Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/152

140 the central fire now streaming from the sky, now rushing broad- sheeted and terrible as ground-lightning from the earth. Of such men there are but few, especially in the highest mode of this greatness. A single One makes a new world, and men date ages after him.

Next in order of greatness comes the organizer. He, also, must have great intellect, and character. It is no light work to make thoughts things. It requires mind to make a mill out of a river, bricks, iron, and stone, and set all the Connecticut to spinning cotton. But to construct a State, to harness fittingly twenty milKon men, animated by such divergent motives, possessing interests so unlike—this is the greatest work of constructive skill. To translate the ideas of the discoverer into institutions, to yoke men together by mere "abstractions," universal laws, and by such yoking save the liberty of all and secure the welfare of each—that is the most creative of poetry, the most constructive of sciences. In modern times, it is said, Napoleon is the greatest example of this faculty; not a discoverer, but an organizer of the highest power and on the largest scale. In human history he seems to have had no superior, perhaps no equal.

Some callings in life afford little opportunity to develop the great qualities above alluded to. How much genius lies latent no man can know; but he that walks familiarly with humble men often stumbles over masses of unsunned gold, where men proud in emptiness looked only for common dust. How many a Milton sits mute and inglorious in his shop; how many a Cromwell rears only corn and oxen for the world's use, no man can know. Some callings help to light, some hide and hinder. But there is none which demands more ability than politics ; they develop greatness, if the man have the germ thereof within him. True, in politics, a man may get along with a very little ability, without being a discoverer or an organizer; were it otherwise, we should not be blessed with a very large House, or a crowded Senate. Nay, experience shows that in ordinary times one not even a great administrator may creep up to a high place and hang on there awhile. Few able administrators sit on the thrones of Europe at this day. But if power be in the man, the hand of politics will draw out the spark.