II
THE HEROES OF THOUGHT
All men belong to the same biological species, but the differences between them are so marked that they extend to very finger-tips. These differences are more than skin deep. They can be observed in human behaviour long before corresponding differences, if any, are discovered in organic structure. The significance of variation, to which these and other facts testify, has not yet been intelligently reflected in our educational and social practice. On the one hand, superficial physical differences have been inflated into differentia of mythical racial divisions in the interests of inequitable social organisation. On the other hand, potentially significant differences in personality have been lost sight of in programmes of uniform training. But however we evaluate the differences between men, the existence of these differences, natural and acquired, cannot be denied. When it is denied, it turns out that only the relevance of certain differences to some particular problem or need is being denied.
Many variations between men are reducible to differences in quantitative degree, for example, height, weight, physical strength. No man is so strong that he cannot be overcome by a group of individually weaker men. If men made history only by virtue of their physical strength, the strong men of our time would be national heroes instead of vaudeville attractions.
But other kinds of variation between men show not only great disparity but irreducibility. Genius is not the result of compounding talent. How many battalions are the equivalent of a Napoleon?[1] How many minor poets will give us a Shakespeare? How many run of the mine scientists will do the work of an Einstein? Questions of this kind are asked not to get an answer but to bring home the uniqueness of genius.
It is not enough, however, for those who believe in the importance of outstanding individuals in history to establish the fact of the existence of outstanding individuals. They must
- ↑ Napoleon probably had himself in mind when he said: “An army of rabbits commanded by a lion is better than an army of lions commanded by a rabbit.”
