Issue36 --Hermes 求拍

qhx17UID: 142079

TOPIC: ISSUE36 - "The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries."
WORDS: 567          TIME: 上午 12:45:00          DATE: 2006-10-29

According to the title of the statement, the author claims that the greatness of individuals can be evaluated by the later generation besides the contemporaries. I agree the assertion in large, but I have several other aspect to supply the assertion.

A threshold point is that the latter can give an objective assertion to evaluate the greatness of individuals who lived before them. Because there is no interest and no parties relationship between the former generation and the later generation. Thus the latter generation can judge whether the person who lived before them is great. For example, in 1940s, civil war in China, people in that time might blame Jiang jieshi, who is the chairman of Kuonintang, for he did not struggle the equal right for peasants. Yet, nowadays we might appreciate his character glamour and his politic insight and his leading talent, we do not regard him the public enemy but a great leader and outstanding man. People in different positions might make different decisions. The latter generation makes a more fair decision than the contemporaries does.

Moreover, the later generation makes an evaluation of the preceded individual in history sight which is more macroscopic and integrate than contemporaries'. Because the later generation is the outsider of the contemporary circumstance and they know the whole process of the history evolvement. Sometimes contemporaries might confuse the one point of the whole process, thus they might evaluate the individual with insufficient evidence and with their own narrow vision. For instance, Lincoln, the 16th present in USA, led the Blake Slaves Liberation in South and was rejected by the South owner. Many people in that time, especially the owner of slaves did not realize the greatness of Lincoln, and even more he was murdered people who was disagree with the Lincoln's proposal. But right now Lincoln obtained a high honor by all people for his contribution of civil war, which makes human a great progress in history.

In additional, sometimes people might not realize the value of people devotion and the contribution brought about. As we all know that many inventions experience the process from rejection to approval to application. Like Wart, who invented the steam engine, was laugh at by public, and then his invention was applied in industry. In today viewpoint, he played an important role in the first industry revolution. How great Wart is, but the people in that time might think how foolish and miraculous Wart was.

Admittedly, the evaluation by the later generation based upon the record by history. While the later generation can make a objective evaluation, what they based on is unconvincing. For records left by preceded was written and described by the contemporaries. Common sense tells us that people wrote what had happened and how was the individual by their own viewpoint. If recorders liked the person, he might appreciate the greatness of that individual and record much contribution about the individual, and vice versa. Thus we might not fairly make a decision about the worth of the preceded devoted, because our failure is fundamentally based on the subjective history record.

To sum up, due to the aforementioned reasons, which sometimes intertwine to form an organic whole and thus become more persuasive than any single of them, we may safely arrive at the conclusion that the evaluation combining the later generation and the preceded generation might be fair to individual in history.