Fleeting Fame

Continuing with some words from John Watson, here he recounts how ordinary people do not experience fame, but so very few people do. Watson notes that fame very often does not last:

It is a consolation for an ordinary person to remember that he belongs to the vast majority of his race, and that if he be outdistanced in talk, he will succeed in the vote. Out of a hundred thousand inhabitants in a city only a handful would be recognized upon a public platform, and out of that handful some were not known yesterday, and will be forgotten to-morrow. The great man of one town may never have been heard of in the next town; his fame does not extend stations along the line. A few men have a national reputation, but it is always a question of argument whether this or that great name will survive its generation. A century in history only adds some score of names to the immortal roll of the ages. When the generations pass across the stage of time, we only identify a face here and there — a Moses, an Alexander, a Paul, a Luther, a Cromwell, a Napoleon, a Washington, a Newton, a Darwin, a Faraday — and the others, perhaps great in their day and doers of great marvels, are now reduced to shadows, to the level of the unknown.

Watson continues: "Perhaps an ordinary person may find comfort in the fact that, after all, nameless people have done some of the great works of human history."

We'll look at these people tomorrow.