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.
(2740)
=Responsibility of Privilege=--See PRIVILEGE INVOLVES
RESPONSIBILITY.
=Responsibility, Personal=--See PLACE, FILLING ONE’S.
=Responsibility, Sense of=--See PERSONAL PREACHING.