What Truly Makes A Man Great?
My personal definition for greatness: "Greatness is the extent to which you are able to tune reality to you."
Emerson gives us examples:
"A man Cæsar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man... and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons."
And Hegel describes this further:
"Such are all great historical men, whose own particular aims involve those 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... from that inner Spirit, still hidden beneath the surface, which, impinging on the outer world as on a shell, bursts it in pieces, because it is another kernel than that which belonged to the shell in question."
Been working so hard for this master’s aaaaand now I’m in Bordeaux, being the youngest researcher in the room, surrounded by scientists whose studies I read, and having a fab supper with them. A reminder that life gets so good when you persevere and consistently put in the work!