Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1913-10-02
Supermen Are Dreamers.

A book of essays by Sigurd IbSen,
the son of the great Norwegian drama
fist. has been translated into English.
Sigurd Ibsen is himself a man of ae-
ton and has been in the diplomatic
service.
But the blood of the dramatist is in
him and Enthusiastically he notes the
dramatic is not confined to the stage
alone, hut is discoverable even in great
works of philosophy: that fantasy is
not ar attribute of dreamers and emo
tional intelleets alone, but also of all
men of dominating power. He writes:
'Jomini and Moltke have pointed out
the similarity between the course of
battle and the drama: York Won War
tenburg has drawn a comparison be-
tween the qualities which make the
great poet and those that make the
great stategist. Taine maintains Ma
poleonss poetic powers. and juxtaposes
him and Dante. The emperor himself
used another meta phor 1 love power,
he said, but it is as an artist that l
love it,: l love it as a musician loves
his violin; love it because l can entiee
from it tones, chords and harmones.'
pect that the great historical conquer
ors have not only been men of action
with their faces turned outward as
they are pictured in the great consc-
iousness, but that they, at the same
time, have lived the deepest inner life,
a lie of ideas and feelings. On the
other hand, there have been artists
with an Unborn desire to conquer, such
one as Balzac, who wished to conquer
the world with his pen as Napoleon
had conquered 1t with the sword; such
a one as richard Wagner, a subduer,
a hypnotizer, related to those who have
conquered kingdoms and nations
We Americans. whose consciousness
is dominated by our men of business,
will, at first, dissent from such doc
trine. To the practical American in
telligence the great dreamers seem
queer, or insane. and the great man of
action seems to lie just American bust
ness men sublima ted--Napoleon a de-
partment store manager raised to the
ninth power
There have been such types, it is true,
Frederick the Great might be taken for
such 4 type. but for his wheel" where
by, as Carlyle describes him, he stood
in the storm Of battle coolly directing
the fight, in his pocket a copy of bad
French verses, which he would rather
have had good than have his next
charge succeed.
There is something the mere practi-
cal mind, however powerful, lacks, as
compared with the mind of the super
men, the higher eonquerors. And what
is lacking may be described as tenn
permanent. or emotional intensity, or
imagination. Napoleon was endowed
with the highest qualities of the scien-
tific intellect as applied to war and to
administration, but so we might say is
Rockefeller as applied to business. But
despite the latter's enormous ability,
which his works prove, there is be-
tween him and Napoleon not merely
some cumulative difference. but also
vast qualitative one.
Napoleon was a dreamer, to whom
came by circumstances chance of
greatest action, a dreamer set on u
throne. If he had been merely prac-
teal man he might have stopped with
being merely the ablest general of the
republic, with becoming. perhaps. the
General Monk of France. Instead be-
ing q dreamer, even as was Oliver
Cromwell he became emperor. And, be-
ing a dreamer still, he continued on as
far as Moscow, as far as st. Helena.
Grant is considered to have been an
unimaginative practical man. Was he?
He scarcely could earn livelihood be-
fore the war. He was no business man
Nor vas he a better business man at
the time of the Grant & Ward failure.
Was Grant a dreamer. too?-Minneapo-
lis Journal.