ABSTRACT
And even where the individual develops, especially since the Greeks, we still deal for a long time essentially with types, e.g. the heroes, the lawgivers. They are, to be sure, depicted as great individuals, and this is borne out by feeling and tradition; but at the same time they are all the more fully types and condensations of the characteristic and the general. And last, the complete individual in antiquity is, above all, πολιτη [part of the state] to a degree of which we now, in the present mode of connection between the individual and the state, have no idea. Whenever one breaks with the πλει (polis) or when it is lost, it is a tragedy every time.
