We have seen that all leadership has an aspect of sympathy and conformity, as well as one of individuality and self-will, so that every leader must also be a follower, in the sense that he shares the general current of life. He leads by appealing to our own tendency, not by imposing something external upon us. Great men are therefore the symbols or expressions, in a sense, of the social conditions, under which they work, and if these conditions were not favorable the career of the great man would be impossible.
Does the leader, then, really lead, in the sense that the course of history would have been essentially different if he had not lived? Is the individual a true cause, or would things have gone on about the same if the famous men had been cut off in infancy? Is not general tendency the great thing, and is it not bound to find expression independently of particular persons? Certainly many people have the impression that in an evolutionary view of life single individuals become insignificant, and that all great movements must be regarded as the outcome of vast, impersonal tendencies.
If one accepts the view of the relation between particular individuals and society as a whole already stated in various connections, the answer to these questions must be that the individual is a cause, as independent as a cause can be which is part of a living whole, that the leader does lead, and that the course of history must have been notably different if a few great men had been withdrawn from it.
As to general tendency, it is false to set it over against individuals, as if it were a separate thing; it is only through individuals that general tendency begins or persists. “Impersonal tendency” in society is a mere abstraction; there is no such thing. Whether idiosyncrasy is such as we all have in some measure, or whether it takes the form of conspicuous originality or genius, it is a variant element in life having always some tendency to innovation. Of course, if we believe in the prevalence of continuity and law, we cannot regard it as a new creation out of nothing; it must be a reorganization of hereditary and social forces. But however this may be, the person as a whole is always more or less novel or innovating. Not one of us floats quite inert upon the general stream of tendency; we leave the world somewhat different from what it would have been if we had been carried off by the croup.
Now in the case of a man of genius, this variant tendency may be so potent as to reorganize a large part of the general life in its image, and give it a form and direction which it could not have had otherwise. How anyone can look at the facts and doubt the truth of this it is hard to see. Would the life we receive from the last century have been the same if, say, Darwin, Lincoln, and Bismarck had not lived? Take the case of Darwin. No doubt his greatness depended upon his representing and fulfilling an existing tendency, and this tendency entered into him from his environment, that is from other individuals. But it came out of him no longer the vague drift toward evolutionary theory and experiment that it was before, but concrete, common-sense, matter-of-fact knowledge, thoroughly Darwinized, and so accredited by his character and labors that the world accepts it as it could not have done if he had not lived. We may apply the same idea to the author of Christianity. Whatever we may or may not believe regarding the nature of Christ’s spiritual leadership, there is, I take it, nothing necessarily at variance with a sound social science in the Christian theory that the course of history has been transformed by his life.
The vague instincts which it is the function of the leader to define, stimulate and organize, might have remained latent and ineffectual, or might have developed in a totally different manner, if he had not lived. No one can guess what the period following the French Revolution, or any period of French history since then, might have been without Napoleon; but it is apparent that all would have been very different. It is true that the leader is always a symbol, and can work only by using existing elements of life; but in the peculiar way in which he uses those elements is causation, is creation, in the only sense, perhaps, in which creation is definitely conceivable. To deny its importance is as absurd as to say that the marble as it comes from the quarry and the marble after Michelangelo is through with it, are one and the same thing.
Most, if not all, of our confusion regarding such points as these arises from the almost invincible habit of thinking of “society,” or “historical tendency,” as a distinct entity from “individuals,” instead of remembering that these general and particular terms merely express different aspects of the same concrete fact—human life. In studying leadership we may examine the human army one by one, and inquire why certain persons stand out from the rest as captains, colonels, or generals, and what, in particular, it is that they have to do; or, in studying social tendency, we may disregard individuality and look at the movements of the army, or of its divisions and regiments, as if they were impersonal wholes. But there is no separation in fact: the leader is always the nucleus of a tendency, and, on the other hand, all social movement, closely examined, will be found to consist of tendencies having such nuclei. It is never the case that mankind move in any direction with an even front, but there are always those who go before and show the way.
I need hardly add that leadership is not a final explanation of anything; but is simply one of many aspects in which human life, always inscrutable, may be studied. In these days we no longer look for final explanations, but are well content if we can get a glimpse of things in process, not expecting to know how they began or where they are to end. The leader is a cause, but, like all causes we know of, he is also an effect. His being, however original, is rooted in the past of the race, and doubtless as susceptible of explanation as anything else, if we could only get at the facts.
CHAPTER X
THE SOCIAL ASPECT OF CONSCIENCE
The Right as the Rational—Significance of this View—The Right as the Onward—The Right as Habit—Right is not the Social as against the Individual—It is, in a Sense, the Social as against the Sensual—The Right as a Synthesis of Personal Influences—Personal Authority—Confession, Prayer, Publicity—Truth—Dependence of Right upon Imagination—Conscience Reflects a Social Group—Ideal Persons as Factors in Conscience.