8. The Role of Prophet - Page 2

contempt and loathing. But society is mistaken. No man is bound to
martyrise himself; in a great many cases a man is bound to do the exact
opposite. He has given hostages to Fortune, and his first duty is to the
hostages. "We ask you for bread," his children may well say, "and you
give us a noble moral lesson. We ask you for clothing, and you supply us
with a beautiful poetical fancy." This is not according to bargain. Wife
and children have a first mortgage on a man's activities; society has
only a right to contingent remainders.

A great many sensible men who had truths of deep import to deliver to
the world must have recognised these facts in all times and places, and
must have held their tongues accordingly. Instead of speaking out the
truths that were in them, they must have kept their peace, or have
confined themselves severely to the ordinary platitudes of their age and
nation. Why ruin yourself by announcing what you feel and believe, when
all the reward you will get for it in the end will be social ostracism,
if not even the rack, the stake, or the pillory? The Shelleys and
Rousseaus there's no holding, of course; they _will_ run right into it;
but the Goethes--oh, no, they keep their secret. Indeed, I hold it as
probable that the vast majority of men far in advance of their times
have always held their tongues consistently, save for mere common
babble, on Lord Chesterfield's principle that "Wise men never say."

The _rôle_ of prophet is thus a thankless and difficult one. Nor is it
quite certainly of real use to the community. For the prophet is
generally too much ahead of his times. He discounts the future at a
ruinous rate, and he takes the consequences. If you happen ever to have
read the Old Testament you must have noticed that the prophets had
generally a hard time of it.

The leader is a very different stamp of person. _He_ stands well abreast
of his contemporaries, and just half a pace in front of them; and he has
power to persuade even the inertia of humanity into taking that one
half-step in advance he himself has already made bold to adventure. His
post is honoured, respected, remunerated. But the prophet gets no
thanks, and perhaps does mankind no benefit. He sees too quick. And
there can be very little good indeed in so seeing. If one of us had been
an astronomer, and had discovered the laws of Kepler, Newton, and
Laplace in the thirteenth century, I think he would have been wise to
keep the discovery to himself for a few hundred years or so. Otherwise,
he would have been burned for his trouble. Galileo, long after, tried
part of the experiment a decade or so too soon, and got no good by it.
But in moral and social matters the danger is far graver. I