the historians produce a saving conception of “greatness.” > “Greatness,” it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the “great” man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a “great” man can be
“ C’est grand! ” say the historians, and there no longer exists either good or evil but only “ grand ” and “not grand .” Grand is good, not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of some special animals called “heroes.” And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que c’est grand , and his soul is tranquil.
“ Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas ,” said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been repeating: “ Sublime! Grand! Napoléon le Grand! ”
Du sublime au ridicule il n’y a qu’un pas.
And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one’s own nothingness and immeasurable meanness.
For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.
XIX
What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret, dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered French, hungry and