TOPIC: ISSUE36 - "The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries."
　　WORDS: 430(644) TIME: 0:43:00 DATE: 2007-8-10
　　People usually try to decide the greatness of individuals, who lived before them and in the same time with them. When it comes to the decision of the greatness of individuals, there are always a host of different opinions held by different people in different fields.
　　Should the greatness of individuals be decided by those who live after them or by their contemporaries? Admittedly, mostly their contemporaries may not be able to decide it for some social influence.
　　However, even those who live after them may also make mistakes when deciding their greatness.
　　To begin with, people live in the same time period with individuals whose greatness they want to decide, usually have a biased attitude toward those individuals, not only because of the media, but also due to those people's ability to understand them. Common people always tend to be influenced by others' points of view as well as some social phenomenon. And many great individuals in history had such high competence and genuine capability that they surpassed the society of their time.
　　UFor example, Monet, one of the greatest novelists in history, wrote a large number of novels during his life, but unfortunately almost not a single of those novels was published by people in his time, for his novels could not be accepted by most critics, considered as the most insightful readers, let alone other common persons. Another example concerns Gogh, one of the greatest three post-impressionistic painters in history. As is well known that his paintings such as Sunflower and starry light that represented the most outstanding impressionistic works and are acknowledged by people all over the world today, were refused by all people of his time and Gogh was under such pressure, which drove him mad and committed suicide.U History is replete with such examples. In light of this, on many occasions, it is rather difficult for people to decide the greatness of an individual in the same time of them.
　　However, even people living after those individuals may still come to unjust conclusions when decide the greatness of them. Sometimes an individual's image has been described in an exaggerated way that leads to a hallowed image of the individual.U Consider, for example, Mao Zedong, the Chinese political leader, who led Chinese Communist Party victory against Kuomintang in the Chinese Civil War, and the People’s Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976, and most Chinese regard him as the greatest revolutionary military, political leader, poet, calligrapher and writer, to whom they think the establishment of People’s Republic of China can be attributed.
　　UYet, common sense tells us that there is no real person without even a single a flaw in an otherwise perfect character.
　　In fact, no one can decide the greatness of individuals totally object, no matter people who live in the same time period or those who live after them and perhaps only time could tell and decide an individual's greatness. It is impossible for someone to consider all the factors that may have an effect on the individual's greatness and should not be ignored while evaluating the greatness of an individual. How can you be entirely familiar with the social environment in a historical time period since you could never be on the scene for yourself? How can you Ube unacted onU all the social traditions, the social values and the comments on the individual's greatness that you try to decide? Anyway, we can only gradually approach the real greatness of an individual.
　　In summary, due to some exterior reasons, individuals' contemporaries often can not give an objective decision on the greatness of them. Yet, even people who live after them still cannot decide their greatness totally correctly, as they can never take into account all of circumstances of history. Only time will tell us about the greatness of individuals.

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