--I can tell her, she may give up the trade
altogether, then; we cannot do without Great Men!--But neither have I
any quarrel with that of "Liberty and Equality;" with the faith that,
wise great men being impossible, a level immensity of foolish small
men would suffice. It was a natural faith then and there. "Liberty and
Equality; no Authority needed any longer. Hero-worship, reverence for
_such_ Authorities, has proved false, is itself a falsehood; no more
of it! We have had such _forgeries_, we will now trust nothing. So
many base plated coins passing in the market, the belief has now become
common that no gold any longer exists,--and even that we can do very
well without gold!" I find this, among other things, in that universal
cry of Liberty and Equality; and find it very natural, as matters then
stood.

And yet surely it is but the _transition_ from false to true. Considered
as the whole truth, it is false altogether;--the product of entire
sceptical blindness, as yet only _struggling_ to see. Hero-worship
exists forever, and everywhere: not Loyalty alone; it extends from
divine adoration down to the lowest practical regions of life. "Bending
before men," if it is not to be a mere empty grimace, better dispensed
with than practiced, is Hero-worship,--a recognition that there does
dwell in that presence of our brother something divine; that every
created man, as Novalis said, is a "revelation in the Flesh." They were
Poets too, that devised all those graceful courtesies which make life
noble! Courtesy is not a falsehood or grimace; it need not be such.
And Loyalty, religious Worship itself, are still possible; nay still
inevitable.

May we not say, moreover, while so many of our late Heroes have worked
rather as revolutionary men, that nevertheless every Great Man, every
genuine man, is by the nature of him a son of Order, not of Disorder? It
is a tragical position for a true man to work in revolutions. He seems
an anarchist; and indeed a painful element of anarchy does encumber him
at every step,--him to whose whole soul anarchy is hostile, hateful.
His mission is Order; every man's is. He is here to make what was
disorderly, chaotic, into a thing ruled, regular. He is the missionary
of Order. Is not all work of man in this world a _making of Order_? The
carpenter finds rough trees; shapes them, constrains them into square
fitness, into purpose and use. We are all born enemies of Disorder:
it is tragical for us a