CHAPTER XV 
ACTIVE SOCIAL ADAPTATION (contINuED) 
THomAs CARLYLE (1795-1881) 
The Réle 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 their 
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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