Nay we might rationally ask, Did any set of
human beings ever really think the man they _saw_ there standing beside
them a god, the maker of this world? Perhaps not: it was usually some man
they remembered, or _had_ seen. But neither can this any more be. The
Great Man is not recognized henceforth as a god any more.
It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great Man a god. Yet let
us say that it is at all times difficult to know _what_ he is, or how to
account of him and receive him! The most significant feature in the
history of an epoch is the manner it has of welcoming a Great Man. Ever,
to the true instincts of men, there is something godlike in him. Whether
they shall take him to be a god, to be a prophet, or what they shall take
him to be? that is ever a grand question; by their way of answering that,
we shall see, as through a little window, into the very heart of these
men's spiritual condition. For at bottom the Great Man, as he comes from
the hand of Nature, is ever the same kind of thing: Odin, Luther, Johnson,
Burns; I hope to make it appear that these are all originally of one stuff;
that only by the world's reception of them, and the shapes they assume, are
they so immeasurably diverse.
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