nd the way He served them was by
making them feel that they were.

I do not believe that Thomas Jefferson, if he were here to-day, would
object to a hero, or aristocrat, a special expert or a genius in
expressing crowds, if he lived and wrought in this spirit.

The final objection that people commonly make to heroes or to men of
marked and special vision or courage is that they are not good for
people, because people put them on pedestals and worship them. They look
up at them wistfully. And then they look down on themselves.

But I have never seen a hero on a pedestal.

It is only the Carlyle kind of hero who could ever be put on a pedestal,
or who would stay there if put there.

And Carlyle--with all honour be it said--never quite knew what a hero
was. A hero is either a gentleman, or a philosopher, or an inventor.

The gentleman--on a pedestal--feels hurt and slips down.

The philosopher laughs.

The inventor thinks up some way of having somebody else get up so that
it will not really be a pedestal at all.

I agree with all the socialists' objections to heroes, if they mean by a
hero the kind of man that Thomas Carlyle, with all his little glorious
hells, all his little cold, lonesome, select heavens, his thunderclub
view of life, and his Old Testament imagination, called a hero. There is
always something a little strained and competitive about Carlyle's
heroes as he conceives them except possibly one or two.

Being a hero with Carlyle consisted in conquering and displacing other
heroes. Even if you were a poet, being a hero consisted in a kind of
spiritual standing on some other poet's neck. According to Carlyle, one
must always be a hero against other men. Modern heroism consists in
being a hero with other men. The hero Against comes in the Twentieth
Century to be the hero With, and the modern hero is known, not by
cutting his enemies down, but by his absorbing and understanding them.
He drinks up what they wish they could do into what he does, or he
states what they believe better than they can state it. Combination or
cooeperation is the tremendous heroism of our present life.

I admit that I would be afraid of Carlyle's heroes having pedestals.
They have already--many of them--done a good deal of harm because they
have had pedestals, and because they would not get down from them.

But mine would.

With a man who is being a hero by cooeperation, getting down is part of
the heroism. And there is nev