Page:The Hero in History.djvu/21

Rh symbol, an index, an expression, an instrument, or a consequence of historical laws. To be sure, distinguishing traits between a great man and other men are recognized. But as a forceful writer of this school has put it, “The ‘distinguishing traits’ of a person are merely individual scratches made by a higher law of (social) development.” On the other hand, we have the conception of the possibility of perpetual transformation of history by innovators whose existence, strategic position, and shattering effect upon their fellow men cannot ever be derived from the constellation of social forces of their day. Intermediate views have not been wanting. They have expressed little more than the eclectic belief that sometimes the great man and sometimes the weight of environment controls the direction of historical change. But they have not specified the general conditions under which these factors acquire determining significance.

Once the theoretical question is firmly grasped, no one interested in understanding history can escape formulating some answer to it. There has hardly been a great period or outstanding individual in history that has not been handled differently by historians with varying attitudes toward the question. During the twentieth century the overwhelming majority of historians have been in unconscious thralldom to one or another variety of social determinism. This has not prevented them from conducting fruitful investigation. Much light has been thrown on the fabric of social life of past times and on the slow accumulation of social tensions which discharge themselves with volcanic fury during periods of revolution. Without impugning the validity of their findings, one wonders whether they have done as much justice to the activity of the leading personalities during the critical periods of world history whose roots they have uncovered so well. Too many figures of history have been surrendered for exploitation to belle-lettrists and professional biographers who draw their subjects with one literal eye on earlier portraits and one imaginative eye on Hollywood.

5. The psychological sources of interest in great men may, with as much justification, be regarded as means by which great men exert influence on their followers. These sources are, briefly, (a) the need for psychological security, (b) the tendency to seek compensation for personal and material limitations, and (c) the flight from responsibility which expresses itself sometimes in a grasping for simple solutions and sometimes in a surrender of political interest to professional politicians. These sources are