Is it a reply to these suggestions, to say society is a Pestalozzian
school; all are teachers and pupils in turn. We are equally served by
receiving and by imparting. Men who know the same things are not long
the best company for each other. But bring to each an intelligent person
of another experience, and it is as if you let off water from a lake, by
cutting a lower basin. It seems a mechanical advantage, and great
benefit it is to each speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to
himself. We pass very fast, in our personal moods, from dignity to
dependence. And if any appear never to assume the chair, but always to
stand and serve, it is because we do not see the company in a
sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to come about.
As to what we call the masses and common men--there are no common men.
All men are at last of a size; and true art is only possible on the
conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play,
and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have won them! But
heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy until
he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his
talent also in its last nobility and exaltation.
The heroes of the hour are relatively great--of a faster growth; or they
are such, in whom, at the moment of success, a quality is ripe which is
then in request. Other days will demand other qualities. Some rays
escape the common observer, and want a finely adapted eye. Ask the great
man if there be none greater. His companions are; and not the less
great, but the more, that society cannot see them. Nature never sends a
great man into the planet without confiding the secret to another soul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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