THE FANATIC. 109 



Carmel's height to mortal combat, and to determine by the lightning of the skies 

 which worshiped the true God. Hebrew history in all its course lifts on high these 

 weird characters, separated from all their surroundings by claims and pretensions 

 denied or scouted by men of their own time. Their foreboding and entreaty 

 weje alike unavailing, since they were received as coming from men moved by 

 disturbed and unhinged minds. 



Emerson, I think it is, says that the heresy of yesterday becomes the litera- 

 ture of to-day. When too late the awakened Trojans recalled the wild prophecies 

 of the frenzied Cassandra. Because a man's neighbors call him an enthusiast or 

 a fanatic, a benefactor or a demon, it does not follow that he is such. When the 

 man's picture is finally placed in the long gallery of time, the mellow historic 

 light falling upon it at a proper angle, then we can say whether it is the face of a 

 malevolent zealot or of a devoted lover of his race. The veiled prophet of Khor- 

 assan, sneering at the delusion of his followers, we know was a fiend behind his 

 snowy robe and shining visor : 



" So shall they build me altars in their zeal. 

 Where knaves shall minister and fools shall kneel; 

 Where Faith may mutter o'er her mystic spell, 

 Written in blood — and bigotry may swell 

 The sail he spreads for heaven with blasts from hell." 



There are conceptions of good or evil in some natures that so outrun their 

 age that the mass of people, unable to rise to their summit or sink to their depth, 

 pronounce the proclaimer thereof a fanatic. Then, again, it happens that a man's 

 contemporaries may have full faith in his power and seership, and blindly follow 

 his impassioned voice, but a later and calmer age beholds in him only a fanatic. 

 The Crusades, whose gigantic movements not only convulsed the world, but 

 whose disasters and ignominious failure at the last wrought out for civihzation 

 and the emancipation of thought the most stupendous results, so far as Peter, 

 the hermit, is concerned, were the product of a strange and misguided religious 

 frenzy. Yet to monarch and peasant, to warriors and children, to thoughtful 

 monk and chivairic cavalier, he seemed to preach a duty and a pleasure, enjoined 

 by the holiest of sentiments. 



'' Great wits to madness are near allied, 



And thin partitions do their bounds divide." 



If, however, we more attentively consider the modern use of the name, 

 " fanatic," we find that it has been so played upon by the valiant and radiant 

 hves of so many heroes who have been proud to wear the despised appellation, 

 that much of its olden dismal features have faded into lines of awe and beauty. 

 The fortune of other odious and dishonoring designations in becoming transformed 

 into names of honor and worth, has in some degree fallen upon this word, which 

 once condensed into itself ignorance, fataUty and superstition. The men who 

 have gloried in being stigmatized as fanatics, who have been serene amid ostra- 



