The meaning of this sentence is well illustrated by
some Words of Jesus Christ, when he was denouncing the spiritual blindness of
the Jewish religious leaders, who rejected his teaching – “woe unto you,
scribes and Pharisees. Hypocrites for yet build the sepulchres of the prophets
and say, if we had been in the days of our father. He should not have been
partakers with them in the blood of: he prophets. Wherefore eye witness to
yourselves that ye are sons of: hem that slew the prophets. For the sentence at
the head of this .essay means that the men who were regarded as fools by the
people their own time, are revered as wise men to day by a later generation.
Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, is himself a good illustration of
the sentence. In his own time, he was regarded as Impostor or a madman by all
except a handful of followers, and at last hounded to death by his own people
yet today he is revered by millions as the world’s greatest religious teacher
and moral example, and acknowledged as one of the greatest men of history even
by those who do not accept his religion.
The fact is that the greatness of a wise man is
really never Fully appreciated by his contemporaries. He is like a great
mountain, which cannot be seen by dwellers at its foot, but only by those at a
distance. As Christ again said, “No prophet is acceptable in his own country”.
Very few understand at first an original thinker, and so they laugh at him and
dub him a fool, and perhaps persecute him. But the next generations sees him in
his true perfection and, realizing his greatness, revere him as a wise man.
Socrates, the famous Greek philosopher, is another
good illustration of the truth of this statement. Except by a few followers,
like the philosopher Plato, Socrates was regarded by the Athenians as either a
fool or a pestilent nuisance, and was accused of undermining religion and
corrupting the youth of Athens. So strong was the feeling against him that he
was eventually condemned to death; and forced to drink the fatal hemlock
poison. His great discipline, Plato, afterwards expounded the principles and
philosophy of Socrates in a series of charming books; and for centuries
Socrates has been revered as one of the greatest thinkers and noblest
characters the world has known.
Many other example could be given of the same
truth. Dr. Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination against small-pox, was
ridiculed by the public and excommunicated by the medical profession. When he
first announced his discovery. George Stephenson, the inventor of the locomotive
engine, was at first laughed at as a foolish crank; Jules Verne, who prophesied
in his novels in the middle of the 19th century the coming of the submarine and
the airship. Was thought to be a Titer of fairy tales for children.