Читать книгу Rebels and Reformers: Biographies for Young People онлайн

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We have chosen men who are not actually connected with one another in any way. But although they lived in different lands and in different centuries, they are linked by the same qualities; the same strain runs through them all of fearlessness, moral courage, and independence of character. Most of them were accounted rebels in their day, but the rebel of one century is often the hero of the next. Though there may be a strong resemblance in the aims of these men, their personalities are different. For instance, there could not be two men more unlike one another than Voltaire and Tolstoy, yet they both devoted their energy and their genius to fighting superstition and shams. Most of our heroes recognized no authority but that of their own conscience, and each of them helped in his way the advance of progress in his country and in the mind of humanity.

The twelve men chosen are not all perhaps the most famous, or what is commonly called the “greatest,” that might have been selected. But that is one of the reasons we have written about them. While every one knows the story of Galileo, but few may have read about Tycho Brahe; Luther is a familiar figure and Savonarola, perhaps, only a name; many lives have been written of President Lincoln, but some have never read of William Lloyd Garrison; Garibaldi is renowned, but Mazzini’s work for Italy has not often been described.