Does some Napoleon “wade through slaughter to a throne, and shut the gates of mercy on mankind,” and break the hearts of a million peasant women, and handicap the careers of ten millions of orphan children? Recently when I used Napoleon in an address as an illustration of unbridled and selfish ambition, and spoke of him as a man raised up to correct the abuses of the French Revolution, who ought to have imitated Washington and Jefferson, and as a man of patriotism all compact concluded his career without a mixture of meanness and sin, a score of people wrote protesting against judging Napoleon by the ordinary standards of morality. Does Goethe forget the law of marriage? For thirty years cast the reins loose on the neck of passion? Use a score of women as material and dynamic for literary work? It is said Goethe was too great to be held down to the ordinary petty rules that control the limited career of peasant souls. Does Byron forget the law of sobriety, and fling himself into wild excesses and lift the cup of flame to his lips? It is said that Byron is a child of genius, quite beyond the pale of convention. Does some Crœsus with the money-making gift get his hands on the reins of power use his secret knowledge to secure exemption from taxes and enjoy special privileges, freeing himself from economic duties that his competitors must bear, not only for themselves alone but for him? The excuse is that the moral laws that hold for those that buy and sell a few pounds of groceries are to be laid on the table and abrogated in the presence of the merchant princes owning uncounted millions.
The biographies of great men are filled with excuses for great generals who have been selfish, of poets who have been wild and lawless, apologies for statesmen who have been drunken, merchants who have been false. And the whole world has suffered through this misconception. As men go toward greatness they go toward responsibility and obligation. It is true that the great man with his gifts must not be judged by ordinary rules—he must be held to extraordinary rules and standards doubly severe. Selfishness can be pardoned in a peasant soldier, not in a great general.—N. D. Hillis.
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Responsibility of Privilege—See [Privilege Involves Responsibility].
Responsibility, Personal—See [Place, Filling One’s].
Responsibility, Sense of—See [Personal Preaching].
RESPONSIBILITY, UNDESIRABLE
The following Lincoln anecdote is quoted in the Literary Digest:
One evening, just before the close of the Civil War, he had some visitors at the White House, among them some Senators and members of Congress. One of the guests asked the President what he would do with Jefferson Davis if he were captured. Crossing his legs and looking at his friends with that peculiar twinkle in his eyes, he said: “Gentlemen, that reminds me of an incident of my home in Illinois. One morning, when I was on my way to the office, I saw a small boy standing on a street corner crying as if his heart would break. I asked him what was the cause of his sorrow. He said, ‘Mister, don’t you see that coon?’ pointing to a poor little beast that he had tied to a string. ‘Well, that animal has given me a heap of trouble all the way along, and now he has nearly gnawed the string in two. I wish to goodness he would gnaw it in two and get away, so I could go home and tell my folks he had escaped from me.’”
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