Such language as all this is hardly that of a disciple to a master, in respect of theories and principles which he is making his own for the use of a lifetime.  “There has been no attempt” [in these pages], I said in winding up, “to palliate either the shallowness or the practical mischievousness of the Social Contract.  But there is another side to its influence.  We should be false to our critical principle, if we do not recognise the historical effect of a speculation scientifically valueless.”  Any writer would have stamped himself as both unfit for the task that I had undertaken, and entirely below the level of the highest critical standard of the day, if he had for a moment dreamed of taking any other point of view.

As for historical hero-worship, after Carlyle’s fashion, whether with Jacobin idols or any other, it is a mood of mind that must be uncongenial to anybody who had ever been at all under the influence of Mill.  Without being so foolish as to disparage the part played by great men in great crises, we could have no sympathy with the barbaric and cynical school, who make greatness identical with violence, force, and mere iron will.  Cromwell said, in vindication of himself, that England had need of a constable, and it was true.  The constable, the soldier, the daring counsellor at the helm, are often necessities of the time.  It is often a necessity of the time that the energy of a nation or of a movement should gather itself up in a resolute band or a resolute chief; as the revolutionary energy of France gathered itself up in the greater Jacobins, or that of England in Oliver Cromwell.  Goethe says that nature bids us “Take all, but pay.”  Revolutions and heroes may give us all, but not without price.  This is at the best, and the best is the exception.  The grandiose types mostly fail.  In our own day, people talk, for example, with admiration of Cromwell’s government in Ireland,—­as if it were a success, instead of being one of the worst chapters in the whole history of Irish failure.  It was force carried to its utmost.  Hundreds were put to the sword, thousands were banished to be slaves of the planters in the West Indies, and the remnant were driven miserably off into the desolate wilds of Connaught.  But all this only prepared the way for further convulsions and deadlier discontent.

It is irrational to contrast Carlyle’s heroes, Cromwell, Mirabeau, Frederick, Napoleon, with men like Washington or Lincoln.  The circumstances were different.  The conditions of public use and of personal greatness were different.  But if we are to talk of ideals, heroes, and models, I, for one, should hardly look to France at all.  Jefferson was no flatterer of George Washington; but his character of Washington comes far nearer to the right pattern of a great ruler than can be found in any of Carlyle’s splendid dithyrambs, and it is no waste of time to recall and to transcribe it:—­