How could it be otherwise? Our sense of time, of the texture of change, – is of-our-species of mammal. When I was a child with my sister in the back seat of our car, I remember those trips to visit with my grand parents. The hour and a half drive felt interminable. More than once I’d ask “Daddy how much longer until we get there?” I cannot remember the replies that were made, but I doubt any reply have helped my incomprehension.

Here Nietzsche identifies two incomprehensibles. I and my contemporaries cannot understand that the greatest, historically most important events are in fact ideas. Also it is quite impossible to fathom how much time it takes for an idea to filter through the mores, habits, and institutions of society in order to rotate the orientation of a people.

Nietzsche compares the span of such events to the amount of time required for a distant star to reach the earth, to become visible.  The Andromeda Galaxy is next door to our Milky Way. Light from Andromeda only takes 2.5 million years to travel this far, to become visible here. Ideas are world changing events and they take time.

What we’d consider a great event is likely to be of negligible consequence.  Many consider a Chicago Bears game at soldier field to be a great event. What about the debate between the two candidates for the White House which is to be televised Tuesday evening? How important is this exchange likely to be in the arc of history? Nietzsche writes that we “live right past” the great events, and are unable to recognize them.

The greatest events and thoughts

– but the greatest thoughts
are the greatest events

– are the last to be comprehended:

generations that are their contemporaries
do not experience these sorts of events,
– they live right past them.

The same thing happens here
as happens
in the realm of stars.

The light from the furthest stars
is the last to come to people;
and until it has arrived,
people will deny
that there are – stars out there.

“How many centuries does it take
for a spirit to be comprehended?”

– this standard
is also used to create
the rank order and etiquette needed
– by both spirit and star. –

Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. by Judith Norman, aphorism 285