14号就考了，issue 36 求拍

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提纲
1. 个人的伟大只能由后人评价——这个断言没有触及问题的实质。一个人的伟大被今人还是后人决定，这依赖于他的成就与贡献是在当时还是在后世被认识到。那么根据不同的领域、不同的时代以及不同的具体事例，会有不同的情况。
2. 对于某些领域，个人成就很容易在当时就被承认。举例：产业界，体育界和娱乐界。
3. 另一些领域则情况复杂。对于科学领域而言，神权统治时代的科学家，由于挑战传统观念和统治者利益，思想不能广泛传播，科学家本人还要遭到迫害；近代以来，由于科学的普及，科学家的成就很容易被社会认可，因而成就科学家的伟大。
4.在艺术领域，由于艺术本身是艺术家本人情感与思想的表达，因此，什么时候艺术家的思想感情能被人们从他的作品中解读，什么时候就能决定一位艺术家是否伟大；梵高与毕加索作为例子相对比。
5. 总结：一个人的成就与伟大是客观存在的，强调一个人的伟大何时为社会所承认依赖于此人的成就与贡献何时被发现。

There exists dispute about the issue whether the greatness of individuals should be evaluated by their contemporaries or by people after those individuals' time. The author claims that only the people who live after those individuals can decide their greatness. It cannot be denied that many individuals with brilliant minds greatly excess their contemporaries' understanding. However, such an assertion does not meet the essence of the problem, and excessively simplifies the problem. In fact, whether the greatness of individuals can be decided by their contemporaries depends on whether their ideas or achievements can be accepted in their living time. The situations should be different in various social realms and various times.

In some specific fields, individuals' achievements can soon be accepted by society. Such a case can be easily found in industrial and business area. A person who leads a revolution in production or brings attractive new ideas into products can affect and change people's lives quickly, and then he can be regarded as greatness by his contemporary. Such as Henry Ford, whose innovation in automobile production created a system of modern industry. The same situation exists in the areas of sports and entertainment. Several influential championships can make a player to be a great athlete; singers or actors, whose works can continuously be favored by public for decades, can be called great singers or actors.

However, it is much more complicated in other social realms, for example – the scientific area. In the age of theocracy, new ideas or new theories were hard to be understood and accepted by people who were blinded by religious doctrines and had poor scientific knowledge; on the other hand and even more seriously, Dominators did not wish that their people were enlightened by the new theories and discoveries which challenged the authority of the religion, and doubted on the legality of theocracy. Nicolaus Copernicus, famous astrologist in 16th century, was pressed and persecuted by the church for his heliocentric theory; Galileo Galilei, another great astrologist and an adherent of Copernicus, was forced to abandon his point of view; Giordano Bruno, who supported and improved the theory of Copernicus, was sentenced to death by the inquisition. As a consequence, all these situations blocked many scientific achievements of some individuals to get social acceptance. On the contrary, after the scientific spirit became the mainstream of people's minds instead of religious doctrines, new ideas and new discoveries, if they are helpful to resolve problems and have been proved by scientific procedures, can be easily accepted by public. The experience of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and other famous modern scientists who all achieved great honor in their living times provide us convincing examples.

The situation in the area of art is also complicated. As Lev Tolstoy said, "Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling theorist has experienced.". This means that people can realize the values of an art work only when they have understood and accepted the artist's feelings and minds inherent in it. Only through such a process, the greatness of an artist can be recognized by public. Different situations happened to different artists. Vincent van Gogh, a representative Impressionistic painter, was unknown in his living age because the style of his paintings went far beyond his contemporaries understanding. Most of people could not read van Gogh's feeling and thinking from his works until his biography was published more than 40 years after his death. From then on, people began to praise the greatness of van Gogh. In sharp contrast with van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, a famous Spanish painter, had millions of admirers all over the world, and is regarded as one of the greatest painters in 20th century not only for his paintings but also for his condemning to the atrocities of Fascist Germany and Italy during the Spanish Civil War.

From the previous case-by-case analysis, we can realize that the greatness of one person is an objective being whether it was discovered by the person's contemporaries or not. For some of those great figures, their achievements or contributions could get to understood in their living times. Then the greatness of such individuals could be decided by their contemporaries. Contrarily, other great persons' achievements or contributions were unable to be recognized by their contemporaries for different aspects of reasons. As a consequence, the value of them only depends on people who live after them to discover.