Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/19

Rh the centuries he has traveled hither and yon. He conceived the myths of our religions; he fashioned the Vedas and the Orphic hymns; he wove the legends of the north; he improvised the themes of folk poetry. In the Middle Ages he carved the numberless statues of the Romanesque and the Gothic cathedrals, and covered chapel and refectory walls with unsigned frescoes. Then, too, he composed tales and legends: all those great books that bear no author's name are his.

But with the approach of modern times, when the stupid craze for signature came in, the Unknown Man ceased his activity, and was content to rest. An immense throng of vain fellows, of men who had a name or sought to make a name, began to paint, invent, carve, write. They had less genius than the Unknown Man, and they had also less modesty: they proclaimed to all the winds that they, and none but they, had done these things. They worked not only for their own joy or for others' benefit, but that the world might know that they, and none but they, had done the work.

But the Unknown Man did not remain permanently inactive. With the coming of democracy he turned to politics. The great modern revolutions have been due to him. The English Puritans, the American Revolutionists, the