Public Opinion | Page 3

south., In the center is the earth surrounded by ocean, which is in
turn surrounded by another earth, where men lived before the deluge.
This other earth was Noah's port of embarkation. In the north is a high
conical mountain around which revolve the sun and moon. When the

sun is behind the mountain it is night. The sky is glued to the edges of
the outer earth. It consists of four high walls which meet in a concave
roof, so that the earth is the floor of the universe. There is an ocean on
the other side of the sky, constituting the "waters that are above the
firmament." The space between the celestial ocean and the ultimate
roof of the universe belongs to the blest. The space between the earth
and sky is inhabited by the angels. Finally, since St. Paul said that all
men are made to live upon the "face of the earth" how could they live
on the back where the Antipodes are supposed to be? With such a
passage before his eyes, a Christian, we are told, should not 'even speak
of the Antipodes.'" [Footnote: _Id._]
Far less should he go to the Antipodes; nor should any Christian prince
give him a ship to try; nor would any pious mariner wish to try. For
Cosmas there was nothing in the least absurd about his map. Only by
remembering his absolute conviction that this was the map of the
universe can we begin to understand how he would have dreaded
Magellan or Peary or the aviator who risked a collision with the angels
and the vault of heaven by flying seven miles up in the air. In the same
way we can best understand the furies of war and politics by
remembering that almost the whole of each party believes absolutely in
its picture of the opposition, that it takes as fact, not what is, but what it
supposes to be the fact. And that therefore, like Hamlet, it will stab
Polonius behind the rustling curtain, thinking him the king, and perhaps
like Hamlet add:
"Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! I took thee for thy better;
take thy fortune."
2
Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public
only through a fictitious personality. Hence the modicum of truth in the
old saying that no man is a hero to his valet. There is only a modicum
of truth, for the valet, and the private secretary, are often immersed in
the fiction themselves. Royal personages are, of course, constructed
personalities. Whether they themselves believe in their public character,
or whether they merely permit the chamberlain to stage-manage it,
there are at least two distinct selves, the public and regal self, the
private and human. The biographies of great people fall more or less
readily into the histories of these two selves. The official biographer

reproduces the public life, the revealing memoir the other. The
Charnwood Lincoln, for example, is a noble portrait, not of an actual
human being, but of an epic figure, replete with significance, who
moves on much the same level of reality as Aeneas or St. George.
Oliver's Hamilton is a majestic abstraction, the sculpture of an idea, "an
essay" as Mr. Oliver himself calls it, "on American union." It is a
formal monument to the state-craft of federalism, hardly the biography
of a person. Sometimes people create their own facade when they think
they are revealing the interior scene. The Repington diaries and Margot
Asquith's are a species of self-portraiture in which the intimate detail is
most revealing as an index of how the authors like to think about
themselves.
But the most interesting kind of portraiture is that which arises
spontaneously in people's minds. When Victoria came to the throne,
says Mr. Strachey, [Footnote: Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria, p. 72.]
"among the outside public there was a great wave of enthusiasm.
Sentiment and romance were coming into fashion; and the spectacle of
the little girl-queen, innocent, modest, with fair hair and pink cheeks,
driving through her capital, filled the hearts of the beholders with
raptures of affectionate loyalty. What, above all, struck everybody with
overwhelming force was the contrast between Queen Victoria and her
uncles. The nasty old men, debauched and selfish, pigheaded and
ridiculous, with their perpetual burden of debts, confusions, and
disreputabilities--they had vanished like the snows of winter and here at
last, crowned and radiant, was the spring."
M. Jean de Pierrefeu [Footnote: Jean de Pierrefeu, _G. Q. G. Trois ans
au Grand Quartier General_, pp 94-95.] saw hero-worship at first hand,
for he was an officer on Joffre's staff at the moment of that soldier's
greatest fame:
"For two years, the entire world paid an almost divine homage to the
victor of the Maine. The