The Hero in History/Chapter 2
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 present the evidence that these individuals not only existed but had a decisive influence on their respective fields of activity. Further, they must be able to meet reasonably the challenge that if these individuals had not lived and worked as they did, their work would, in all likelihood, have been done by others.
At first glance the position seems to be quite easily established. Particularly in the arts and sciences, evidence pouring in from all sides makes it abundantly clear that the original patterns are created by a few great individuals and imitated by the merely talented many. A casual survey of some of the major cultural fields makes this plain. In what follows we shall present this survey as it might be made by a protagonist of a modified form of heroic determinism.
The titanic figures who dominate the history of literature and drama include Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Lucretius, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Balzac, Dickens, Dostoevski, Tolstoy, Proust, and Joyce. Other names may be added to this incomplete list, as well as to other incomplete lists in kindred fields. But whoever adds them will insist upon two things: that they are roughly of the same stature as the writers enumerated, and that there is a vast dimensional difference between them and the tens of thousands of poets, dramatists, and novelists whose minor excellences we enjoy without feeling the breath of greatness in their works. It matters little that no two lists will be identical. If we run the lists up to a hundred of the greatest individuals in the literature of western civilization, we need but select the names that are common to all the lists. No one will seriously gainsay the palpable differences between the few figures that appear on every list and the multitude of those who appear on no list. Nor is the point affected by the observation that great figures in literature, as in other fields, often emerge in clusters. Certain periods in history are undoubtedly more receptive to genius, that is, more stimulating or more sensitive, than others. They make it possible for genius to thrive as well as for more pedestrian spirits. But they do not produce these geniuses any more than a fertile plot of soil, on which both precious flowers and common weeds flourish, can be regarded as the creative source of the flowers.
Inexpugnable differences in taste enter into all survey of outstanding creation in every field. Shakespeare will be evaluated differently in the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. But if we are interested in the question of influence rather than of “intrinsic” achievement, a more objective consensus may be obtained. By comparing the list of the most influential individuals with the previous list, in which the compilation is made on grounds other than influence, we can determine the extent to which the great figures have also been the most influential. We will find that almost every influential figure appears on the first list, but that many on the first list do not appear on the second. In other words, some great figures may be passed by or ignored by their immediate times and recognized subsequently as isolated peaks of eminence, much appreciated but little imitated.
In music, the record of achievement is even more noticeably the record of new forms and their consummate fulfilment, new points of departure and their masterful development, at the hands of a comparative few of all who have made music. Our list of musicians would include Bach, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Moussorgsky, Debussy, Strauss, Schoenberg, Hindemith, and a few others for whom music historians may make out a case. The themes of the music and sometimes its treatment may be accounted for by the tastes of the public or patron whom the musician, like other artists, sought to please. But just as often, the musician chose to please himself. In any event, his virtuosity and originality cannot be explained in terms of pressures and inducements that were common for all musicians of his period.
In literature and music there has been far greater evidence of collective creation—the epic, the chant, the ballad—than in painting, even when we allow for the factories of some of the great masters. And where technical assistance has been rendered, as in some large canvasses and murals, it is completely subordinated to the plan and judgment of the responsible painter. If we compose our list of the most influential figures in modern painting, it will include Giotto, Masaccio, van Eyck, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Correggio, Rubens, Poussin, Velasquez, Watteau, David, Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso.[2] This is not to say that we can understand the history of painting without taking note of many things outside of painting, ranging from politics to physics. The significant thing about such influences, where they are relevant, is what the artists did with them. Materials and techniques, varying with different periods, may have provided common limiting conditions, class and personal associations may have furnished the ideals and allegiances determining the selection of themes, but what marks the unique achievement of the great artist is his individual craftsmanship, his sensibility, insight, and power to make us see things in a fresh light.
It is often alleged that in painting, as in music and literature, the great artist meets the need or atmosphere of his time which, in a sense, speaks through him even when he is unconscious of it or in revolt against it. Even if this were true the great artist would prove himself in how he meets that need, not merely in being a creature of it. But it is not always true. Very often the great creator runs counter to the modes of feeling and understanding around him. He has to rely upon his own work ultimately to generate the taste and sensibility which are capable of appreciating his intent and the skill of his execution. One need but read the excommunications pronounced by shocked critics against new departments in the history of art and music to realize to what an extent public taste is gradually transformed by those who have begun by outraging it.
The history of philosophy reflects the history of politics, religion, and science, but no one can make it intelligible without making central in his account the ideas of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel, to stop with the early nineteenth century. Sociological interpretations of philosophy have been unduly neglected, but what they explain is why certain ideas have been accepted within a particular milieu, not why they have been generated. The influential philosophies which succeed in getting themselves institutionalized are far fewer than the total number projected.
Sometimes ideas that make little headway in their own times, outside the narrow confines of a school, are revived in subsequent periods and used as a leverage to bulwark social power or pry it loose from entrenched positions. If such occasions never arise, these ideas remain enshrined in the great works of philosophy and are sources of perennial interest to lonely and questing spirits in every climate of opinion. Despite the local idiom and emphasis with which they are clothed, certain recurrent themes concerning human life, struggle, and death have a universal appeal to reflective minds in all developed civilizations.
Even when a philosophy lends itself to acceptance, no one has been able to show that its particular system of ideas is uniquely necessitated by the needs of the society, or the dominant class within the society, which adopts it. Some other cognate philosophical systems are theoretically just as serviceable. But among all the possible systems that may be exploited for purposes of social idealization or criticism, those that win the competition for acceptance are usually distinguished by comprehensiveness, rigour, practical relevance, and flexibility—virtues that are unequally distributed among philosophers.
What does the history of science show? The cumulative character of scientific discovery, the unity of its method or inquiry the common problems that are set for it by previous investigators, and the intimate relations between science, industry, and war seem to make extremely unplausible the hypothesis that scientific development owes most of its achievements to the activities of its leading figures. In addition, it is now a commonplace that many epoch-making discoveries in science have been the work of two men working independently of each other, for example, Newton and Leibnitz on the differential calculus, Darwin and Wallace on evolution, Adams and Leverrier on the perturbations of the orbit of Uranus which led to the discovery of Neptune. Grant, too, that a revolutionary discovery may depend upon the contribution of a humble laboratory assistant operating a calculating machine.
Nonetheless, what all these considerations boil down to is the recognition of the fact that greatness in science consists in successfully meeting theoretical and practical problems rather than in creating them, and that science like every other human discipline receives some of its stimuli of development from the needs and pressures of social life. But this does not gainsay a fact, just as obvious, that in order to do the work of a Newton or a Darwin an individual must equal them in intellectual stature. In the absence of a dozen laboratory assistants, it is not mystical to assume that someone else would have been found to turn the crank of the calculating machine or to plot a star map. In the absence of both Newton and Leibnitz or of any comparable intelligence with the power to master their problem successfully (where the power is independently determined), it is mystical to assume that some other individual would necessarily have been born to do their work. Modern physics owes more to Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Huygens, Lagrange, Laplace, Faraday, Fourier, Clerk-Maxwell, Hertz, Gibbs, Planck, Einstein, and a small cluster of other luminaries than it does to modern industry and war. It may even be argued that industry and war owe more to the researches of the scientists than vice versa. Indeed, for some of the greatest scientific discoveries, for instance, the theory of relativity, it is hard to establish any plausible connection with problems of industry and war.
Nevertheless, intellectual tradition, social need, and the organization of the scientific community have a far greater influence on the discoveries of scientists than upon the creations of artists and literary men. In the latter fields the production of a new creation with a distinctive form and style is obviously the work of the individual in the sense that, for all his dependence on his culture, it would be absurd to believe that his work would have been given to the world by someone else if the individual artist or writer had not lived. Raphael’s Sistine Madonna without Raphael, Beethoven’s sonatas and symphonies without Beethoven, are inconceivable. In science, on the other hand, it is quite probable that most of the achievements of any given scientist would have been attained by other individuals working in the field.
But the degree of probability varies with the accomplishment. It is extremely difficult to see how we would go about establishing a legitimate claim that, if this or that discovery had not been made, its subsequent discovery would be unlikely. Yet certain general considerations apply. If Newton had not made his discoveries in mechanics and optics, we can readily believe that others might have done so not long after, for interest in the problems of these fields was widespread and other attempts at their solution by first-rate minds had been independently made. But some other branches of mathematics and physics show creative work along certain lines by an individual who had no outstanding predecessors in the field and from whom all subsequent investigation in the same direction stems. For example, we have no specific evidence that would warrant the judgment that Cantor’s theory of transfinite numbers and Einstein’s special theory of relativity would have been developed by others. Although it would be rash to assert that no one but Cantor and Einstein would have propounded these theories, the assertion that others would have done so has even less ground. These cases seem to be intermediate between situations illustrated by the discovery of a new chemical element, after the Periodic Table had been set up, and those exemplified by the composition of the Missa Solemnis.
The same general pattern of creative activity will be disclosed in almost every field of creation. There are some exceptions, notably religion. This seems surprising since the majority of the great religious movements have derived not only their existence but even their names from their founders—Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Christ, Mani, Mohammed, Luther, Calvin. Yet it would be rash to regard this fact as decisive or even of much weight. The significant things about a religious movement are its social effects and the reasons why it continues in existence, and not the proclamation of a religious faith by a presumed founder. We say “presumed” founder because critical scholarship raises doubts about the actual historicity of some of the founders of ancient religions. And since their teachings were sometimes set down by followers who lived at a later period, we have no reliable way of knowing to what extent the doctrines were faithfully transcribed or altered in the process of interpretation. But even if the fact of their historicity were vindicated, this would have little bearing upon the profound changes in practice and belief which the religious movements associated with, their names have undergone. The early Church fathers would have been burned as heretics in thirteenth-century European Christendom.
If we judge the origins of past religious movements in terms of the same forces that give rise to religious movements in our own time, we must conclude that, in the main, these movements create their own leaders, who become the dramatic symbols of the needs and aspirations of their following. The moral ideals, as distinct from the theological trappings, which constitute part of religious faith are an ever-present element in the social tradition. In times of acute crisis and of the failure of nerve which marks a shift from attempts at control to quests for salvation, these ideals are coupled with a profound hope that things are really better than they seem. Hope fortified with supernatural belief is the substance of religious faith. The religious leader crystallizes around himself and his way of life a sentiment that is already in existence when he calls unto the faithful. Very few of the masses who respond come under his personal influence. The force of example, especially at second and third hand, usually moves only those whose position of need and desire already predisposes them in its direction. ••••• With the exceptions indicated, let us for the moment grant the claims made by the protagonist of heroic determinism in the fields of culture already considered. We may even leave uncontested far more exaggerated claims. The truth is that all the evidence is grandly irrelevant to the theory we are examining save on one extreme assumption which has never been seriously defended. This assumption is that the towering figures of literature, music, painting, philosophy, and science have also been the decisive figures in world history—political, social, and economic. Or, in modified form, this assumption holds that the consequences of the work of a Shakespeare, a Bach, a Raphael, a Newton, a Kant, or a Balzac have been among the major influences shaping the development of society, particularly in the spheres of politics, economics, and social organization.
To attribute such causal significance to the geniuses of the class listed borders on fantasy, except for the men of science, where the suggestion is further from fantasy but hardly closer to fact. Although it is indisputably true that the world of technology has been profoundly affected by the discoveries of “the heroes of science,” it must first be established that the major political, social, and historical changes are functions of technological development. Without denying in the least the pervasive influence of first steam and then power on our everyday life and its problems, it still remains true that new tools and techniques implement social policy rather than determine it. The tank and the plane revolutionized modern warfare just as they could have revolutionized our agriculture and transportation system had they been applied with comparable energy in these fields. But it would be foolish to say that they caused Fascism or the Second World War. To be sure, a technological advance may be followed overnight by widespread unemployment and want, but the more relevant, if less immediate, cause of that unemployment is a system of social production which makes the continued labour of these men, even if it would be serviceable to the community, unprofitable to those who employ them. Modern workers know better than their forebears, who tried to destroy the machines instead of subjecting them to social control.
Teclmical innovations do not eliminate alternatives of choice and action. They may narrow the alternatives by ruling out some possibilities; they may be employed to carry out a decision once the alternative is chosen. They do not cause wars or peace, social revolutions—or even changes of ministry. Finally, it must not be overlooked that among the roster of the great names of science are individuals whose scientific theories have had no important technological consequences. The history of technology, compared to the history of pure science, from which it can be distinguished (but not separated) is a history of lesser men, of Fords and Edisons who achieve their prominence because they score first in a race in which so many men compete that no one man seems indispensable for finishing the race. Someone nearly always wins.
The issue before us is located in a different field in which the arts and sciences play a subordinate role. The question is whether the vast political, social, and economic changes which mark off historical periods, or whether the events that are turning points in historical development, are ever attributable to the work of uniquely gifted or uniquely situated personalities. If there are such uniquely gifted or outstanding personalities, what conjuncture of circumstances must arise before they can exercise their influence? Or are they able to play their parts at any time? Detailed inquiries of a specific kind along these lines are rare, but some have been made. We shall presently turn to the most patient and thoroughgoing of them. The problem here is much more difficult than in the fields already canvassed, for all sorts of considerations are confused in defining the “historical hero” as distinct from the heroes of the arts and sciences. Evaluations of historical significance are much more troubled by controversial passions. Robert Ingersoll and H. G. Wells refuse to regard Napoleon as a hero because they do not approve of him.[3] There is certainly room in history for moral judgments, but they do not enter in determining the actual effects of any individual on human affairs. We may abominate Hitler precisely because we believe that he has revolutionized the civilization of the twentieth century.
In due course, we shall meet the problem of definition head on. But we must first examine the findings of the chief empirical account devoted to the influence of outstanding personalities in history. The account is interesting not only because it tells us that individuals of a certain class make history but how much history they make. This brings us to the work of F. A. Wood.
- ↑ 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.”
- ↑ I am indebted to Professor Meyer Schapiro for suggesting some of the names on this list. In compiling the list of the most influential musicians I am indebted to conversations with Professor Martin Bernstein and Mr. B. H. Haggin for some of the names mentioned. None of them, of course, is responsible for the position which these lists are used to illustrate.
- ↑ Typical of this attitude is H. G. Wells’s characterization of Napoleon.
“Failing (a noble imagination) Napoleon could do no more than strut upon this great mountain of opportunity like a cockerel on a dunghill. The figure he makes in history is one of almost incredible self-conceit, of vanity, greed, and cunning, of callous contempt and disregard of all who trusted him, and of a grandiose aping of Cæsar, Alexander, and Charlemagne which would be purely comic if it were not caked over with human blood.” The Outline of History, pp. 98–9, Star edition. New York, 1929.