Saturday 26 November 2016

The Passing of a Plum

"Hero-worship is a dangerous vice, and one of the minor merits of a democracy is that it does not encourage it, or produce that unmanageable type of citizen known as the Great Man.  It produces different kinds of small men - a much finer achievement.  But people who cannot get interested in the variety of life, and cannot make up their own minds, get discontented over this, and they long for a hero to bow down before and to follow blindly.  It is significant that a hero is an integral part of the authoritarian stock-in-trade today.  An efficiency-regime cannot be run without a few heroes stuck about it to carry off the dullness - much as plums have to be put into a bad pudding to make it palatable.  One hero at the top and a smaller one each side of him is a favourite arrangement and the timid and the bored are comforted by the trinity and, bowing down, feel exalted and strengthened."
 

No comments: