ply religious in
his own way, though I am told he wrecked many. So is Bismarck. So were
Wellington and Von Moltke--men who guided frightful carnage. We may
smile at the religion which wrecks and kills and prays, but we do not
remove the combination; and it is probable that the great ones have been
too closely conscious of their own sudden discernments to find a gross
materialism possible. It was the same with the pagans. Even Bonaparte
had an implicit belief in what he called his lucky star.

The followers of Buckle claim that man is personally hardly more than a
cipher in history, that his name is hardly worth writing in the great
scroll. But how is this when the fate of Europe rests, as it may rest at
this moment, wholly and solely in the faculties of one man? The instinct
of hero-worship is too deep-set to be valueless. And the experiments
which do so much to explain the sources of increased human knowledge
point to the fact that it is in the man of the hour that the history of
the hour is written. One leads; the others follow. Gifted he may be,
even before he is born; endowed he may be, by forefathers who were
clean; but when the event approaches there is always one who more than
others realizes the stress, strain, or peril, and in a mighty effort
creates from his own faculties a scheme or plan which others are glad to
follow.

That is greatness. That is history. That is creation. For creation is of
spirit; and man, as these seemingly trivial experiments prove, is also,
in part, of spirit. The disasters that may result through other causes
from his action are only the proof of his humanness--proof that his
strain for enlightenment was not continued. In these ways history is
human, but always with a partly secreted and godlike faculty awaiting
demand. "Seek, and ye shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened unto
you." The greatest man that ever lived taught this. And whatever he was,
or was not, he knew more than any other man.

This article is by no means intended to suggest that the will of God
need not be considered in the study of history. When it is proved that
human privacy is impossible, and that any ordinary person's soul may be
made to see us at all times, then we may be quite sure that the Giver of
these faculties to man possesses them himself and that we are watched
both personally and nationally. But the article _is_ intended to suggest
that man has progressed and has been great when the exercise of his