The greatness of a man lies in his ability to interpret his age.
Such a man must have that rarest of traits of genius; he must instinctively feel his fellow-men.
He is not a leader. The whole strong-man theory is a humbug. He is a servant.
The greatest man is the man who comes nearest to executing the will of the people. He is “servant of all.”
If he is a poet, he utters the word they dumbly feel. If he is an artist, he bodies forth their impotent fancy. If he is a states-man, he materializes their political convictions. If he is an orator or a writer, he says what they all would say. Always behind him is the mass, from which he draws his force.
It is this power of submerging one’s self in the current of others’ feeling that is the gift of greatness.
The lawyer is great who loses himself m the interests of his clients.
The physician is great who gives him-self up to his patients, serving the poorest of them as loyally as any subject ever served his king.
The teacher is great who is the exponent of his pupils, the expression of their intellectual curiosity, the will of their highest ambitions.
The workman is great who feels the profit of his employer, the care of his goods, and the perfecting of his work as if it were his own.
The merchant is great who senses his customers, divines their needs, ministers to their wants; and he is greater yet if he feels his responsibility to those he employs, if he is the personal embodiment of the activities of all his working force.
A president, a governor, a senator, a congressman, a mayor, is great if he knows his people; if their conscience is his conscience; if his voice is their thought; if their desires and ideals move his hand and brain.
Homer, Goethe, Voltaire, Shakespeare, spoke their time.
The great men are the manufacture of the people.
David, Ceasar, Washington, Napoleon, these knew how to ride the crest of the multitudinous wave.
Even of Jesus no greater thing can be said than that He uttered the heart of all mankind.
