It is a fact that some men are more intellectually able than others. Some men are quicker than others, some are wittier, some remember more with less prompting than their peers. This is the case regardless of the society one chooses to look at. Differences in ability also exist in other arenas, such as athletics, sports, and even making money. The strange thing is that, while we find it perfectly respectable for sportsmen and politicians to take pride in their achievements, we consider it the height of hubris for the intellectually gifted to act in the same fashion. Why should this be so?
No one found it distasteful when Mohammed Ali used to say of himself, "I am the greatest," and yet woe be unto the Dartmouth student, or even the Nobel Laureate, who dares to venture a similar opinion of himself. There will be no shortage of individuals to accuse him of conceit, hubris, or, worst of all, an "elitist" attitude. It matters not that this "conceit" may be founded in reality. When one considers the low esteem which society seems to hold for intellectual endeavor as an end in itself, such an attitude seems quite strange. Why people should dislike those whose talents they regard as useless is not at all obvious.
Regardless of the reasons for the contempt in which individuals who think highly of their talents are generally held, I hold that to do so is still a good thing, for very little worth doing has ever been done by people who have no faith in their own abilities. The sheer act of creating something is a declaration of one's own importance, for why would one bother to create if one thought one's conceptions of no value? The importance of intellectual self-confidence is most vividly illustrated by the Renaissance. This period marked the birth of the modern world as we know it, and for a very important reason. It was in this era that the idea was reborn in the western world that man, by his own rational abilities, could fathom the universe. It was then that men began again to consider that they could sometimes be right, and the sages of antiquity wrong. As the great mathematician Fermat said, "... perhaps the ancients did not know everything." This questioning attitude, in which the received wisdom of the ages could be cast aside, could only have been born of supreme self-confidence, for it was equivalent to claiming that one's insight was better than that of all those who came before.
The motivations behind this remarkable outburst of creativity were varied, but an important one was simply the desire on the parts of some to show their intellectual mastery to others, a motivation that is well and alive today. Many of those we today acknowledge as great men were envious of the achievements and influence of others, extremely competitive, and endowed with vast egos, justifiably so. Individuals such as Isaac Newton, Karl Friedrich Gauss, Frank Lloyd Wright and Friedrich Nietzche easily come to mind.
If it were simply a case of great talent being accompanied by egotism my argument would be lacking in force, but things are not that simple. The fact is that when one considers what any great intellectual endeavor entails, anything less than a belief in one's own unique insights and abilities will not be enough to see one through. Great problems often take many years to come to a resolution, years in which recognition and reward are not to be had. Often problems turn out simply to be insoluble in the lifetimes of those who undertake to solve them. Einstein took 10 years to obtain his General Theory of Relativity, and he spent the rest of his life in a futile hunt for a Unified Field Theory. What are we to suppose sustained him through both the fruitful and fruitless undertakings but faith in his own powers?
It thus becomes clear that what is commonly taken to be hubris, far from being undesirable, is necessary in some measure for the truly able individual to do his best. If an individual of inferior talents takes it upon himself to feel superior, no great harm is done in the end to anyone but himself, and if an individual who truly is superior acknowledges it, well and good -- he should not be penalized for being proud of his hard won victories. Such an individual might actually be doing others a service by advertising his talents, since for many there is no greater goad to true achievement than injured pride. To hell with humility, I say.
