TEN GREAT MEN

Evening Star, Issue 21620, 16 January 1934, Page 8

TEN GREAT MEN

LORD RAGLAN S CHOICE INLUENCE ON HISTORY A WIDE FIELD What is a great man? Is he a man yho is successful, whatever his. sphere ci activity, and whatever the means •' by which he achieves success? That, it seems-to me, would bring greatness too near to notoriety. On the other hand, the merely good man, who has tried to make the world better and failed, can- ' not properly be called great, since greatness, for me, implies achievement. I shall define a great man, then, as a man of outstanding personality whose achievements definitely led to an advance in civilisation, though I must ■> confess that this definition does not entirely satisfy me (writes Lord Raglan in the ‘Daily Mail’). It has the advantage, at any rate, of knocking out a great many of the pseudo-great men—cricketers and ' jockeys, whom a dexterity slightly • greater than that of their competitors - enables to head the averages ; the great politicians, whose words, widely reported to-day, are, happily, in a very short time forgotten—even some great soldiers, whose victories, however long remembered, led to no useful result. - There are three classes whose claims . are unassailable—the. great scientists, : the great artists, the great writers. But I must try to make my list representative 1 shall start, I hope appropriately, with William the Conqueror I,(1027-1087). " A SINGLE COUNTRY. * Hp , found England a group of earldoms, each with its own laws and its own dialect, loosely federated under a king with little power, almost completely cut off . from what then stood for civilisation. The immediate result of his efficient rule was to make Eng- - land, once for all, into a single country, and the indirect result was that v fusion of Latin and Teutonic culture which was to lead, five centuries later, ■to the cultural predominance of England in Europe. , ■ ] William has been maligned by the sentimentalists, who always assume that the conquered, are more to be admired than the conquerors, but if anyone can claim' to be -1 the maker of EngI say it is he. _ .. As my next man of action I ..shall take Augustus (63 b.c.-a.d. 14). He ■entered the. political arena at Rome ■ at a time when the old Republican ~ system of government had completely broken down, and there had been sixty - years of almost incessant civil war. There was still enough Republican feeling to make monarchy out of the question, and Augustus managed, with the —greatest skill, to gain absolute power 7 while preserving the,) forms of .the Republic. His measures procured for the . Roman Empire a century of internal " peace, and -his system of government 7 lasted for three hundred years, during which period Roman civilisation was „ spread from the North Sea to the Sahara and from the Atlantic to the ’ Persian Gulf.

THE GREAT DUKE. * As my last man of action I shall take the great Duke of Wellington * (1769-1852). He , took the leading part , in freeing Europe from the tyranny of Napoleon, and was afterwards, for ' over thirty years, the leading figure in British public life. Both in and out of offit he displayed a courage, a - truthfulness, a disinterestedness, and_ a1, moderation which finally gained for him the confidence of the entire nation and set' an example for times, far -•ahead. , _ As my men of science I shall take H first Wiiliam Harvey (157871657); whose * discovery of the circulation of the blood ; marks an epoch in the _ history of i human progress. He also initiated researches which led to an understanding of the processes by means, of which men and animals ■ come r intb v existence. He owed a good deal to his predecessors, particularly the Belgian Vesalius, but he seems to me to stand-out above both them and those who followed. He was ‘physician!, to ■■ King.{'Charles . 1., who helped him in his researches. As my next great scientist I shall * take Charles _ Darwin (1809-1882). His greatest service to mankind lies not so much in his discovery of evolutionthere were others on the same track—as in his freeing the human mind from, " the tyranny of the Book of Genesis. This collection of Hebrew myths was previously regarded as the sole arbiter ■ in all ouestions of-human' knowledge. , Every discovery which clashed, or even ‘ seemed to clash, with any statement in the book, • was forthwith condemned as false and blasphemous. Darwin’s char- . acter and the manner in which he pre- ~ sented his case were such that in the u battle which followed the publication of his * Origin af Species,’ the obsctirantisls were defeated from the start. MEN .OF LETTERS. For my men of letters I shall take J first Montaigne (1533-92)..whose essays * display not only a vast amount of learning and wit, but also a lively curiosity . regarding the most varied aspects of ■ human life and conduct. He wrote in the true spirit of science, which takes nothing for granted, and his writings, which display a tolerance _ and broadmindedness remarkable in such a : bigoted age, have had very far-reaching effects. ■■ As my second man of letters I shall * take Edward Gibbon (1737-94 V His method of writing history, by which he showed it as a sequence of causes and effects and not merely a string of events, and by which he consulted every authority and pointed out where they differed, combined -with the majestic -r ease of his style, have made his ‘ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ’

the greatest historical work in the Enp- „ lish language. It is unique, since it is , ■ stilli 150 years after it was _ written, the standard work qn the subject. As my poet I shall choose Aeschylus Y 525-458 n.c.), the Athenian tragedian. , It was he who took the leading part'in - raising the drama from a mere ritual ' performance at the festival of Dionysus » to a vehicle for the expression of all . tliat is highest in human emotion. « As, my artist I Phidias (490432 n.c.), also an Athenian, and probably the greatest sculptor of all time, , He set a' standard of dignity and beauty * in the representation of the _ human s form which has often been imitated — but never surpassed. ; Are there any really great men alive . to-day? I believe that there is at last one. The Scout movement is probably

the greatest movement in the direction of peace and world-fellowship which has ever been devised, and I believe that the name pf its founder and organiser, < Lord Baden-Powell (born 1857) will go down to posterity as that of the greatest man of his day.