the inter-relations of the organic world. But there are whole troops
of serfs, "addicti jururo in verba magistri," who, accepting, without
attempt or capacity to verify the conclusions of the master mind, think
to solve all the mysteries of the universe by ejaculating the word
"Evolution." If I ask what was the secret of Dante's or of Shakespeare's
divining rod, and you answer "Evolution," 'tis as if, when sick in heart
and sick in head, I were referred, as medicine for "a mind diseased," to
Grimm's Law or to the Magnetic Belt.

Let us grant that Caesar was evolved from the currents in the air about
the Roman Capitol, that Marcus Aurelius was a blend of Plato and
Cleanthes, Charlemagne a graft of Frankish blood on Gallic soil, William
I. a rill from Rollo filtered in Neustrian fields, Hildebrand a flame
from the altar of the mediaeval church, Barbarossa a plant grown to
masterdom in German woods, or later--not to heap up figures whose
memories still possess the world--that Columbus was a Genoan breeze,
Bacon a _rechauffe_ of Elizabethan thought, Orange the Silent a Dutch
dyke, Chatham the frontispiece of eighteenth-century England, or Corsican
Buonaparte the "armed soldier of Democracy." These men, at all events,
were no bubbles on the froth of the waves which they defied and
dominated.

So much, and more, is to be said for Carlyle's insistence that great men
are creators as well as creatures of their age. Doubtless, as we advance
in history, direct personal influence, happily or unhappily, declines. In
an era of overwrought activity, of superficial, however free, education,
when we run the risk of being associated into nothingness and criticised
to death, it remains a question whether, in the interests of the highest
civilisation (which means opportunity for every capable citizen to lead
the highest life), the subordination of the one to the many ought to be