The Neihart herald. [volume] (Neihart, Mont.) 1890-1901, 1896-04-11
WHOLE NO.. $50.

no concurrent belief of the greatness of
/ any single American. Leave it to the
newspapers, and they will answer in
/ the negative. Leave it to committee
of preachers, and the report will be that
there acre great men, but they are all
/ gone. All the great bishops and preach
ers are dead. Leave it to the lawyers,
and they will decide that the great ju-
rists and great chancellors and advocates
are in bronze. All the great orators and
lawyers are of the past.
| Suppose we should be called on to
nominate great man. What would the
newspapers say regarding any possible
! candidate? What would the Politicians
say? What would the preachers say?
| What would the magazines say? What
would even the literati say: The sky
would be rent with vociferous contra
! dictions Americans might agree that
Bismarck is great, that Gambetta was
great and possibly that Gladstone is
| great, but how about Cleveland? How
about Sherman: How about Hill? IN
particular, how about Carlisle? How
about Charles A. Dana and Rudyard
Kipling? AS for the thousand impossi-
| UllltltS We uD HOt venture Dff tDe nulnOf
of mentioning them.
A like judgment prevails with respect
to the products and producers of the in
tellectual world. Here also there is
practical atheism with regard to the
greatness of any living American. The
opinion is substantially this-that the
age is one of intellectual decadence.
| The great orators, the great essayists,
are gone. The great poets, so the critics
tell us, are gone. Irving and John
Quincy Adams and Fulton and Morse
are gone. Practically men do not believe
that another Webster or Clay could ex-
ist. They positively disbelieve that any
such poet as Shakespeare or Goethe
could be reborn on this earth. There is
total want Of faith in the intellectual
and moral fecundity of the.age. We tell
over the names Of the giants who in their
time did something to illumine the
world, but there is no thought that an
other Laplace or another Leibnitz might
appear on this scene Of action. The idea
that Socrates or the Christ might come
again seems absurd and unthinkable
There is not the slightest expectation
that poet like Byron could again cleo
trify Eng gland that Schiller might re-
appear in Germany and, as for Victor
Hugo his second apparition is as little
expected as the resurrection of Charlie
magne There is practical assent
throughout the world that weakness has
supervened that genius has disappeared
or dwindled into mere TALENT that all
living song is no more than an echo of
song that is dead; that all art is DO
more than reflection of the glories of
the art that is past
We know from historical data that
this inexplicable bnt ntcertainly fallacious
view of human greatness has prevailed
i'll the past as much as it prevails i'll the
present Every epoch has denied the
existence of the genius and strength
which nature and time bestowed upon
it. Each age has sought to disallow and
to disprove the claims of every tail son
of the morning who has honored the age
with his presence.
The enthusiastic southern races have
not been so vicious i'll this respect as
have the strong races of the north. The
Gaul-the Celt-among modern peoples
has been most disposed to recognize
modicum of the greatness of the passing
age. When Daniel O'Connell was the
uncrowned king Of Ireland, he could
hardly be said to lack the appreciation
of his countrymen. The French are not
wholly incapable Of understanding that
genius may flourish in the present tense.
But among English speaking peoples
and the Tentonic races generally there
80 nil t,1 IL
greatness or positive and acrimonious
denial Of its existence. The Germans
would as soon expect to see Prince Beo-
wolf coming up again from the slaugh
ter of the Grendel i'll his cave as to see
Humboldt on the streets of Heidelberg
or to bail Blucher on his black horse
riding through the Brandenburg gate.
From all this the writer totally dis
sents. The unbelief Of the age i'll its own
greatness and the greatness of its prod
ucts is fallacy, hurtful to civilization,
cruel to mankind. At bottom it is not
true that the great men are all in bronze
We doubt whether the majority of the
great men have taken the form of statu-
ary. There is a strange delusion i'll the
mind ON this question, an unaccountable
blindness and weakness with respect TO
the stature and power Of men. If we al
low the greatness of the past, we must
also allow the greatness of the present
for the past was the presenter else
we must suppose that the universal evo-
luton is working retrogressively and dis
astrously i'll man.
The close of the nineteenth century,
instead of being barren and unfruitful
in the production of genius, has, we
doubt not, its full share of that sublim-
est quality known to earth. We doubt
that the German race has ever produced
a stronger man than Prince Otto Eduard
Bismarck of Schonhausen. Great Brit
ain has today thinker equal to Plate
and greater than Francis Bacon He is
Herbert Spencer. She has a poet who is
superior to Milton in all the essentials
of great song, and he is Algernou
Charles Swinburne. She has two OF
three scientists of this age who have
done more for the natural history of lifa
than Newton did for the history and
law of the planetary worlds. America
has one man, an unlettered man, whoss
genius has carried him further into the