ust in some one clear instinct, are
essential to it; but the spontaneous variation must be in the
direction of some possible sort of order; it must exclude and leave
behind what is incapable of being moralised. How, then, should there
be any great heroes, saints, artists, philosophers, or legislators in
an age when nobody trusts himself, or feels any confidence in reason,
in an age when the word _dogmatic_ is a term of reproach? Greatness
has character and severity, it is deep and sane, it is distinct and
perfect. For this reason there is none of it to-day.

There is indeed another kind of greatness, or rather largeness of
mind, which consists in being a synthesis of humanity in its current
phases, even if without prophetic emphasis or direction: the breadth
of a Goethe, rather than the fineness of a Shelley or a Leopardi. But
such largeness of mind, not to be vulgar, must be impartial,
comprehensive, Olympian; it would not be greatness if its miscellany
were not dominated by a clear genius and if before the confusion of
things the poet or philosopher were not himself delighted, exalted,
and by no means confused. Nor does this presume omniscience on his
part. It is not necessary to fathom the ground or the structure of
everything in order to know what to make of it. Stones do not
disconcert a builder because he may not happen to know what they are
chemically; and so the unsolved problems of life and nature, and the
Babel of society, need not disturb the genial observer, though he may
be incapable of unravelling them. He may set these dark spots down in
their places, like so many caves or wells in a landscape, without
feeling bound to scrutinise their depths simply because their depths
are obscure. Unexplored they may have a sort of lustre, explored they
might merely make him blind, and it may be a sufficient understanding
of them to know that they are not worth investigating. In this way the
most chaotic age and the most motley horrors might be mirrored
limpidly in a great mind, as the Renaissance was mirrored in the works
of Raphael and Shakespeare; but the master's eye itself must be
single, his style unmistakable, his visionary interest in what he
depicts frank and supreme. Hence this comprehensive sort of greatness
too is impossible in an age when moral confusion is pervasive, when
characters are complex, undecided, troubled by the mere existence of
what is not congenial to them, eager to be not themselves; when, in