,
Shakspeare, Milton have left a deep and permanent impression upon the
forms of thought and speech, the language and literature, the science
and philosophy of nations. And inasmuch as a nation is the aggregate of
individual beings endowed with spontaneity and freedom, we must grant
that exterior conditions are not omnipotent in the formation of national
character. Still the free causality of man is exercised within a narrow
field. "There is a strictly necessitative limitation drawing an
impassable boundary-line around the area of volitional freedom." The
human will "however subjectively free" is often "objectively unfree;"
thus a large "uniformity of volitions" is the natural consequence.[7]
The child born in the heart of China, whilst he may, in his personal
freedom, develop such traits of character as constitute his
individuality, must necessarily be conformed in his language, habits,
modes of thought, and religious sentiments to the spirit of his country
and age. We no more expect a development of Christian thought and
character in the centre of Africa, unvisited by Christian teaching, than
we expect to find the climate and vegetation of New England. And we no
more expect that a New England child shall be a Mohammedan, a Parsee, or
a Buddhist, than that he shall have an Oriental physiognomy, and speak
an Oriental language. Indeed it is impossible for a man to exist in
human society without partaking in the spirit and manners of his country
and his age. Thus all the individuals of a nation represent, in a
greater or less degree, the spirit of the nation. They who do this most
perfectly are the _great_ men of that nation, because they are at once
both the product and the impersonation of their country and their age.
"We allow ourselves to think of Shakspeare, or of Raphael, or of Phidias
as having accomplished their work by the power of their individual
genius, but greatness like theirs is never more than the highest degree
of perfection which prevails widely around it, and forms the environment
in which it grows. No such single mind in single contact with the facts
of nature could have created a Pallas, a Madonna, or a Lear; such vast
conceptions are the growth of ages, the creation of a nation's spirit;
and the artist and poet, filled full with the power of that spirit, but
gave it form, and nothing but form. Nor would the form itself have been
attained by any isolated talent. No genius can dispense with
experience..