GEORGE WASHINGTON
He left as fair a reputation as ever belonged to a human character.... Midst all the sorrowings that are mingled on this melancholy occasion I venture to assert that none could have felt his death with more regret than I, because no one had higher opinions of his worth.... There is this consolation, though, to be drawn, that while living no man could be more esteemed, and since dead none is more lamented.
—Washington, on the Death of Tilghman
GEORGE WASHINGTON
Dean Stanley has said that all the gods of ancient mythology were once men, and he traces for us the evolution of a man into a hero, the hero into a demigod, and the demigod into a divinity. By a slow process, the natural man is divested of all our common faults and frailties; he is clothed with superhuman attributes and declared a being separate and apart, and is lost to us in the clouds.
When Greenough carved that statue of Washington that sits facing the Capitol, he unwittingly showed how a man may be transformed into a Jove.
But the world has reached a point when to be human is no longer a cause for apology; we recognize that the human, in degree, comprehends the divine.