, 1880-04-28
THE MENTAL INFLUENCE or
GREAT EVENTS.
(FrOm the SpectGtOy.j

we WOnder IL there Is any truth at all in
the idea that great events tend to produce
great men; THAT the effect of immeDss
: changes, striking catastrophes, vivid Ifa
generally in the world, is to raise the stan.
dard of thought in the communities affect.
ed or conscious of what is passing, and Of
course, greatly to elevate the few who
stand above the average. That idea used
to be considered a commonplace. and wa
were told that the great men of the Refor.
nation time were the natural product Of
an era in which the old ideas of cosmogony
were abandoned, and '.the sapphire vault
rolled itself away" and old creeds vera
flung into the crucible, and adventure dis
covered a new world ; and that the great
ones, warriors, poets, and staten en-, Of
Elizabeth'S day were the resulting flowers
of a time in which events like the Armada
were but incidents. 1t is pleasant tog be
lieve such things, to think that great
intellectual stir, with all it's pains, has
such a compensation as this, or that .
grand war may evolve q grand generation
of men but we are not sure that the
belief is well founded, rather concei We that
the world often c~onfuses stirring times
with intellectual stir. The man who dis.
covered America, though till he died he
never knew it, but thought he had reach.
ed Asia by another route, was a great
character, or he would not have triumphed.
But did the discovery of America make
anybody very big The Spaniards, who
did most of it, and at first proited most by
it, were not large men; and Raleigh might
have been as great as he was, though he
had never dreamed of gold mines. Most
of the figures which emerged during, the
French Revolution epoch were rather small,
I'D l. ,~r a. rrO l.I ~0% IOx,n10-a
any very especially lofty standard,-our
own history, for example, under GeorgelV.
not being exceptionally noble. The grand
~ dram attic time of modern Italy, the
years during which she secured her unity,
did not produce either any grand figures or
q very lofty people, the great men of Italy
-CavOur, Garibaldi, Ricasofi, D'AzegliO,
and the restraining been matured before
the great events, not by them. They were !.
bred in a sitting atmosphere and amidst
the p~ettieSt details, in countries where a
new opera was hailed as an event, and an
attempted assassination was an enormous
Incident. The American Civil War was
for North America an Immensely "Mg +.
thing" None of us fairly realised how
immense an affair it was, considered mere
~ as a war how completely it involved
the future of a continent; how definitely
the opposing principles Of privilege and
equality, caste and humanity, fought ont
in that series of battles their quarrel
to the death. 1t is difficult to ~exaggerate
that event as an event, but we do not see
that the four years of it produced especial
ly great Americans, OF raised the Amerl-
can average i'll any p%erceptible degree.
General Grant is the biggest American
still, and politics are as little marked 10y
grandeur of aim as ever. Germans anu
Frenchmen are not greater after thelI
cataclysm, though a great defeat, no douoD
sobered the whole French people; ana III
the vivid liyeliness of to-day, when catas.
trophies are incidents, aud wars yearly
events, and we watch, evolutions through
spy-glasses, there are no very patent signs
of elevation. We write always with the
reserve that but little can ever be visible
to one set of eyes, but we should say
Germany had declined intellectually since
1865, that EnIland had grown baser mo,
rally, and that France, though quleter, hal
become less French, had exhibited fewer OF
the special gifts of her peculiar genius.
Strong men, or men of genius, find their ca.
reers in the times of great events; but they
have usually gr%owninthe little times, nottne
big, n have hated the little times very
hard. Cayour was not trained by %svlctory.
but before victory and Bismarck cultlya'
ted both his powers and his bOldness while
d~iplOmatist at the Russian and French
Courts, and representative OF Prussia az
that intolerable Frankfort Diet. which
oonc11o~ol L.~o ~ IA,o hooorcn hn darp6 10