CHAPTER XV 



ACTIVE SOCIAL ADAPTATION (CONTINUED) 



THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881) 



The Role of the Great Man 



Though antedating the period selected for the main part of our 

 discussion, the great man theory of Carlyle has been too impor- 

 tant in modern history, literature and social writings to be passed 

 by without mention. Himself a genius, a prophet, a teacher, a 

 moral reformer, he appreciated the contributions to social progress 

 of those in whose souls and lives the best in others had been fused, 

 and who gave it back to the world not only with the stamp of then- 

 personality but in such form and with such energy as to stir up 

 new currents of thought, feeling and activity destined to change 

 the whole flow of human history. But not only do great men give 

 back to their fellow-men in new form what they have received, 

 he holds, but great men are in touch with the divine. The spark 

 that lights their souls and fires their wills is not of the earth, 

 earthy, but from above. " The history of what man has accom- 

 plished in this world," he says, " is at bottom the history of the 

 great men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, 

 these great ones, the modelers, patterns, and in a wide sense crea- 

 tors, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to 

 attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world 

 are properly the outer material result, the practical realization 

 and embodiment of thoughts that dwelt in the great men sent 

 into the world; the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly 

 be considered, were the history of these. . . . No time need have 

 gone to ruin, could it have found a man great enough, a man wise 

 and good enough; wisdom to discern truly what the time wanted, 

 valor to lead it on the right road thither; these are the salvation 

 of any time. But I liken common languid times, with their 

 unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their languid doubting char- 

 acters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling 



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