God has made some men great and others little. The use of great men is to serve the little men; to take care of the human race, and act as practical interpreters of justice and truth. This is not the Hebrew rule, nor the heathen, nor the common rule, only the Christian. The great man is to be the servant of mankind, not they of him. Perhaps greatness is always the same thing in kind, differing only in mode and in form, as well as degree. The great man has more of human nature than other men, organized in him. So far as that goes, therefore, he is more me than I am myself. We feel that superiority in all our intercourse with great men, whether kings, philosophers, poets, or saints. In kind we are the same; different in degree. In nature we find individuals, not orders and genera; but for our own convenience in understanding and recollecting, we do a little violence to nature, and put the individuals into classes. In this way we understand better both the whole and each of its parts. Human nature furnishes us with individual great men; for convenience we put them into several classes, corresponding to their several modes or forms of greatness. It is well to look at these classes before we examine any one great man; this will render it easier to see where he belongs and what he is worth. Actual service is the test of actual greatness; he who renders, of himself, the greatest actual service to mankind, is actually the greatest man. There may be other tests for determining the potential greatness of men, or the essential; this is the Christian rule for determining the actual greatness. Let us arrange these men in the natural order of their work.