In the next place, if he did labour only on his own account, like the rest, why should his act be human, those of the rest unhuman, that is, egoistic? Perhaps because this book, painting, symphony, is the labour of his whole being, because he has done his best in it, has spread himself out wholly and is wholly to be known from it, while the work of a handicraftsman mirrors only the handicraftsman, the skill in handicraft, not "the man?" In his poems we have the whole Schiller; in so many hundred stoves, on the other hand, we have before us only the stove-maker, not "the man."
But does this mean more than "in the one work you see me as completely as possible, in the other only my skill?" Is it not me again that the act expresses? And is it not more egoistic to offer oneself to the world in a work, to work out and shape oneself, than to remain concealed behind one's labour? You say, to be sure, that you are revealing Man. But the Man that you reveal is you; you reveal only yourself, yet with this distinction from the handicraftsman - that he does not understand how to compress himself into one labour, but, in order to be known as himself, must be searched out in his other relations of life, and that your want, through whose satisfaction that work came into being, was a - theoretical want.