THE MAKING OF GREATNESS

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13235, 21 July 1906, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE MAKING OF GREATNESS

. BY TOHT/XGA. In the first place,■ what is .-greatness? Csesar was a great man and Brutus a great assassin; Burns was a great man and Wordsworth a great poet; Tasman was a gieat man and " Bounty" Blight, a great sailor; Seddon was a great man and Yogel a great politician. Manifoldare the influences which may make a": man " great" in any one walk of life, and often in such cases wo: say great" when we only mean notorious. But greatness involves the inherited possession of energies and faculties, in". richer measure than most men are bora to and the awakening to feverish but ordered activity of those energies and faculties. As for the -inheritance, there is quite no doubt that every great man has had an exceptional mother. As for the awakening, there is quite no doubt that no man has even been roused to the fullest living of which- he is capable . excepting by the influence of some particular woman. Wherever we win trace in detail the lives of great men .we see this painted. across' the page of, their biographies;; wherever we know' even a little of them we; can -see where some "new -and altogether dominating influence entered into their lives.

' In the very nature ofHhings the influence of woman over man is the mainspring of human action, as every ''doing" man must know from.his own personal feelings./ If it were not for women men would still be .sitting naked, round their camp-fires, bragging of the distance they could throw rocks, and swapping lies as to the length of the snakes they had killed. Woman comes along and sets men fighting cue another, for the warmest caivo in ..which to house her, for the finest fur with which to cover her for the brightest feather to stick in her hair, and for the first place for her in the procession. VAs it was in the beginning, so it is now, and will be for ever. Every woman fee's more affectionate towards the mair who for her sake'proves himself capable, no matter, though she may not receive the material fruit of his capacity. The moment she begins to regard him as the man in her life she begins to : spur him, begins to impress upon him the fact that the love of woman is only for the' capable, that it only goes out in ungrudging measure to the vigorous and the strong. And then the band begins to play, and if the man is capable enough, and if the world is ripe for action, the tune comes lilting down the ages until it merges in the murmured echoes of the heroic past. r|

.';• Of course, there are odd men who fall out of the marching army of humanity, and sitting by the roadside lift up their voices to bewail r the folly of men and to curse the worth] essness of women. Of these are the Schopenhauers and their crew, , who have attained a feeble notoriety by screaming loudly that life is not worth living and that woman is consequently an evil thing. If a woman/ ever influenced such ignoble lives or, inspired such puling philosophy it was surely the daughter of the . horse-leech, whose , touch fills the heart- with hatred, and not the wearer of the, cestus that: fills the heart with love. But cursing is not a* convincing proof of greatness; nor despairing of life the evidence; of a vigorous and capable mind. For this to become popular is a bad sign for civilisation, but doss not affect, the ; fact that the doers and inspirers: of great things-—who alone.are the great men—<are invariably influenced by the love of a woman. . : ' ' ; ,'""-.

': The tragedy of Napoleon the Great is the tragedy of Josephine Beauhiurnais. ', Whatever the woman was: she had roused his genius of action, had given him self-confi-dence," had transformed him from a selfdoubting, uncertain man to the most indomitable and masterful man of his time. She" was his mascot, and from the moment he discarded her his self-confidence faltered, and with it his genius ebbed. •If we turn to Frederick the Great wo see no Josephine, but all men are. not alike, and all women do not' influence' men in precisely the same way. At Copenhagen Nelson was still only the reckless viking who saw with blind eye the signal .to .retreat as he rushed into Aboukir Bay he was the matchless strategian, whose brain coined a new plan of battle at sight of the single-anchored Frenchman, and whose double-banked attack instantly turned English inferiority into a crashing superiority; again at Trafalgar he wrought the same strategic marvel, the crescentedl allies in such a manner that provided only his columnleaders were not crushed at £116"'impact the enemy must speedily be overwhelmed by his inferior fleet Nelson and Collingwood led the columns, and Nelson died in doing it. ! There is no mystery about Nelson's mental transformation. Its . cause is common knowledge. It is the most pathetic story told of England's great men. And Frederick ! Where is he when his character alters? What is the meaning of the charge that all through his life he aimed at personal aggrandisement, if not that he sought to please a woman?

In his youth Frederick the Great is supposed to have given no evidence of future greatness. ? He had tried to escape from being a Princo and had nearly been executed by his father as an unworthy and incapable son. In 1733 he married, to conciliate his father, and from 1734 lived at Bheinsbei'g. where for the first time he had some liberty .of action. At this Rheinsberg the Frederick we know of was bora.' ' He gradually ■ surrounded himself with cultured companions, his little Court finding its diversions in music, poetry, and literature, and here—while he is talking philosophy, making * verses, and playing the fiddle—his, dreams of greatness begin. He is to do more than inherit a crown; he, himself. Frederick, ,is to show the world what manner of man he is; he will seize Saxony, clutch Poland, march his Prussians south 'and west and east, found a dynasty that will bring the proud Hapsburgs to the dust—already his schemes form themselves in his mind. If this does not proclaim feminine influence nothing ever did; and there were more women at Rheinsberg than the Princess. Besides, who knows? Princes are as human as ploughmen, as susceptible as sailors, and who knows what hopeless love was enshrined in Frederick's heart when he married to his father's choosing, to what unknown and unseen woman lie ottered the tribute of his fame because .she had said it would comfort her if he would make her proud of him? There is surely ii woman in this transformation of Frederick, as in the transformation of Napoleon, as in .the transformation of Nelson, as in the transformation of every human character, great or small, from ineffective to effective living.

But we 'know all this, either because we have felt the whip that woman wields in her soft hands or because we have felt the want of it in our lives. In either case, wo do not wear hearts upon our sleeves, nor let one another know just how we feel about things. That is rather funny. Each and every man has a kind of notion that he is verv different from all those around him, that life has used him differently from everybody else, that the doors have cither been' shut against him alone 01 opened to him alone. "This isn't so'at all. We have all been born and shall all/die; and in the past Ave have learned much, and in the future we shall learn much more: and we all travel much the same road. The great men are much the same as the small men, only more so,' and not a small man in the wide world buf knows, that he never did the best he 'could do unless the desire to please some woman urged him and sustained him. 1 However well lie did without that . impulse lie could have done better with it. As with the smaller so with, the greater. Women have the making of greatness.