Critique of paragraph

I have written the following paragraph for the opening of an essay that I'm beginning to write (not for school, but for myself). I am looking for opinions or criticisms in general on it, as it is the beginning, which is most important. I'm a Sophomore.

"It is the prerogative of all great men that, by virtue of their greatness, they should be the standard by which all men are judged. It is the end of all men that they should be great; that they should be what they are to the fullest extent that they can be. Most hold themselves to be men for no reason more than the empirical fact that they were born of parents who are termed to be human within the biological field. In such a qualification, men are men only insofar as by virtue of the biological humanness of their parents that was passed down onto them. Nothing, in such a case, distinguishes man from his biological counterparts in nature, animals; and he who would be a man by virtue of his biological heritage alone is thus no more essentially man than essentially animal, for, within such a construct, man is an animal: man is savage."