- 最后登录
- 2018-6-29
- 在线时间
- 6 小时
- 寄托币
- 59
- 声望
- 0
- 注册时间
- 2003-4-13
- 阅读权限
- 40
- 帖子
- 6
- 精华
- 10
- 积分
- 3415
- UID
- 131655
  
- 声望
- 0
- 寄托币
- 59
- 注册时间
- 2003-4-13
- 精华
- 10
- 帖子
- 6
|
原文
36"The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries."
正文
After a long history, there have been a lot of famous people who dedicate their lives to their great enterprise and work out many influential effects. People always intend to appraise a person in any kind of language whenever they find this person’s greatness or historical status. However, people are always faced with this dilemma: whether the contemporaries or the people live after them could determine the greatness of individuals. We should not make a hasty answer and I think we have to discuss these issues as followed.
At first, the different criterions and basis decide that an individual will have distinctive comments by people from different eras, cultures, and classes. As time goes by, the society has been altered so greatly that people in different periods would have dissimilar perspectives on the same person from points of view of dissimilar ideologies and values. Thus it is difficult to integrate their attitudes and draw an accordant conclusion. Columbus, who discovered the American continent, leaded the European to explore resources and ancient civilization on this continent. His feat brings us the whole America and let us found the modern society in this new world. Nevertheless, Columbus was considered as a messenger of the devil by the aboriginal American who lived there for thousands of years. They were forced to be homeless and became the slaves for those European immigrants. In this way, the great explorer would be a Satan as well.
Moreover, people’s merits are not easily found in a short term, while their limitations are hardly to be discovered.
Van Gogh, one of the great artists in the nineteen century, as an example, drew a lot of paintings which are thought to the most wonderful masterpieces in the world at present. Even though his works are sold at an invaluable price, he lived a miserable live and often could not have a penny to buy a bar of bread. Chairman Mao, as another instance, was apotheosized in nearly three ten years after he constitute a new government in China. After his death, however, the rational people gradually realized that Mao also brought the country some misfortune such as the institutional revolution. Since he saved people from the previous autocracy and leaded them to a better life, they regarded him as a deity. At the same time, he was regarded as a mortal again for his reign ruins the later generation’s interests. So the greatness of an individual sometimes could not be found in a hurry.
The last but not the least, the comments on an individual by people from different periods will be helpful for us to comprehend and understand this person more profoundly. People never remark on another person at random. Their critiques are always based on the influence made by that person. So the people’s attitudes in different time can well inflect an individual’s importance. Not any side of them could solely determine the conclusion of a person.
In summary, it is not proper for the people from any periods to simply determine an individual’s greatness. In our democratic society, every person has his/her right to make any comments on others, especially the famous people, to express their perspectives on these people. We should synthesize these dissimilar points from different time, not let one of them decide the others. |
|