The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-07-05
CONTEMPORARY GREATNESS.

That there We're giants in those days
has always been a current phrase OF
human speech. AS We recede from great
men in point of time they seem greater,
just as mountains do when we recede
from them in point of space. And in
looking backward we commonly lament
the fact that no greatness is left about
u.s. The giants are of other days alone;
the contemporaries are mere pigmies by
comparison; the future looks like an
everlasting commonplace.
Perhaps it was in some such spirit
as this that the Rev. DR.. Patton, presi-
dent of Princeton College, uttered, in
his baccalaureate sermon, the though
that greatness has departed. He said;
sgt Is hard to put your finger upon the
conspi1 pously great men living There
is no Gfsdstone, no Tennyson, no
Browning, aos Darwin, and no sign of
any of them. WE are living upon the
great concepts that gerat men have
given u.s..
One trouble WitISthese peSsimists is
that they do not realize that greatness
is protean, continually changing its
shape from age to age%according to the
changing events and circumstances of
the age. Again, greatness In altering
Its position and ideas also changes it's
geographical place. "A great man falls
in England. We loof for another in the
same place equal to- him in mis- chosen
sphere and looking fail to see. Yet at
the very time a mapsof equal stature is
rising perhaps in China or Japan or ii
some American village. We do not rec
ognize him at once because he is not
where we were accustomed to look for
the particular type of man who had just
gone, nor is his occupation the same.
When the great Napoleon died at ST.
Helena other world personalities were
rising. In BUNDLED and stricken Ger
many a Bismarck was growing up and
In the 5ackWoods of America young
Abra ,dm Lincoln was studying by the
Light OF smouldering logs. Ii Hung
Chang had been born, and Gladstone
and great masters of literature. Each
generation has had its dominating
minds; and each generation is bound to
have them: but as one generation is
not like another, SO their great men are
different from those gone before. Were
this an age of song, surely we should
produce a Tennyson or Browning: If it
were an age OF speculative philosophy
a Darwin would not be lacking; IL an
age of military conquest some Caesar or
Genghis Khan would appear; but 1t
happens to be an age of commerce and
trade and manufacturing and behold
here are the captains Of industry and
the great inventors to typify it, In
stead of Napoleon of battle we have
an equal genius in the warfares of
finance. Pierpont Morgan, ]. D.
Rockefeller or Cecil Rhodes, as pieases
you; instead of Darwin, wrinkled over
the study OF. biology, or Tennyson sing
ing his song, we have Edison holding
the lightning in a globe of glass or
Harvesting it to wheels and looms; and
Bell lengthening the sound of human
speech until one may talk with his
nefghbor a thousand miles away. This
is the era OF practical effectiveness in
the arts of peace and the men who made
IT so are lowered with the majesty Of
greatness.
There are giants in these days but so
many have not the eyes to see them.
The future, however, will see clearly
and as usual men win lament their loss
and feel sure that the day OF small
things is there.