George Washington came of a family that must be called undistinguished, unless a persistent mediocrity, enduring many generations, is in itself a distinction. With the exception of the illustrious George there is no record of a Washington who ever attained anything more than a quickly fading celebrity. The name is unknown in science, in literature, in art, in commerce, in large-scale industry.
The historian McMaster called Washington the most elusive character in history, and he is not alone in his opinion. Whatever other qualities our Country's Father may have possessed, there can be no doubt that historians and biographers consider him to have been well supplied with elusiveness.
McMaster said that he did not understand Washington's inner life. That is why he called him elusive. The inner life of a man is the stream of feelings and impulses that flows through his soul. It is a dim and chaotic mingling of doubts and desires, perceptions, intuitions, dreams and hopes. From this inner life come the motives that impel the personality; but before these impulses become visible in action they are molded by the will and whittled down into presentable shape by the reason.
Washington's mind was the business mind. He was not a business man, in the modern sense; he did not live in a business age. But the problems which he understood, and know how to solve, were executive problems; and he approached them in the great executive manner.
His type of personality is not uncommon in America. There are many Washingtons among us to-day.
It is not the highest type of mind. Far from it. But it has a certain hard greatness of its own. Washington was an intense realist. The realist is often an individualist; the two qualities seem to be linked together...............
