There are many great people in our history. But we can find that many people have their standards to evaluate whether the people is great. Someone think that the greatness of individuals will be decided by contemporaries, but not the people who live after them. I don’t agree on it very much. Holding the opposite views, I think that the greatest is beyond the evaluating of the people those who live after the predecessors.
Of course, somebody are all being respected by many people, whose faiths are the most popular and convinced of in the society, such as Present MaoZedong in China, Present Hitle in Germany and so on. The former give the new China and a public country to the world, though he lead to a elimination of the modern humanism, which was called the Civilization Revolution. The latter, who gives the world the Second War and a worst adversity, which make the world economic depression for many years after the war. You can find that many people adored the Present Mao losing their wits in the Civilization Revolution. The Present Mao was the greatest people by their heart, even they think he was their immortal. What Present Mao said were faith and what he want the people to do were the people in the society should do. At that time, the greatness of Present Mao was thought by his contemporaries. But now we can find that Present Mao usually in the evaluation that he gives seventy percent contribution to China and thirty percent destruction to the development of China. As the same example as Present Mao, Present Hitle in Germany also made their citizen to believe him and satisfy his authority. But there are 84.6% people thinking that his action is the most failure in the history of Germany in the contemporary society.
Besides this, there are some people, who weren’t known very much in the period of theirs, to devote their lives to the contribution to the society. For example, the first mayor of the Beijing in the new China, whose name is PengZheng, wasn’t known very much at that time. But he provides the first opinion of the area economic development in China. When he major in his work, he try his best to manage the Beijing and give some frameworks for the economic of Beijing. He also divided the Old Beijing into the four area according to the different economic characters in Beijing. His work is silent at that time, but it is the framework of the developing of the modern Beijing. And many big cities learn from his opinions to manage their economic and make a good mark in the history of China.
I insist on that we think some people are great, not only according to their contribution to their contemporary society, but also how long the impact of the contribution will be on and whether the contribution will be more and more year by year. The greatness is changing according the ideas of the changed society and it is the impact on the modern time. If the greatness just was limited beyond the short time, it will be much more dull and there will be no value for us to discuss it. So the greatness of individuals is decided only by those people who live after them but not their contemporaries.