the appearance of great minds is as
inexplicable to us as if they had dropped among us from another planet.
Who will tell us why they have arisen when they did, and why they did
what they did, and nothing else? I do not deny that such a science is
conceivable; because each mind, however great or strange, may be the
result of fixed and unerring laws of life: and it is conceivable, too,
that such a science may so perfectly explain the past, as to be able to
predict the future; and tell men when a fresh genius is likely to arise
and of what form his intellect will be. Conceivable: but I fear only
conceivable; if for no other reason, at least for this one. We may grant
safely that the mind of Luther was the necessary result of a combination
of natural laws. We may go further, and grant, but by no means safely,
that Luther, was the creature of circumstances, that there was no self-
moving originality in him, but that his age made him what he was. To
some modern minds these concessions remove all difficulty and mystery:
but not, I trust, to our minds. For does not the very puzzle de quo
agitur remain equally real; namely, why the average of Augustine monks,
the average of German men, did not, by being exposed to the same average
circumstances as Luther, become what Luther was? But whether we allow
Luther to have been a person with an originally different character from
all others, or whether we hold him to have been the mere puppet of
outside influences, the first step towards discovering how he became what
he was, will be to find out what he was. It will be more easy, and, I am
sorry to say, more common to settle beforehand our theory, and explain by
it such parts of Luther as will fit it; and call those which will not fit
it hard names. History is often so taught, and the method is popular and
lucrative. But we here shall be of opinion, I am sure, that we only can
learn causes through their effects; we can only learn the laws which
produced Luther, by learning Luther himself; by analyzing his whole
character; by gauging all his powers; and that--unless the less can
comprehend the greater--we cannot do till we are more than Luther
himself. I repeat it. None can comprehend a man, unless he be greater
than that man. He must be not merely equal to him, because none can see
in another elements of character which he has not already seen in
himself: he must be greater; because to comprehend him thoroughly, he
must be a