Article August 26, 1916 Issue

From Our Exchanges

with contributions from Joseph Fort Newton, J. Collings Caton

[The Continent]

There is no greatness in anything pretended. Pretense is of itself a proof that the man is not as big as the size he covets. He "stretches himself overmuch" in order to reach what he would like to be. Ambition rears a hollow front of appearances to conceal his actually trifling stature. But the really great man has no ambition except to give himself at just what he is worth to the needs of his times. Being great, he knows he is worth something, and that worth is what he wants to put to use. But he fears to defeat the value of what he really is by representing himself to be anything which he is not. Any suspicion, therefore, that a man is playing a part—dealing doubly with intent to capture an esteem that would not naturally fall to him on his own merit—is equivalent to a denial of that man's greatness.

[Rev. Joseph Fort Newton, Litt. D., in The Christian Commonwealth]

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