Page:The Hero in History.djvu/49

Rh implicit in the logical notion of man and in the organic necessities of social growth without which men could not become truly men, that is, free men, Hegel was convinced that he knew that the Germanic people were destined to become a unified nation and the final carriers of the torch of freedom. He did not base his knowledge, however, on the character of German economic or political history or on the heroic personal qualities of the Austrian Emperor or the King of Prussia, to whom he transferred his allegiance. His knowledge was derived from the dialectical necessity of the logical idea, of Freedom which seizes and is seized upon by the great men of action and thought. Similarly Spengler knows that each culture will have its Alexander, its Aristides, its Socrates, not because of any empirical evidence but in virtue of a metaphysical insight into the eternal life cycle of the social organism which cannot fulfil “the style of its soul” without men of this type.

On this view the greatness of any individual is apparent only after the event, when the consequences of what he has done have become plain and when judgment has become safe. Great men do not make history. They are evoked by “great times.” Great times are those transitional periods when mankind rises from one level of freedom and organization to another. The great man, therefore, will always be found, but whether he is found in the purple of royalty or in the beggar’s robe is relatively accidental.

In what then does greatness exist for Hegel? In some dim perception, translated ultimately into political action, of what the world order is to be. Great men like Cæsar, Alexander, and Napoleon are touched by the divine Reason which seems like madness to their sober contemporaries: It was not his [Cæsar’s] private gaia merely but an unconscious impulse that occasioned the accomplishment of that for which the time is ripe. Such are all great historical men—whose own particular aims involve these large issues which are the will of the world-spirit. They may be called Heroes, inasmuch as they have derived their purposes and their vocation, not from the calm, regular course of things, sanctioned by the existing order; but from a concealed fount—one which has not attained to phenomenal, present existence—from that inner Spirit, still hidden beneath the surface, which impinging on the outer world as a shell,