Crowds Part 45

The part that must be saved first and provided for first is that slippery little s.h.i.+ny streak under the bark.

One could dig out a huge brush-heap of roots and the tree would live.

One could pick off millions of leaves, could cut cords of branches out of it, or one could make long hollows up to the sun, tubes to the sky out of trees, and they would live, if one still managed to save those little delicate pipe lines for Sap, running up and running down, day and night, night and day, between the light in heaven and the darkness in the ground.

Perhaps Men are valuable in proportion as it would be difficult to produce promptly other men to perform their functions, or to take their places.

If we cut away in society men of genius, leaves, and blossoms, in trees, men who reach down Heaven to us, they grow out again.

If we cut away in society great ma.s.ses of roots, common men who hew out the earth in the ground and get earth ready to be heaved up to the sky--the roots grow out again.

But if we cut a little faint rim around it of artists, of inventive men-controllers, of the Sap-conductors, the men who make the Hewers run up to the sky and who make the geniuses come down to the ground, the men who run the tree together, who out of dark earth and bright suns.h.i.+ne build it softly--if we destroy these, this little rim of great men or men who save others, a totally new tree has to be begun.

It is the essence of a democracy to acknowledge that some men for the time being are more important in it than others, and that these men, whosoever they are, in whatever order of society they may be--poor, rich, famous, obscure--these men who think for others, who save others and invent others, who make it possible for others to invent themselves, these men shall be saved first.

One always thinks at first that one would like to make a diagram of human nature. It would be neat and convenient.

Then one discovers that no diagram one can make of human nature--unless one makes what might be called a kind of squirming diagram will really work.

Then one tries to imagine what a flowing diagram would be like.

Then it occurs to one, one has seen a flowing diagram.

A Tree is a flowing diagram.

So I am putting down on this page for what it may be worth, what I have called A Family Tree of Folks.

_Read across_:

=INVENTORS= =ARTISTS= =HEWERS=

Inventors Organizers Labourers

Imagination Applied Imagination Tool or Mechanism

Fecundity Control Activity

Seer Poet Actor

{ The Man who Sees the } The Man who Generalizes {General in the Particular} Action

The Deeper Permanent {The Immediate Significance} Hewing Significance { or Meaning }

Light Applied Light or Heat Applied Heat or Motion

Stevenson and Wall James J. Hill Railway Hands

Creating Creative Selecting Hewing

The Democrat {The Aristocrat or} The Crowd { Crowdman }

G.o.ds Heroes Men

Centrifugal Power Equilibrium Centripetal Power

The Whirl-Out People The Centre People The Whirl-In People

Alexander Graham Bell Telephone-Vail Hands

Architect Contractor Carpenter

Genius Artist Workmen

Columbus Columbus Isabella and the sailors

The Prospector The Engineer }Scoopers, Grabbers }(in mind or body), }Hewers

David the poet David the king David the soldier

Shakespeare Shakespeare Shakespeare

CHAPTER XVIII

THE MAN WHO PULLS THE WORLD TOGETHER

The typical mighty man or man of valour in our modern life is the Organizer or Artist.

If a man has succeeded in being a great organizer, it is because he has succeeded in organizing himself.

A man who has organized himself is a man who has built a personality.

The main fact about a man who has succeeded in being an organized man or personality is, that he has ordered himself around.

Naturally, when other people have to be ordered around, being full-head-on in the habit of ordering, even ordering himself, the hardest feat of all, he is the man who has to be picked out to order other people. As a rule the man who orders himself around successfully, who makes his whole nature or all parts of himself work together, does it because he takes pains to find out who he is and what he is like. If he orders other men successfully and makes them work together it is because he knows what they are like.

A man knows what other people are like and bow they feel by having times of being a little like them and by being a big, latent all-possible, all-round kind of man.

Leaders.h.i.+p follows.

Modern business consists in getting Inventors' minds and Hewers' minds to work together. The ruler of modern business is the man who by experience or imagination is half an Inventor himself, and half a Hewer himself. He knows how inventing feels and how hewing feels.

He has a southern exposure toward Hewers and makes Hewers feel identified with him. He has what might be called an eastern exposure toward men of genius, understands the inventive temperament, has the kind of personality that evokes inventiveness in others.

Incidentally he has what might be called a northern exposure which keeps him scientific, cool, and close to the spirit of facts.