upon him; undeniable, there, there!--I wish you to take this as my
primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it is
competent to all men that God has made: but a Great Man cannot be
without it.

Such a man is what we call an _original_ man; he comes to us at
first-hand. A messenger he, sent from the Infinite Unknown with tidings
to us. We may call him Poet, Prophet, God;--in one way or other, we all
feel that the words he utters are as no other man's words. Direct from
the Inner Fact of things:--he lives, and has to live, in daily communion
with that. Hearsays cannot hide it from him; he is blind, homeless,
miserable, following hearsays; _it_ glares-in upon him. Really his
utterances, are they not a kind of "revelation";--what we must call such
for want of other name? It is from the heart of the world that he comes;
he is portion of the primal reality of things. God has made many
revelations: but this man too, has not God made him, the latest and
newest of all? The "inspiration of the Almighty giveth _him_
understanding": we must listen before all to him.

This Mohammed, then, we will in no wise consider as an Inanity and
Theatricality, a poor conscious ambitious schemer; we cannot conceive
him so. The rude message he delivered was a real one withal; an earnest
confused voice from the unknown Deep. The man's words were not false,
nor his workings here below; no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery mass of
Life cast-up from the great bosom of Nature herself. To _kindle_ the
world; the world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither can the faults,
imperfections, insincerities even, of Mohammed, if such were never so
well proved against him, shake this primary fact about him.

On the whole, we make too much of faults; the details of the business
hide the real centre of it. Faults? The greatest of faults, I should
say, is to be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one
would think, might know better. Who is called there "the man according
to God's own heart"? David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins
enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the
unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God's heart?
The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults,
what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the
remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it,
be forgotten? "It is not in man that walketh to dir