Franklin, I recognize. The cherubs - no clue.

The same cannot be said for Da Vinci, a man who became not just a painter, but an inventor, a sculptor, a scientist, an advisor to royalty.  Da Vinci biographer Michael Gelb attributes this to a curiosity that “fueled the wellspring of his genius throughout his entire life.”   Nor can it be said of Franklin – author, inventor, scientest, father of a nation.  Despite his accomplishments, Franklin was always trying to improve himself, to the extent that Franklin biographer Walter Isaacson suggests “the most interesting thing Franklin invented, and continually re-invented, was himself”.

Newman is one of the most compelling public figures of the 20th century, but despite his success as an actor and sex symbol, biographer Shawn Levy writes “he had a need to assert himself in other, more physical areas of his life in order to pass muster with himself.”  Fortune favoured Newman, and he could’ve coasted on his gifts,  but instead he became a philanthropist, a devoted father and husband who was uncomfortable with fame save for how he could use it to help others.  As Levy points out “he claimed only that bit he felt reasonably due him, and he gave back more, by far, than he ever took.”

But perhaps the man whose life view best describes what all four these men have in common is Teddy Roosevelt.  An acquaintence of Roosevelt who met him as a young man described that view as follows:

the upbuilding of a colossal pyramid whose apex was the sky. The eternal stability of this pyramid would be insured only through honest, intelligent, interworking and cooperation, to the common end of all the elements comprised in its structure. Individual elements might strive to build intensively and even high, but never well.  Never well, because lacking an adequate base – the united stabilizing support of the other elements – they might never attain to the zenith.

In other words, Teddy believed in a balanced life, one devoted to and supported by a wide variety of interests and skills that informed each other. They all believed it – the more they tried, the more they mastered, the more they understood, and in so doing they pursued (and achieved) a kind of transcendent personal excellence.    You could argue that they were blessed with unique gifts, or were lucky enough to be born at a time when those gifts could stand out, and indeed they can seem like the ancient heroes written about by Plutarch – men whose quest of greater things for themselves were intertwined with the progress of humanity.

But I don’t believe that what these men achieved, and how they achieved it,  is impossible for the rest of us. In the next post, I will tell you why….

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