# Four and Twenty Minds/Chapter 1

FOUR AND TWENTY MINDS
I
THE UNKNOWN MAN
Modern critics have the most unfortunate custom of discussing only men who are well known, men of whose existence they are absolutely sure. The result is that no one hitherto has taken the trouble to write the biography of the Unknown Man. I am not referring to the ordinary unknown person who may at any time be brought into the commonplace class of the known and the recognized. I mean the Unknown Man himself, the authentic Unknown Man whom nobody knows.
The critics, one and all, write only about the prominent, the illustrious, or at least about beings known to the police and listed in the directories. Far be it from them to waste ink for a man without a name—for a man who does not even possess one of those trivial pairs of names ​which the papers print just once: in the column of death notices.
What if they ask: "How can we write the life of the Unknown Man, since the very fact that he is unknown prevents us from knowing anything about him"? A foolish excuse! The most highly educational biographies are those of men of whom little or nothing is known. Those are the books that set forth the human ideal, that tell us what a man ought to be.
The critics may go their way, and I'll go mine. And you will see that I do not need to resort to fiction.
If it be true that men are known by their works, how much we know of the Unknown Man! I might maintain that he has been the most important personage in history, the greatest hero of humanity. If you don't believe it, I don't mind. But I do ask that you lend me your ears, you slaves of the known, you devotees of the catalogue!
The Unknown Man is very ancient. He appeared, indeed, in the first human tribe. In the earliest times he busied himself chiefly with chemistry and metallurgy. He invented the wheel, and discovered the use of iron. Later he concerned himself with clothes, devised money, and started agriculture. But he soon tired of these material interests, and became a poet. ​Throughout the centuries he has traveled hither and yon. He conceived the myths of our religions; he fashioned the Vedas and the Orphic hymns; he wove the legends of the north; he improvised the themes of folk poetry. In the Middle Ages he carved the numberless statues of the Romanesque and the Gothic cathedrals, and covered chapel and refectory walls with unsigned frescoes. Then, too, he composed tales and legends: all those great books that bear no author's name are his.
But with the approach of modern times, when the stupid craze for signature came in, the Unknown Man ceased his activity, and was content to rest. An immense throng of vain fellows, of men who had a name or sought to make a name, began to paint, invent, carve, write. They had less genius than the Unknown Man, and they had also less modesty: they proclaimed to all the winds that they, and none but they, had done these things. They worked not only for their own joy or for others' benefit, but that the world might know that they, and none but they, had done the work.
But the Unknown Man did not remain permanently inactive. With the coming of democracy he turned to politics. The great modern revolutions have been due to him. The English Puritans, the American Revolutionists, the ​French Sansculottes, the Italian Volunteers were his followers. Under the names of Mob and People he frightened kings, overthrew demagogues, and resolved to turn the world upside-down.
But these great concerns do not dim his memory of the good old times. Often, deep in thought, he walks through ancient streets which he laid out, stops to delight in the simple forms of vases such as he first modeled, and now and again turns into some pleasant courtyard, remembering the distant time when he, in his childhood, invented houses, on the model of woods and caves.
He lives still, and he cannot die. The frightful progress of pride and of advertisement will limit his activity more and more; but he will be forever what silent men were to Carlyle: the salt of the earth. Now and then, to tell the truth, I am moved to fear that his enforced idleness and the trend of the times have turned him into evil ways. When the newspapers attribute thefts or assaults to "the usual unknown parties" I am always a little afraid that he is involved. But that plural reassures me.
Judging from his portraits, I should not think him capable of baseness. Have you not noticed, in the great galleries, those canvases which catalogues and labels call "Portrait of an Unknown ​Man?" These portraits are all different, to be sure, and pedantic critics maintain that they represent different persons not as yet identified. But I have no use for the critics, and I have perfect faith in the multiplicity of my hero's faces. How noble and how beautiful his countenance! Sometimes he is represented as a gentleman deep in thought. Sometimes he is a pale youth seen in profile against a window. Sometimes he is a wise, mature man toying with a glove or a falcon. But you can always see in his face that aristocracy of soul and that natural reserve which have made him unwilling to let his name be trumpeted by the vulgar mouth of fame. ****** You may think that I am jesting, after the fashion of Swift or Carlyle. No: I desire, seriously, to suggest a matter for serious thought. We are in general too much inclined to attribute importance to all that has a name, to all that is legitimized by a signature, by print, by foolscap. We fail to realize that most of what we call civilization has been produced by people of whose lives and personalities we know absolutely nothing. Those who remain anonymous and unknown have done far more for us than all the men whose fame fills biographical dictionaries. The fairest fancies, the simplest melodies, the most enduring phrases, the fundamental inventions, are the ​work of the Unknown Man, to whom historians and panegyrists give no heed.
We are guilty, in this case, of an ingratitude reënforced by laziness. We remember things more readily when they have a name; it is easier to be grateful when we have before us a definite being to whom we may address our praise, in whom we may take pride. The Unknown Man, who thought and wrought without labeling his works, without sending communiqués to the papers, is too evanescent, too easily forgotten. All men, Jews and Protestants included, must have images when they attempt adoration. If they do not know the name and the features of the man who has achieved, they cannot fix their thought upon him, they cannot direct toward him the current of their affection or their enthusiasm. It is our ineradicable laziness that has led us to forget the Unknown Man, the age-long benefactor of the human race.
In our public squares we behold—unfortunately—numberless equestrian or pedestrian statues of men who have merely written a tiresome tragedy or given a lucky sabre-thrust. The Greeks had at least the profound and prudent idea of raising an altar to the Unknown God. Should not we forgetful moderns erect a monument to the Unknown Man?