Issue36 【Persistence 小组】第二十五次作业，字数稍显多，计时没成功

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36. "The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries."


Can a person's greatness only be decided by those who live after them? In my point of view, the speaker unfairly draws that conclusion. In any areas, the greatness of individuals can be recognized by either the later generations or their contemporaries according to the cases.

First of all, no one can deny that the people live at the same period of the great persons have the capability to recognize the greatness of those celebrities who did deeply influence their contemporaries. In the realm of art, for example, many great works of art, such as music of Beethoven and novels of Mark Twain, which can spark the spirits of the contemporaries were accepted and appreciated by them even when these works have been created. Therefore, to some extent, the greatness of Beethoven and Mark Twain were decided by people live at the same time with them considering the short-term effects of their works. In addition, in the field of science, the greatness of scientists can also be recognized by the contemporaries. Stephen Hawking, one of the most preeminent theoretical physicists in our modern time, has worked on the basis laws which govern the universe and unified General Relativity with Quantum Theory. For his remarkable contribution to science, he has held the post of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, which held by Isaac Newton in 1669. This would not happen if modern people could not recognize the greatness of Stephen Hawking.

Compared with the contemporary persons, the later generations possess several advantages to evaluate the greatness of those celebrities. They have more time and opportunities to recognize and appreciate the greatness of the celebrated individuals. Take the example of the realm of art again, many distinguished works of art like the paintings of Picasso, have got nothing but ridicule at that time, but proved to be valuable and have profound effects on human mind. This indicates that people lived after the celebrities have more objective opportunities to decide the contribution of the outstanding persons without the influences given by contemporary media and people, and with passing of time, later generation can have more time to appreciate the greatness by study the long-term effects given by those celebrities.

Furthermore, judging the greatness of individuals is a continuous process. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the greatness of individuals can only be decided in one perspective, as a result, people, either the contemporaries or the later generation, will evaluate the greatness of the celebrities continuously and try to figure out as much perspectives of the greatness as possible. On the one hand, the contemporary people evaluate the celebrities according to their own experience. On the other hand, later generations have opportunities to get more objective and complete views on the efforts made by the eminent individuals.

In sum, the speaker's opinion that only those who live after an individual can they decide the greatness of him/her is groundless is prejudiced. Both long-term and short-term effects which have been given by the greatness of individuals can be decided respectively by people live after the great persons and those who exist at the same era of the celebrities, and therefore, both the later generations and the contemporaries have the capability to evaluate the greatness of individuals.