The French revolution did disclose original men: among the twenty-five millions, at least one or two units. Some reckon in the present stage of the business, as many as three: Napoleon, Danton, Mirabeau. Whether more will come to light, or of what sort, when the computation is quite liquidated, one cannot say. Meanwhile, let the world be thankful for these three; as indeed, the world is; loving original men, without limit, were they never so questionable, well knowing how rare they are! To us, accordingly, it is rather interesting to observe how on these three also, questionable as they surely are, the old process is repeating itself; how these also are getting known in their true likeness. A second generation, relieved in some measure from the spectral hallucinations, hysterical ophthalmia, and natural panic-delirium of the first contemporary one, is gradually coming to discern and measure what its predecessor could only execrate and shriek over; for, as our proverb said, the dust is sinking, the rubbish-heaps disappear; the built house, such as it is, and was appointed to be, stands visible, better or worse. Of Napoleon Bonaparte, with so many bulletins, and such self-proclamation from artillery and battle-thunder, loud enough to ring through the deafest brain, in the remotest nook of this earth, and now, in consequence, with so many biographies, histories and historical arguments for and against, it may be said he can now shift for himself; that his true figure is in a fair way of being ascertained. Doubtless it will be found one day, what significance was in him; how, (we quote from a New-England book,) the man was a divine missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached through the cannons throat that great doctrine, La carrière ouverte aux talens, (the tools to him who can handle them,) which is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone can Liberty lie. Madly enough he preached it is true, as enthusiasts and first missionaries are wont; with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant; yet as articulately, perhaps, as the case admitted. Or call him if you will, an American backwoodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and even theft; whom, nevertheless, the peaceful sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless harvest, bless. From the incarnate Moloch, which the world once was, onward to to this quiet version, there is a considerable progress.
What are the conquests and expeditions of the whole corporation of captains, from Walter the Pennyless to Napoleon Bonaparte, compared with these moveable types of Johannes Faust? Truly, it is a mortifying thing for your conqueror to reflect, how perishable is the metal which he hammers with such violence; how the kind earth will soon shroud up his bloody foot-prints; and all which he achieved and skilfully piled together, will be but like his own canvass city of a camp; this evening loud with life, to-morrow all struck and vanished, a few earth-pits and heaps of straw! For here, as always, it continues true, that the deepest force is the stillest; that, as in the fable, the mild shining of the sun shall accomplish what the fierce blustering of the tempest has in vain essayed. Above all, it is ever to be kept in mind, that not by material but by mental power, are men and their actions governed. How noiseless is thought! No rolling of drums, no tramp of squadrons or immeasurable tumult of baggage-wagons, attends its movements; in what obscure and sequestered places may the head be meditating which is one day to be crowned with more than imperial authority; for kings and emperors will be among its ministering servants; it will rule not over, but in all heads, and with these, its solitary combinations of ideas, as with magic formulas, bend the world to its will! The time may come, when Napoleon himself will be better known for his laws than for his battles; and the victory of Waterloo prove less momentous than the opening of the first mechanics institute.
Brother Ringletule, the missionary, inquired of Ram-Dass, a Hindoo man-god, who had set up for godhead lately, what he meant to do then with the sins of mankind? To which Ram-Dass at once answers, he had fire enough in his belly to burn up all the sins in the world. Ram-Dass was right so far, and had a spice of sense in him; for surely it is the test of every divine man this same, and without it he is not divine or great; that he have fire in him to burn up somewhat of the sins of the world, of the miseries and errors of the world: why else is he there! Far be it from us to say that a great man must needs with benevolence prepense, become a friend of humanity; nay, that such professional self-conscious friends are not the fatalest kind of persons to be met with in our day. All greatness is unconscious or it is little and naught. And yet a great man without such fire in him, burning dim or developed as a divine behest in his heart of hearts, never resting till it be fulfilled, were a solecism in nature. A great man is ever, as the transcendentalists speak, possessed with an idea. Napoleon, himself not the superfinest of great men, and balanced sufficiently with prudence and egoisms, had nevertheless, as is clear enough, an idea to start with; the idea that democracy was the cause of man, the right and infinite cause. Nay, to the very last, he had a kind of idea, that, namely, of the tools to him that can handle them; really one of the best ideas yet promulgated on that matter, or rather the one true central idea, toward which all the others, if they tend any whither, must tend. Unhappily, it was only in the military province that Napoleon could realize this idea of his, being forced to fight for himself the while; before he got it tried to any extent in the civil province of things, his head by much victory grew light, (no head can stand more than its quantity,) and he lost head, as they say, and became a selfish ambitionist and quack, and was hurled out, leaving his idea to be realized, in the civil province of things, by others! Thus was Napoleon; thus are all great men: children of the idea; or, in Ram-Dass phraseology, furnished with fire to burn up the miseries of men.
Napoleon, Danton, Mirabeau, with fire-words (of public speaking) and fire whirlwinds (of cannon and musketry,) which for a season darkened the air, are perhaps at bottom but superficial phenomena.
Napoleon was the armed soldier of democracy, invincible while he continued true to that. He does by no means seem to me so great a man as Cromwell. His enormous victories, which reached over all Europe, while Cromwell abode mainly in our little England, are but as high stilts on which the man is seen standing; the stature of the man is not altered thereby. I find in him no such sincerity as in Cromwell; only a far inferior sort. No silent walking, through long years, with the Awful, Unnameable, of this universe; walking with God as he called it; and faith and strength in that alone: latent thought and valor, content to lie latent, then burst out as in a blaze of heavens lightning! Napoleon lived in an age when God was no longer believed; the meaning of all Silence, Latency, was thought to be Nonentity: he had to begin not out of the Puritan Bible, but out of poor, sceptical encyclopedias. This was the length the man carried it. Meritorious to get so far. His compact, prompt, every way articulate character, is in itself perhaps small compared with our great chaotic inarticulate Cromwells. Instead of dumb prophet struggling to speak, we have a portentious mixture of the Quack! Humes notion of the Fanatic-Hypocrite, with such truth as it has, will apply much better to Napoleon than it did to Cromwell, to Mahomet or the like, where indeed, taken strictly, it has hardly any truth at all. An element of blameable ambition shows itself from the first in this man; gets the victory over him at last, and involves him and his work in ruin.