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A Discourse Occasioned by the Death of Daniel Webster
A Discourse Occasioned by the Death of Daniel Webster Author:Theodore Parker Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: coveted. Then, and so long as human affairs are controlled by brute force, the giant is thought to be the great man, — is had in honor for his eminent brute stre... more »ngth. When men have a little outgrown that period of force, cunning is the quality most prized. The nimble brain outwits the heavy arm, and brings the circumvented giant to the ground. He who can overreach his antagonist, plotting more subtly, winning with more deceitful skill; who can turn and double on his unseen track, " can smile and smile, and be a villain," — he is the great man. Brute force is merely animal; cunning is the animalism of the intellect, — the mind's least intellectual element. As men go on in their development, finding qualities more valuable than the strength of the lion or the subtlety of the fox, they come to value higher intellectual faculties, — great understanding, great imagination, great reason. Power to think is then the faculty men value most; ability to devise means for attaining ends desired; the power to originate ideas, to express them in speech, to organize them into institutions ; to organize things into a machine, men into an army, or a state, or a gang of operatives; to administer these various organizations. He who is eminent in this ability is thought the great man. But there are qualities nobler than the mere intellect, the moral, the affectional, the religious faculties, — the power of justice, of love, of holiness, of trust in God, and of obedience to his law, — the Eternal Right. These are the highest qualities of man : whoso is most eminent therein is the greatest of great men. He is as much above the merely intellectual great men, as they above the men of mere cunning or of force. Thus, then, we have four different kinds of greatness. Let me name them bodily greatn...« less