Page:The Hero in History.djvu/111

Rh increases the odds of success for the alternative he chooses by virtue of the extraordinary qualities he brings to bear to realize it. At the very least, like Cæsar and Cromwell and Napoleon, he must free the path he has taken from opposition and, in so doing, display exceptional qualities of leadership. It is the hero as event-making man who leaves the positive imprint of his personality upon history an imprint that is still observable after he has disappeared from the scene. The merely eventful man whose finger plugs a dike or fires the shot that starts a war is rarely aware of the nature of the alternative he faces and of the train of events his act sets off.

It is easy to make a sharp distinction in analysis between the eventful man and the event-making man, but there are few historical figures that will fit comfortably into either classification. We must leave to historians the delicate task of ascertaining whether any particular “hero” of human history is, in respect to some significant happening, an event-making character—or merely lucky. That the classes defined by the distinction are not empty of members has been made apparent for eventful men and will be established for event-making men. Whether it is possible to treat these classes in terms of gradations or combinations of qualities common to both is doubtful: Yet the same historical personage may be eventful in one respect, event-making in another, and neither in a third.

It is not suggested that this approach is the only one that can be taken in evaluating the historical significance of individuals in history. For the nature of their influence may be expressed in ways so manifold that they sum up to a torrent, and yet at the same time in ways so indirect that it is difficult to trace their path.

The influence of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln on American life, on the ways Americans have thought and acted, has been enormous. Yet it would be difficult and perhaps irrelevant to classify them either as eventful or event-making. Jefferson wished to be remembered after he was gone as “the author of the Declaration of Independence, the Statute of Virginia for religious liberty, and father of the University of Virginia.” Yet separately or together these achievements do not indicate that he was an eventful or event-making man. There is much in the contemporary rhetoric of democracy which would now be different had Jefferson not composed the Declaration of Independence, but the vision and faith to which he gave such