Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau

Emerson uses Mirabeau to test a theory: that the truly great are not those who labor into a higher sphere of thought but those who simply open their eyes and see. Against men who must make painful corrections and watch for error, Mirabeau stands as the type who is what he is from nature and never reminds us of anyone else. His place in the book's argument is to show that service from superior men is indirect — a quality conveyed, not a lesson sold — and that a man in his rightful place is constructive, fertile, and magnetic, like a river making its own shores.