Darwin’s intellectual significance no one will question; and his self-confidence or faith was equally remarkable, and not at all inconsistent with his modesty. In his case it seems a faith in truth itself, so wholly is the self we find in his books identified with the striving after truth. As an act of faith his twenty years of collecting and brooding over the facts bearing upon the principle he had divined, was an exploit of the same nature as that of Columbus, sailing westward for months into an unknown ocean, to a goal which no one else could see. And with what simple confidence does he take his stand upon the truth thus won, and apply it to the geological history of the globe, or the rise of the human body and mind. A good illustration of his faith is his assertion, in the face of ridicule, that the existence of an orchid with a narrow neck eleven inches long proved the existence of a moth with a tongue of equal length. The moth, at that time unknown, was subsequently discovered.[[87]]
To illustrate the same principles in a wholly different phase of thought, we might take Charles Lamb. Lamb, too, attracts us first of all by a human and congenial personality. We feel that in the kinds of sentiment with which he deals he is at home and adequate, is ourselves and more than we, with a deeper pathos, a richer, more audacious humor, a truer sensibility. He, too, enlarges life by access to novel and acceptable modes of being; and he is always boldly and simply himself. It is a poor notion of Lamb that does not recognize that he was, in his way, a man of character, conviction, and faith.
A similar analysis might be applied to great writers of other sorts—poets, historians, and moralists; also to painters, sculptors, actors, singers, to every potent personality after its kind. While there is infinite variety in leadership—according to the characters of the persons concerned, the points at which they come in contact, the means of communication between them, and so on—there is, nevertheless, a likeness of principle everywhere present. There is no such radical and complete divergence of the conditions of power in the various fields of activity as is sometimes imagined. While there are great differences, they may be looked upon as specific rather than generic. We may always expect to find a human nature sufficiently broad and sound—at least in those phases most apparent in the special means of expression chosen—to be felt as representative; also some timely contribution added to the range of thought or feeling, and faith in or loyalty to this peculiar contribution.
It is a very natural result of the principles already noted that the fame and power of a man often transcend the man himself; that is to say, the personal idea associated by the world with a particular name and presence has often little basis in the mind behind that name and presence, as it appears to cool and impartial study. The reason is that the function of the great and famous man is to be a symbol, and the real question in other minds is not so much, What are you? as, What can I believe that you are? What can you help me to feel and be? How far can I use you as a symbol in the development of my instinctive tendency? The scientific historian may insist on asking, What are you? because the instinct he is trying to gratify is the need to make things consistent to the intelligence. But few persons have this need strongly developed, in comparison with those of a more emotional character; and so most will care more for the other questions. The scientific point of view can never be that of the most of mankind, and science, it seems to me, can hardly be more than the critic and chastener of popular faith, not its leader.
Thus we may say of all famous and admired characters that, as personal ideas, they partake of the nature of gods, in that the thought entertained of them is a constructive effort of the idealizing imagination seeking to create a personal symbol of its own tendency.
Perhaps there is no more striking illustration of this than that offered by the mediæval history of the papacy. It is notorious that the idea of the pope, as it was entertained by the religious world, and the pope himself, as he appeared to his intimates, were things having for the most part no close relation to each other. The visible pope was often and for long periods at a time a depraved or insignificant man; but during these very periods the ideal pope, the pope of Europe’s thought, might and often did flourish and grow in temporal and spiritual power. The former was only a symbol for the better definition of what the world needed to believe, a lay figure for garments woven by the co-operative imagination of religious men. The world needed to believe in a spiritual authority as a young girl needs to be in love, and it took up with the papacy as the most available framework for that belief, just as the young girl is likely to give her love to the least repugnant of those who solicit it. The same is true in a large measure of the other great mediæval authority, the emperor, as Mr. Bryce so clearly shows in his history of the Holy Roman Empire; and it holds true in some degree of all those clothed with royalty or other great offices. Fame may or may not represent what men were; but it always represents what humanity needs them to have been.
It is also true that when there is a real personal superiority, ascendency is seldom confined to the traits in which this is manifested, but, once established in regard to these traits, it tends to envelop the leader as a whole, and to produce allegiance to him as a concrete person. This comes, of course, from the difficulty of breaking up and sifting that which presents itself to the senses, and through them to the mind, as a single living whole. And as the faults and weaknesses of a great man are commonly much easier to imitate than his excellences, it often happens, as in the case of Michelangelo, that the former are much more conspicuous in his followers than the latter.
Another phase of the same truth is the ascendency that persons of belief and hope always exercise as against those who may be superior in every other respect, but who lack these traits. The onward and aggressive portion of the world, the people who do things, the young and all having surplus energy, need to hope and strive for an imaginative object, and they will follow no one who does not encourage this tendency. The first requisite of a leader is, not to be right, but to lead, to show a way. The idealist’s programme of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable, that affords occupation to progressive instinct. This holds true, for instance, in the case of teachers. One may sometimes observe two men of whom one has a sounder judgment, a clearer head, a more steadfast character, and is more a master of his subject, than the other; yet is hopelessly inferior in influence, because the other has a streak of contagious idealism which he lacks. One has all the virtues except hope; the other has that and all the power. It has been well said that when a man ceases to learn—to be open and forward looking—he should also cease to teach.
It would be easy to multiply illustrations of this simple but important truth. All vigorous minds, I think, love books and persons that are mentally enfranchising and onward-looking, that seem to overthrow the high board fences of conventional thought and show a distance with purple hills; while it would be possible to mention powerful minds that have quickly lost influence by giving too much the impression of finality, as if they thought their system was the last. They only build another board fence a little beyond the old one. Perhaps the most admirable and original thing about Emerson is the invincible openness and renewal that seem to be in him, and some of us find his best expression in that address on the “Method of Nature” in which, even more than elsewhere, he makes us feel that what is achieved is ever transitory, and that there is everything to expect from the future. In like manner, to take perhaps the most remarkable example of all, the early Christians found in their belief organized hope, in contrast to the organized ennui of the Roman system of thought, and this, it would seem, must have been its most direct and potent appeal to most minds.[[88]]
It is also because of this ideal and imaginative character in personal ascendency that mystery enters so largely into it. Our allegiance is accompanied by a mental enlargement and renewal through generative suggestions; we are passing from the familiar to the strange, are being drawn we know not whither by forces never before experienced; the very essence of the matter is novelty, insecurity, and that excitement in the presence of dim possibilities that constitutes mystery.