The great man is a spontaneous variation in
humanity; but not in any direction. A spontaneous variation might be a
mere madness or mutilation or monstrosity; in finding the variation
admirable we evidently invoke some principle of order to which it
conforms. Perhaps it makes explicit what was preformed in us also; as
when a poet finds the absolutely right phrase for a feeling, or when
nature suddenly astonishes us with a form of absolute beauty. Or
perhaps it makes an unprecedented harmony out of things existing
before, but jangled and detached. The first man was a great man for
this latter reason; having been an ape perplexed and corrupted by his
multiplying instincts, he suddenly found a new way of being decent, by
harnessing all those instincts together, through memory and
imagination, and giving each in turn a measure of its due; which is
what we call being rational. It is a new road to happiness, if you
have strength enough to castigate a little the various impulses that
sway you in turn. Why then is the martyr, who sacrifices everything to
one attraction, distinguished from the criminal or the fool, who do
the same thing? Evidently because the spirit that in the martyr
destroys the body is the very spirit which the body is stifling in the
rest of us; and although his private inspiration may be irrational,
the tendency of it is not, but reduces the public conscience to act
before any one else has had the courage to do so.
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