We can, in truth, no more explain a great man than we can explain life itself. How is it that the acorn has power to take from the earth and air and sunshine the things that make the oak-tree, the monarch of the forest? How is it that of all the oaks in the woods of the world there are no two exactly alike? How is it that among all the children in a family, in a school, in a nation, there are no two really alike?
A boy I knew once put the puzzle in this way: “You would think that twins would be more truly twins than they are. But when they seem most twinsy, they’re somehow different, after all!”
All that we can say is that each child is himself alone, and that as the days go by the things he sees and hears, the things he thinks about and loves, the things he dreams and the things he does, are somehow made a part of him just as the soil and sunshine are made into the tree.