HKB
which cannot be self-deceived, the spirit which is a safeguard against fanaticism and hypocrisy, the sunlike warmth of intelligence without which the heart is a darkness full of unclean things.
The full development and crowning grace of such a manly nature Aristotle has tried to present in the character of the Great-souled man—him whom Plato has called the true king by divine right, or the autocrat by the patent of nature. Like all such attempts to delineate a type in the terms necessarily single and successive of abstract analysis, it tends occasionally to run into caricature, and to give partial aspects an absurd prominency. Only the greatest of artists could cope with such a task, though that artist may be found perhaps classed among the historians. Yet it is possible to form some conception of the ideal which Aristotle would set before us. The Great-souled man is great, and he dare not deny the witness of his spirit. He is one who does not quail before the anger and seek the applause of popular opinion: he holds his head as his own, and as high as his undimmed self-consciousness shows it is worth. There has been said to him by the reason within him the word that Virgil erewhile addressed to Dante:
“Libero, dritto, e sano è il tuo arbitrio E fallo fora non fare a suo cenno; Per ch’ io te sopra te corono e mitrio.”
He is his own Emperor and his own Pope. He is the perfected man, in whom is no darkness, whose soul is utter clearness, and complete harmony. Calm in self-possessed majesty, he stands, if need be, contra mundum: but rather, with the world beneath his feet. The chatter of personality has no interest for him. Bent upon the best, lesser competitions for distinction have no attraction for him. To the vulgar he will seem cold, self-confined: in his apartness and distinction they will see the signs of a “prig.” His look will be that of one who pities men—rather than loves them: and should he speak ill of a foe, it is rather out of pride of heart and unbroken spirit than because these things touch him. Such an one, in many ways, was the Florentine poet himself.