The great man is the man who can get himself made and who will get himself made out of anything he finds at hand.
If success cannot do it, he makes failure do it. If he cannot make success express the greatness or the vision that is in him, he makes failure express it.
But this book is not about great men and goodness. It is about touching the imagination of crowds with goodness, about making goodness democratic and making goodness available for common people.
A stupendous success in goodness will advertise it as well as a stupendous failure.
Goodness has had its cross-redeemers to attract the attention of half a world.
Possibly it is having now its success-redeemers to attract the attention of the other half.
The people the success-redeemers reach would turn out to be, possibly, very much more than half.
The Cross, as a means of getting the attention of crowds, or of the more common people in our modern, practical-minded Western world, was apparently adapted to its purpose as long as it was used for church purposes or as long as it was kept dramatic or sensational or remote, or as long as it was a cross for some one else, but as a means of attracting the attention of crowds of ordinary men and women to goodness in common everyday things, it is very doubtful if failure—in the power of steady daily pulling on men's minds, has done as much for goodness as success.
It is doubtful if, except as an ideal or conventional symbol the cross has ever been or ever could be what might be called a spiritually middle-class institution. It has been reserved for men of genius, pioneers and world-designers to have those colossal and glorious crosses that have been worshipped in all ages, and must be worshipped in all ages as the great memorials of the human race.