It is the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age.
Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.
Those who have read history with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives which represent individuals as effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd suppose.
