Page:The History of San Martin (1893).djvu/506

476 can; he commands, obeys, abdicates, and condemns himself to eternal silence and eternal exile. Seldom has the influence of one man had more decisive effect on the destinies of a people. The greatness of those who attain to immortality is not measured by their talents, but by the effect exercised by their memory upon the conscience of humanity, making it vibrate from generation to generation with a passion or with an idea. Of such was San Martin, whose influence still lives, not by reason of any genius he possessed, but by reason of his character.

San Martin conceived great plans, political and military, which appeared at first to be folly, but when believed in became facts. He organized disciplined armies, and infused into them his own spirit. He founded republics, not for his own aggrandisement, but that men might live in freedom. He made himself powerful, only that by this power he might accomplish his destined task; he abdicated and went into exile, not from egoism or from cowardice, but in homage to his own principles and for the sake of his cause. He is the first captain in the New World, the only one who has given lessons in modern strategy on a new theatre of war. With all his intellectual deficiencies and his political errors the Revolution of South America has produced no other who was his equal.

Faithful to the maxims of his life, , and rather than be that which he ought not to be he preferred. For this his name shall be immortal.