The Roman and the Teuton : A Series of Lectures Delivered Before the University of Cambridge PDF

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Jshall develop into manhood, action, success. And in what that same strength consists, not even the dramatic imagination of a Shakespeare could dis cover.

What are those heart-rending sonnets of his, but the confession that over and above all his powers he lacked one thing, and knew not what it was, or where to find it - and that was - to be strong? And yet he who will give us a science of great men, must begin by having a larger heart, a keener insight, a more varying human experience, than Shakespeare's own; while those who offer us a science of little men, and attempt to explain history and progress by laws drawn from the average of mankind, are utterly at sea the moment they come in contact with the very men whose actions make the history, to whose thought the progress is due. And why? Because (so at least I think) the new science of little men can be no science at all: because the average man is not the normal man, and never yet has been; because the great man is rather the normal as approaching more nearly than his fellows to the true 'norma' and standard of a complete human character; and therefore to pass him by as a mere irregular sport of nature, an accidental giant with Six fingers and six toes, and to turn to the mob for your theory of humanity, is (i think) about as wise as to ignore the Apollo and the Theseus, and to determine the proportions of the human figure from a crowd of dwarfs and cripples.