And yet, neither Columbus, nor Washington, nor
Lincoln was what we call a genius--a genius, that is, in the sense in
which Shakespeare or Napoleon or Galileo was a genius. But they combined
in singular degree those three characteristics without which no man may
be truly great: sincerity and courage and singleness of purpose.
It is not without a certain awe that we contemplate these men--men like
ourselves, let us always remember, but, in many ways, how different! Not
different in that they were infallible or above temptation; not
different in that they never made mistakes; but different in that they
each of them possessed an inward vision of the true and the eternal,
while most of us grope blindly amid the false and trivial. What that
vision was, and with what high faith and complete devotion they followed
it, we shall see in the story of their lives.
This is the basic difference between great men and little ones--the
little ones are concerned solely with to-day; the great ones think only
of the future. They have gained that largeness of vision and of
understanding which perceives the pettiness of everyday affairs and
which disregards them for greater things. They live in the world,
indeed, but in a world modified and colored by the divine ferment within
them. There are some who claim that America has never produced a genius
of the first order, or, at most, but two; however that may be, she has
produced, as has no other country, men with great hearts and seeing eyes
and devoted souls who have spent themselves for their country and their
race.
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