ty.
Since his forced participation in the war, he had been obliged to
acknowledge that this folly was so largely expiated by suffering that
it would be superfluous to add anything to it. Man had made his own
hell upon earth, and there was no need of further condemnation. He was
on leave, at Paris, when he came across Clerambault's articles which
showed him that there was something better for him to do than to set
himself up as a judge of his companions in misery; that it would be
far nobler to try to deliver them while taking his share of the common
burden.

The young disciple was disposed to go farther than his master.
Clerambault, who was naturally affectionate and rather weak, found his
joy in communion with other men, and suffered even when divided in
spirit from their errors. He was a confirmed self-doubter. He was
prone to look in the eyes of the crowd for agreement with his ideas.
He exhausted himself in futile efforts to reconcile his inward beliefs
with the aspirations and the social struggles of his time. Froment,
who had the soul of a chieftain in a helpless body, dauntlessly
maintained that for him who bears the torch of a lofty ideal it is an
absolute duty to hold it high over the heads of his comrades; that
it would be wrong to confuse it in the other illuminations. The
commonplace of democracies that Voltaire had less wit than Mr.
Everybody is nonsense.... "_Democritus ait; Unus mihi pro populo
est_.... To me an individual is as good as a thousand." ... Our modern
faith sees in the social group the summit of human evolution, but
where is the proof? Froment thought the greatest height was reached
in an individual superiority. Millions of men have lived and died to
produce one perfect flower of thought, for such are the superb and
prodigal ways of nature. She spends whole peoples to make a Jesus, a
Buddha, an Aeschylus, a Vinci, a Newton, or a Beethoven; but without
these men, what would the people have been? Or humanity itself? We do
not hold with the egotist ideal of the Superman. A man who is great
is great for all his fellows; his individuality expresses and often
guides millions of others; it is the incarnation of their secret
forces, of their highest desires; it concentrates and realises
them. The sole fact that a man was Christ, has exalted and lifted
generations of humanity, filling them with the divine energy; and
though nineteen centuries have since passed, millions have not ceased
to aspire to