especially in days of gloom they have the power to raise up broken hearts and despairing souls.
-excerpted from “Mein Kampf” by Adolf Hitler