“It was not he who did the harm,” I answered; “it was the people who misunderstood him and misused his words. No great man ever does all that he sets out to do. He cannot, since his aim is no less than perfection.”
“I hate perfect people,” said Virginia, “or to think of any great man as perfect, because it is so inhuman. I read a book for children, lately, about Jesus, which made him out a perfect child. It was full of contradictions, for it said first that he was a wonder, who walked, talked and thought earlier than other children, and then it said that he was human, and understood all human weaknesses. I think that to know men a man must have human weaknesses and imperfections.”
“Yes,” I said; “and I never thought of Jesus as unhumanly perfect. He, too, had his temptation and weakness to fight and overcome. Indeed, only the petty man could be perfect.”
“But he would not be perfect,” said Henry.
“No,” I answered; “but according to his standard, he might think himself so. The great man, the Jesus, the Lincoln, could never be perfect, for his perfection could only come with the completeness and beauty and goodness of the whole world. You said of Jesus that he did harm, because the doctrine made from his words did harm. But you must see that until all men are great men, every man must suffer so. Take Lincoln, for instance. If he had lived, and kept control of the Government, surely the evils of the reconstruction period would have been avoided. You might say, then, that Lincoln did harm, because his work led to all that wrong and unhappiness.”
“But it has all come right now,” said Henry.
“Hardly,” I answered; “it is not nearly right, even to-day.”
“And I suppose,” Virginia said, “that finally the work of Jesus and of every great man will come right.”
“And Lincoln’s work,” said Florence, “will come right sooner, because it is not so large as the work of Jesus.”
Now I said I wanted to go on to a subject which seemed to me especially interesting, the question of the making of laws and regulations. Was it not a curious thing that men’s minds, outrunning their other powers, should see clearly the great good for which they strove, and should make regulations for themselves, which they were even unable to keep?