There are possibly three ways in which, in the confusion of our modern world, one can tell a hero when one sees one.
One knows a hero first by his originality. He invents a new kind and new size of man. He finishes off one sample. There he is.
The next thing one notices about this man (when he is invented) is his humility. He never seems to feel—having invented himself—how original he is. The more original people think he is, and the more they try to set him one side as an exception, the more he resents it.
And then, of course, the final way one knows a man is a hero is always by his courage, by his masterful way of driving through, when he meets a man, to his sense of identity with him.
One always sees a hero going about quietly everywhere, treating every other man as if he were a hero too.
He gets so in the habit, from day to day (living with himself), of believing in human nature, that when he finds himself suddenly up against other people he cannot stop.
It is not that he is deceived about the other people, though it might seem so sometimes. He merely sees further into them and further for them.
Has he not invented himself? Is he not at this very moment a better kind of man than he thought he could be once? Is he not going to be a better kind to-morrow than he is now?
So, quietly, he keeps on year by year and day by day, treating other people as if they were, or were meant to be, the same kind of man that he is, until they are.