Crowds: A Moving-Picture of DemocracyLee, Gerald Stanley
Philosophy
Crowds: A Moving-Picture of Democracy
Lee, Gerald Stanley
Crowds; Social problems
went about the country holding his little exhibits of the tip of the
planet we could not help wishing, many of us who were in the Audience,
that this man who sat there before us, the man who had the Thing in his
hand, who had collected the North Pole, would not notice us, would snub
us if need be a little, and would leave these people, these millions of
people, with their heads up and go quietly on to the South Pole and
collect that. It is because there are thousands of men who understand
just how Wilbur Wright felt when he slipped away the other day in New
York and left the entire city with its heads up that we have every
reason to expect that the crowd is to produce great leaders, and is to
become a great crowd, great and humble in spirit before God, before the
stars, and the atoms, and the microbes, and before Itself. In the
meantime, however, we see all about us in the world countless would-be
leaders of the crowd, who would perhaps not quite understand the way
Wilbur Wright felt that day when he slipped away from New York and left
the entire city with its heads up. Most newspaper men--men who are in
the habit of writing for a crowd and regarding a crowd quite
respectfully--will have wondered a little why Wilbur Wright could have
let such a crowd go by. Most actors and theatrical people would have
stayed over a train or so and given one more little performance with all
those wistful people on the roof-tops. There are only a very few
clergymen in England or America to-day who, with a great audience like
that and so many men in it, would ever have thought of slipping off on
the 3:25 train in the way Wilbur Wright did. The ministers and the
politicians of all countries are still wondering a little--if they ever
thought of it--how Wright did it. Most of the other people in the world
wonder a little, too, but I imagine that the great inventors of the
world who read about it the next morning did not wonder. The true
scientists, in this country and in Germany and in France, all understood
just how Wilbur Wright felt when he left New York with its heads up. The
great artists of the world, in literature, in painting, and
architecture; the great railroad builders, the city builders, the nation
builders, the great statesmen, the great biologists, and chemists,
understood. James J. Hill, with his face toward the Pacific, understood.
Alexander Graham Bell, out abroad doing the listening and talking and
thinking the thoughts of eighty million people, understood. Marconi,
making the ships whisper across the sea, and William G. McAdoo, shooting
a hundred and seventy thousand people a day through a hole under the
Hudson--understood.
And God, when He made the world. And Columbus when he discovered
America. And Jesus Christ when He was so happy and so preoccupied over
His vision of a new world, over inventing Christianity, that it seemed a
very small and incidental thing to die on the Cross--He understood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account