XII.
The great man, who has proved himself, knows himself; unconsciousness is the condition of ignorant genius. Toussaint had expressed in deeds, inACTIONS, the dumb aspirations of his race for freedom, self-development and manhood; he had given them a chance to rise, and they felt it in every throb of their susceptible hearts, and they told him so in their love and loyalty to his person and commands. He was a leader of men, and he accepted his position with its powers and its cares.
He who retires from men, and dreams in the serene solitude of his hermitage, may solace himself with great thoughts, and poetic ideas and vague hopes—he may be a philosopher.
But such is not the fullest manifestation of God. It is when Thought is crystallized into Action; for a good deed is greater than a good word.
Nebulous, undefined, shadowy, matter floats in space till God speaks his thought in Act—then the vague, misty mass comes into harmonious order, and goes on its certain way through the boundless sky, a brilliant, beautiful star—a guide to the uncertain mariner, and the wandering fugitive, and the home for unknown life.
Creation is the speech—the Word of God.
Whoever, therefore, brings Order out of Chaos, Life and Action out of Thought and Aspiration, approaches to God, and such are the men whom the world (in the past) has deified: such were Hercules and Osiris, Confucius and Budha, Mahomet and Thor: these were godlike men.
Such, also, were Oberlin, Cromwell, Winthrop, Penn, Oglethorpe, and Washington.
Such, too, was Toussaint Louverture.