The Most Influencial People in the World: CYRUS THE GREAT (C. 590 B.C.-629 B.C.)

Cyrus the Great was the founder of the Persian Empire. Starting as a subordinate ruler in southwest Iran, he overthrew—by a remarkable series of victories—three great empires (those of the Medes, Lydian’s, and Babylonians), and united most of the ancient Middle East into a single state stretching from India to the Mediterranean Sea.

Cyrus (Kurush in the original Persian) was born about 590 B.C., in the province of Persis (now Fars), in southwest Iran. The area was at that time a province in the empire of the Medes. Cyrus was descended from a line of local chiefs who were vassals of the king of the Medes.

Later tradition created an interesting legend concerning Cyrus, somewhat reminiscent of the Greek legend of King Oedipus. According to this legend, Cyrus’s was the grandson of Astyages, king of the Medes. Before Cyrus’s birth, Astyages had a dream that his grandson would someday overthrow him. The king ordered that the infant be killed promptly after his birth. However, the official entrusted with the job of killing the infant had no heart for such a bloody deed, and instead handed him over to a shepherd and his wife with instructions that they put the child to death. But they, too, were unwilling to kill the boy, and instead reared him as their own. Ultimately, when the child grew up, he indeed caused the king’s downfall.

This story (the details may be found in Herodotus) seems obviously fictitious, and virtually nothing is known of Cyrus’s early years. We do know that some time about 558 B.C., Cyrus succeeded his father, Cambyses I, as king of the Persians, which made him a vassal of the Median king. About 553 B.C., however, Cyrus rebelled against his overlord, and after a war lasting for three years, succeeded in overthrowing him.

The Medes and the Persians were very closely related, both in origins and in language. Since Cyrus retained most of the laws of the Medes and much of their administrative procedure as well, his victory over the Medes was more like a change of dynasty than a foreign conquest.

Cyrus, though, soon showed that he desired foreign conquest also. His first target was the Lydian Empire in Asia Minor, ruled by King Croesus, a man of legendary wealth. Cyrus’s iron proved more than a match for Croesus’s gold, and by 546 B.C., Cyrus had conquered the Lydian Empire and made Croesus his prisoner.

Cyrus then turned his attention to the east, and in a series of campaigns, subdued all of eastern Iran and incorporated it into his empire. By 540 B.C., the Persian Empire extended as far east as the Indus River in India and the Jaxartes 9modern-day Syr Darya) in Central Asia.

With his rear protected, Cyrus could now concentrate on the richest prize of all, the wealthy Babylonian Empire, centered in Mesopotamia but ruling the entire Fertile Crescent of the ancient Middle East. Unlike Cyrus, the Babylonian ruler Nabonidus was not popular with his subjects. When Cyrus’s armies advanced, the Babylonian troops had no taste for the pointless struggle, and in 539 B.C., Babylon surrendered to Cyrus without a fight. As the Babylonian Empire had included Syria and Palestine, those regions, too, were added to the domains under Cyrus’s control.

Cyrus spent the next few years consolidating his rule and reorganizing the enormous empire that he had won. Then he led an army to the northeast to conquer the Massagetae, who were nomadic tribes living in Central Asia, east of the Caspian Sea. The Persians were victorious in an early skirmish. But in a second battle, fought in 528 B.C., they were defeated, and Cyrus—ruler of the greatest empire the world had yet seen—was slain.

Cyrus was succeeded by his son, Cambyses II. Cambyses defeated the Massagetae in a return engagement, recovered his father’s body, and buried it at Pasargadae, the old Persian capital. Cambyses then went on the conquer Egypt, thus uniting the entire ancient Middle East into a single empire.

Cyrus was clearly a leader of immense military ability. But that was only one facet of the man. More distinctive, perhaps, was the benign character of his rule. He was exceptionally tolerant of local religions and local customs, and he was disinclined to the extreme brutality and cruelty which characterized so many other conquerors. The Babylonians, for instance, and even more notably the Assyrians, had massacred many thousands and had exiled whole peoples whose rebellion they feared. For examples, when the Babylonians had conquered Judea in 586 B.C., they had deported much of the population to Babylon. But fifty years later, after Cyrus had conquered Babylonia, he gave the Jews permission to return to their homeland. Were it not for Cyrus, therefore, it seems at least possible that the Jewish people would have died out as a separate group in the fifth century B.C. Cyrus’s decision in this matter may have had political motivations; nevertheless, there seems little doubt that he was a remarkably humane ruler for his time. Even the Greeks, who for a long period considered the Persian Empire to be the chief threat to their own independence, never ceased to regard Cyrus as a thoroughly admirable ruler.

So well had Cyrus done his work, that even after his death the Persian Empire continued to expand? It endured, in fact, for about two hundred years, until its conquest by Alexander the Great. For most of those two centuries, the lands ruled by Persia enjoyed internal peace and prosperity.

Alexander’s conquest did not mark the permanent end of the Persian Empire. After Alexander’s death, one of his generals Seleucus I Nicator, gained control of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran, thereby establishing the Seleucid Empire. However, foreign control over Iran did not last very long. In the middle of the third century B.C., there was a rebellion against Seleucid rule, led by Arsaces I, who claimed to be descended from the Achaemenids (the dynasty of Cyrus). The kingdom founded by Arsaces—known as the Parthian Empire—eventually gained control over Iran and Mesopotamia. In 224 S.D., the Arsacid rulers were replaced by a new Persian dynasty, the Sassanids, who likewise claimed descent from the Achaemenids, and whose empire endured for over four centuries.

The career of Cyrus the Great represents one of the major turning points in world history. Civilization had first arisen in Sumeria, somewhat before 3000 B.C. For over twenty-five centuries, the Sumerians and the various Semitic peoples who succeeded them (such as the Akkadians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians) had been at the very center of civilization. For all that time, Mesopotamia had been the richest and most culturally advanced region of the world (with the exception of Egypt, which was roughly on the same level). But Cyrus’s career—which, incidentally, marks roughly the mid-point of recorded history—brought that chapter of world history to an end. From then on, neither Mesopotamia nor Egypt was the center of the civilized world, either politically or culturally.

Furthermore, the Semitic peoples—who made up the bulk of the population of the Fertile Crescent—were not to regain their independence for many centuries to come. After the Persians (an Indo-European people), were to come the Macedonians and the Greeks, followed by a long succession of Parthian, Roman, and Sassanid rulers, all of whom were Indo-Europeans. It was not until the Moslem conquests of the seventh century—almost twelve centuries after Cyrus the Great—that the Fertile Crescent was again controlled by Semitic peoples.

Cyrus is significant not merely because he won a lot of battles and conquered a lot of territory. Of greater importance is the fact that the empire he established permanently altered the political structure of the ancient world.

The Persian Empire, despite its considerable territorial extent and duration, did not have nearly as great an impact on history as did such longer-lived empires as the Roman, British, or Chinese empires. But in estimating Cyrus’s influence, one should keep in mind that what he accomplished would probably never have occurred without him. In 620 B.C. (a generation before Cyrus was born), no one would have suspected that within a century the entire ancient world would be under the rule of a previously obscure tribe from southwest Iran. Even in retrospect, it does not appear that the rise of the Persian Empire was one of those historical events which, because of preexisting social or economic factors, was bound to happen sooner or later. Thus, Cyrus was one of those rare men who have actually altered the course of history.

The Most Influencial People in the World: PETER THE GREAT (1672-1725)

Peter the Great is generally acknowledged to be the most outstanding of the Russian czars. The policy of westernization that he instituted was a major factor in the transformation of Russia into a great power.

Peter was born in 1672, in Moscow, the only son of Czar Alexis and his second wife, Natalia Narishkina. Peter was not yet four years old when his father died. Since Alexis also had thirteen children by his first wife, it is hardly surprising that there was a lengthy and sometimes violent struggle over the succession to the throne. On one occasion, the young Peter even had to flee for his life. For several years, Peter’s half-sister Sophia served as regent, and it was not until 1689, when she was removed from that office, that Peter’s position became reasonably secure.

Russia in 1689 was a backward region, centuries behind Western Europe in almost every way. Towns were fewer than in the west. The institution of serfdom was flourishing—indeed, the number of serfs was increasing, and their legal rights declining. Russia had missed both the Renaissance and the Reformation. The clergy was ignorant; literature was almost nonexistent; mathematics and science were ignored or despised. In contrast with Western Europe, where Newton had recently written his Principia, and where literature and philosophy were flourishing, Russia was almost medieval.

In 1697-98, Peter made a lengthy trip to Western Europe, a trip which was to set the tone for the succeeding years of his reign. Peter took about 250 people along with him on this “grand embassy.” By using a pseudonym (Pyotr Mikhaylov), Peter was able to see many things which he could not have observed otherwise. In the course of this trip, Peter worked for a period as a ship’s carpenter with the Dutch East India Company in Holland. He also worked in the Royal Navy’s dockyard in England, and he studied gunnery in Prussia. He visited factories, schools, museums, and arsenals, and even attended a session of Parliament in England. In short, he learned as much as he could about Western culture, science, industry, and administrative techniques.

In 1698, Peter returned to Russia and embarked on a far-ranging series of reforms designed to modernize and westernize the Russian state. In order to encourage the introduction of Western technology and techniques, Peter brought many Western technology and techniques, Peter brought many Western technicians into Russia. He also sent many young Russians to study in Western Europe. Throughout his reign, Peter encouraged the development of industry and commerce. Under his rule, towns grew in size and the bourgeoisie increased in numbers and in influence.

During Peter’s reign, the first good-sized Russian navy was built. Furthermore, the army was remodeled on the Western style, the troops were provided with uniforms and modern firearms, and Western style military drilling was instituted. Peter also instituted many changes in the Russian civil administration, including the sensible reform of promoting civil servants on the basis of their performance in office, rather than their hereditary rank.

In social matters, also, Peter encouraged westernization. He decreed that all beards must be cut off (though he later modified the decree), and men at court were ordered to dress in the Western style and were encouraged to take up smoking and the drinking of coffee. Although at the time many of his proposals met with strenuous opposition, the long-term effect of these policies was that much of the Russian aristocracy eventually developed Western manners and culture.

Not surprisingly, Peter considered the Russian Orthodox Church to be a backward and reactionary force. Peter succeeded in partly reorganizing the Orthodox Church and in gaining considerable control over it. Peter instituted secured schools in Russia and encouraged the development of science. He also introduced the Julian calendar and modernized the Russian alphabet. During his reign, the first newspaper was established in Russia.

In addition to all these domestic reforms, Peter engaged in a foreign policy that had important consequences for the future. Under him, Russia was involved in wars both with Turkey in the south and with Sweden in the north. Against Turkey he initially had some success, conquering the port of Azov in 1696, and thereby providing Russia with some access to the Black Sea. Later in his reign, however, the Turks got the better of the fighting, and in 1711 he was forced to cede Azov back to Turkey.

In the war against Sweden, the sequence of events was almost exactly reversed, with the Russians defeated at the beginning and victorious at the end. In 1700, Russia joined with Denmark and Saxony in a war against Sweden, which at that time was a major military power. (Poland, too, later declared war on Sweden.) At the battle of Narva, in 1700, the Russian forces were badly defeated. Following this battle, the Swedish king turned his attention to his other enemies. Meanwhile, Peter rebuilt the Russian army. Eventually, the battle between Sweden and Russia was resumed, and at Poltava, in the year 1709, the Swedish army was decisively defeated.

The Russian territorial gains from the war included (roughly) Estonia and Latvia, plus a substantial area near Finland. Although the area conquered was not extremely large, it was important because it gave Russia an outlet on the Baltic Sea, and therefore a “window to Europe.” On the banks of the Neva River, on some of the land conquered from Sweden, Peter founded a new city, St. Petersburg (today known as Leningrad). In 1712, he moved his capital there from Moscow. Thereafter, St. Petersburg became the major point of contact between Russia and Western Europe.

Peter’s various domestic policies and foreign wars were, of course, very costly, and inevitably led to the imposition of additional taxes. Both the high taxes and the reforms themselves angered many Russians, and there were several revolts, all of which Peter crushed ruthlessly. Though he had many opponents in his own day, today both Russian and Western historians agree that Peter was the greatest of the Russian czars.

In his person, Peter made an imposing appearance. He was tall (at least6’6”), strong, good-looking, and energetic. He was full of lusty and boisterous high spirits, and was mirthful, although his humor was often rather crude. He sometimes drank heavily, and he had a violent streak in him. In addition to his political and military skills, Peter had studied carpentry, printing, navigation, and shipbuilding. An unusual monarch!

Peter was married twice. He married his first wife, Eudoxia, when he was seventeen. They lived together for only a week, and when he was twenty-six, he had her sent to a convent. In 1712, he divorced hew and married another woman. His second wife, Catherine, was a Lithuanian girl of humble birth. Peter had a son, Alexis, by his first wife; however, Peter and his son were on bad terms. In 1718, Alexis was arrested on charges of conspiracy against Peter. He was arrested, tortured, and died in jail. Peter himself died in St. Petersburg in early 1725, at the age of fifty-two. He was succeeded by his widow, Catherine (not to be confused with Catherine the Great).

Peter the Great is on this list because of the important role he played in the westernization and modernization of Russia. However, since the rulers of many other countries have pursued similar policies, one might reasonably ask why Peter has been included on this list and most of the others omitted.

It is true enough that today, in the twentieth century, most heads of state see the importance to their nations of adopting Western methods, particularly in science and technology. In 1700, however, the desirability of westernization was not obvious to most persons outside of Europe. What makes Peter so significant is that he was two centuries ahead of his time in realizing the importance of westernization, and in modernizing his country. Because of Peter’s foresight, Russia, which at his accession had been a very backward country, was able to pull well ahead of most countries in the world. (However, because of the very rapid progress that Western Europe made during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Russia was unable to draw abreast of Western Europe.)

The contrast with Turkey, the other important state on the eastern frontiers of Europe, is particularly striking. Turkey and Russia were both semi-European countries. During the two centuries immediately preceding Peter’s reign, Turkey was more advanced than Russia militarily, economically, and culturally. (For that matter, Turkey had been more advanced than Russia throughout most of history.) But there was no Turkish sultan around 1700 who realized the importance of rapid westernization and who pushed his country in that direction. Therefore, while Russia, from Peter’s time on, made rapid strides, Turkey made only slow progress. It was not until the twentieth century that Kemal Ataturk led Turkey in a program of rapid modernization. By that time, Russia was more advanced industrially and educationally than Turkey.

Today, of course, we take Russian predominance over Turkey for granted. Suppose, however, that instead of Peter the Great in Russia there had been, at that time, a great reforming sultan in Turkey. Then Turkey might well be a major power today, and probably would control the region which instead became Soviet Central Asia. (The residents of that region are Moslems, and are far more closely related to the Turks than they are to the Russians.)

Peter the Great was not a ruler who simply floated with the current, but was rather a man who was ahead of his time. His foresight quite possibly changed history and diverted it into a path it might not otherwise have followed. For these reasons, it seems plain to me that Peter is entitled to a place on this list.

In deciding where to rake Peter, I have been somewhat influenced by the comparison between him and Queen Elizabeth I of England. Elizabeth is much more famous, particularly in the West. However, I think I would find it difficult to persuade even the most fair-minded Russian that Elizabeth was more influential than Peter the Great. Peter was far more innovative, far more original. Whereas Elizabeth mainly represented a consensus of her people’s desires, Peter pulled the Russians in a direction in which they had never previously contemplated going. The difference between the rankings of the two would be even larger were it not for the fact that through most of the intervening centuries, England has played a far more significant role in the world than Russia has.

The Most Influencial People in the World: MAO ZEDONG (1893-1976)

Mao Zedong led the Communist party to power in China, and for the next twenty-seven years presided over a remarkable and far-reaching transformation of that vast nation.

Mao was born in 1893, in the village of Shaoshan, in Hunan province, the son of a well-off peasant. In 1911, when Mao was an eighteen-years-old student, a rebellion broke out against the decaying Ch’ing dynasty, which had ruled China since the seventeenth century. Within a few months the imperial government was overthrown, and China was declared a republic. Unfortunately, the leaders of the revolution were unable to establish a stable, unified government in China was—one which lasted, in fact, until 1949.

As a young man, Mao became steadily more leftist in his political ideas, and by 1920 he was a confirmed Marxist. In 1921, he was one of the twelve original founders of the Communist party of China. However, his climb to the top of the party leadership was rather slow, and it was not until 1935 that he became the leader of the party.

Meanwhile, the Communist party of China was engaged in a long, slow, and quite unsteady path to power. The party suffered major setbacks in 1927 and in 1934, but managed to survive them. After 1935, under Mao’s leadership, the party’s strength steadily increased. By 1947, it was ready for all-out war against the Nationalist government headed by Chiang Kai-shek. In 1949, their forces were victorious, and the Communists gained complete control of the Chinese mainland.

The China that Mao, as head of the party, now came to govern had been torn by was for the better part of thirty-eight years. China was a poverty-stricken, underdeveloped country, whose teeming; tradition-bound millions were mainly illiterate peasants. Mao himself was fifty-six years old, and it appeared that the bulk of his career was behind him.

In fact, however, the period of Mao’s greatest influence was just beginning; and by the time of his death, in 1976, Mao’s policies had transformed China. One aspect of that transformation was a rapid industrialization, combined with great improvements in public health and education. These changes, though obviously very important, are of a sort that occurred in quite a few other countries during the same period, and they alone would not be sufficient to justify Mao’s place on this list.

A second accomplishment of Mao’s government was the transformation of China’s economic system from capitalism to socialism. Just a few years after Mao died, however, his successor (Deng Xiaoping) started to reintroduce various aspects of a free-market economy into China. We cannot yet be sure just how far this process will go; but it now seems likely that within five or ten years China will abandon socialism and will become a capitalist nation again. The economic policies of Mao therefore seem far less important than they once did.

Mao had originally believed that the industrial workers of the cities would provide the strongest base of support for the Communist party, an idea which was in accordance with Marx’s own thinking. However, about 1925, Mao came to the conclusion that, at least in China, the party’s main support would come from the peasantry. He acted accordingly, and, during the long power struggle with the Nationalists, Mao’s power base was always in the countryside. This idea was carried over during his years as head of state. For example, whereas Stalin, in Russia, usually stressed industrial development, Mao generally paid more attention to agricultural and rural development. Nevertheless, China’s industrial production increased markedly under Mao’s leadership.

Politically, of course, Mao installed a thoroughly totalitarian system. At least 20 million of his countrymen—quite possibly 30 million or more—met their deaths at the hands of Mao’s regime, making his reign perhaps the bloodiest in all human history. (Only Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan can challenge Mao for this dubious “honor.”) There was some liberalization after Mao died; but attempts to convert China into a democracy have been firmly repressed by Deng Xiaoping, sometimes—as in the June 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing—quite savagely.

Of course, it was not Mao Zedong alone who determined the policies of the Communist government. He never exercised the sort of one-man control that Stalin did in the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, it is clear that Mao was by far the most important figure in the Chinese government from 1949 until his death in 1976.

One project for which he seems to bear chief responsibility was the “great Leap Forward” of the late 1950s. Many observers think that project, which included an emphasis on small-scale, labor-intensive production methods, which could be carried out on the rural communes, was a failure. (In any event, it was eventually abandoned.) Another project which Mao supported, over the opposition of various other Chinese leaders, was the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” of the late 1960s. This was a major upheaval—in some senses almost a civil war between Mao and his supporters on the one hand, and the entrenched Communist party bureaucracy on the other.

It is interesting to note that Mao was already in his mid-sixties when the “Great Leap Forward” began, was well past seventy when the Cultural Revolution was instituted, and was almost eighty when, in a dramatic change of policy, he commenced a rapprochement with the United States.

It is always difficult to assess the long-term influence of a recent political figure. In the first edition of this book I gave Mao a very high ranking because I thought that the Communist system which he had established in China was likely to endure for a long time. That no longer seems probable. China appears to be abandoning socialism; and the dictatorial political system which Mao bequeathed China, though still in place, no longer seems secure.

While Mao was alive, it appeared that he might turn out to be as important a figure as Shih Huang Ti. Both were Chinese, and both were architects of revolutionary changes in their country. However, the influence of Shih Huang Ti on China endured for some twenty-two centuries, while the influence of Mao seems to be fading rapidly.

It seems more appropriate to compare Mao with Lenin, who also lived in the twentieth century. Just as Mao was the leader who established Marxism in China, so Lenin was the one who established it in Russia. At first sight, Mao seems the more important of the two: After all, China has more than three times the population of the Soviet Union. But Lenin preceded Mao, set an example for Mao, and influenced Mao’s thinking. Furthermore, by establishing the world’s first Communist state, Lenin had an enormous worldwide influence, far more influence outside his own country than Mao did. Taking that into consideration, it seems that Mao should be ranked somewhat below Lenin.

The Most Influencial People in the World: FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)

Though for years he was a leading English politician, and though he devoted the majority of his time and energy to furthering his political career, Francis Bacon has been included in this book solely because of his philosophical writings. In those writings, he was the herald of the new age of science: the first great philosopher to realize that science and technology could transform the world, and an effective advocate of scientific investigation.

Bacon was born in London, in 1561, the younger son of a high government official under Queen Elizabeth. When he was twelve years old, he entered Trinity College in Cambridge; however, after three years he left without receiving a degree. Starting at sixteen, he served for a while on the staff of the British ambassador in Paris. But when Bacon was only eighteen, his father died suddenly, leaving him with rather little money. He therefore studied law, and at age twenty-one he was admitted to the bar.

His political career started soon after that. When he was twenty-three, he was elected to the House of Commons. However, although he had highly-placed relatives and friends, and despite his obvious brilliance, Queen Elizabeth steadily refused to appoint him to any major or lucrative position. One reason for this was his courageous opposition in parliament to a certain tax bill which the queen strongly supported. Since Bacon lived extravagantly and was constantly in debt (once he was actually arrested for debt), he could ill afford such independent behavior.

Bacon became a friend and advisor of the Earl of Essex, a popular and politically ambitious young aristocrat. In turn, Essex became a friend and generous benefactor of Bacon. However, when Essex’s overweening ambition led him to plan a coup against Queen Elizabeth; Bacon warned him that he would put loyalty to his Queen first. Essex tried his coup anyway; it failed, and Bacon played an active role in the earl’s prosecution for treason. Essex was beheaded, and the entire affair left many persons with adverse feelings toward Bacon.

Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, and Bacon became an advisor to her successor, King James I. although James did not always take his advice, he did appreciate Bacon, and during James’s reign, Bacon advanced steadily in the government. In 1607, Bacon became solicitor general; in 1613, he became attorney general; and in 1618, he was appointed Lord Chancellor of England, a position roughly equivalent in importance to that of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the United States. That same year, he was appointed a baron; and, in 1621, he was appointed a viscount.

But then disaster struck. As a judge, Bacon had accepted “gifts” from litigants before him. Though that was a rather common practice, it was plainly illegal. His political opponents in Parliament eagerly seized upon the opportunity to remove him from power. Bacon confessed and was sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower of London and a large fine. Also, he was permanently barred from public office. The king soon released Bacon form jail and remitted his fine, but Bacon’s political career was ended.

Now, one can recall quite a few instances of high-ranking politicians who have been caught taking bribes, or otherwise violating the public trust. Frequently, when such persons are caught, they whine and defend themselves by asserting that everybody else is cheating also. If taken seriously, this defense would seem to mean that no crooked politician should be punished unless every other crooked politician is punished first. Bacons’s comment on his conviction was somewhat different: “I was the justest judge that was in England these 50 years; but it was the justest censure in Parliament that was these 200 years.”

Such an active and crowded political career would not seem to leave much time for anything else. Still, Bacon’s lasting fame, and his place on this list, is due to his philosophical writings rather than to his political activities. His first important work was his Essays, which first appeared in 1597 and were gradually enlarged. The Essays, which are written in a pithy and brilliant style, contain a wealth of penetrating observations, not merely on political matters but on many personal matters as well. Some characteristic remarks are:

Or Youth and Age

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune…

Of Marriage and Single Life

(Bacon himself was married, but had no children.)

But Bacon’s most important writings concern the philosophy of science. He had planned a great work, the Instauratio Magna (or Great Renewal), in six parts. The first part was intended to review the present state of our knowledge; the second part was to describe a new method of scientific inquiry; a third was to include a collection of empirical data; a fourth was to contain illustrations of his new scientific method at work; the fifth was to present some provisional conclusions; and the last part was to be a synthesis of the knowledge gained from his new method. Not surprisingly, this grandiose scheme—perhaps the most ambitious undertaking since Aristotle—was never completed. However, The Advancement of Learning (1605) and the Novum organum (1620) can be considered the first two parts of his great work.

The Novum organum (or New Instrument) is perhaps Bacon’s most important book. The book is basically a plea for the adoption of the empirical method of inquiry. The practice of relying entirely upon the deductive logic of Aristotle was stultifying, and a new method of inquiry, the inductive method, was required. Knowledge is not something we start with and deduce conclusions form; rather it is something we arrive at. To understand the world, one most first observe it. First collect the facts, Bacon said, then draw conclusions from these facts by means of inductive reasoning. Although scientists have not followed Bacon’s inductive method in every detail, the general idea he expressed—the crucial importance of observation and experimentation—form the heart of the method used by scientists ever since.

Bacon’s last book was The New Atlantis, an account of a utopian commonwealth situated on a fictional island in the Pacific. Although the setting is reminiscent of Sir Thomas Moore’s Utopia, the whole point of Bacon’s book is different. In Bacon’s book, the prosperity and welfare of his ideal commonwealth depend upon and result directly from a concentration on scientific research. By implication, of course, Bacon was telling his readers that intelligent application of scientific research could make the people of Europe as prosperous and happy as those living on his mythical island.

One might fairly say that Francis Bacon was the first truly modern philosopher. His overall outlook was secular, rather than religious (though he firmly believed in God). He was rational rather than superstitious; and empiricist rather than a logic-chop-ping scholastic. In politics, he was a realist rather than a theoretician. And along with his classical learning and great literary skill, he was sympathetically attuned toward science and technology.

Though a loyal Englishman, Bacon had a vision which went far beyond his own country. He distinguishes three kinds of ambition:

The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country; which kind is vulgar and degenerate. The second is of those who labor to extend the power of their country and its dominion among men; this certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition… is without doubt both a more wholesome thing and a nobler than the other two.

Though Bacon was the apostle of science, he was not a scientist himself, nor did he keep abreast of the advances being made by his contemporaries. He ignored Napier (who had recently invented logarithms) and Kepler, and even his fellow Englishman, William Harvey. Bacon correctly suggested that heat was a form of motion—an important scientific idea; but in astronomy, he refused to accept the ideas of Copernicus. It should be remembered, though, that Bacon was not attempting to present a complete and correct set of scientific laws. Instead, he was trying to present a survey of what needed to be learned. His scientific guesses were only intended to serve as a starting point for further discussion, not as the final answer.

Francis Bacon was not the first person to recognize the usefulness of inductive reasoning; nor was he the first to understand the possible benefits which science could bring to society. But no man before him had publicized those ideas so widely and so enthusiastically. Furthermore, partly because Bacon was such a good writer, and partly because of his fame as a leading politician, Bacon’s attitudes toward science actually had a great deal of influence. When the Royal Society of London was founded, in 1662, to promote scientific knowledge, the founders named Bacon as their inspiration. And, when the great Encyclopedia was written during the French Enlightenment, major contributors, such as Diderot and d’Alembert, credited Francis Bacon with the inspiration for their work. If the Novum organum and the new Atlantis are less read today than they once were, it is because their messages have become so widely accepted.

The Most Influencial People in the World: Henry Ford (1863 – 1947)

This famous American industrialist was, more than any other single person, responsible for the introduction of mass production techniques into modern industry. By so doing, he vastly increased the standard of living throughout his nation and, ultimately, the whole world.

Ford, who was born near Dearborn, Michigan, never attended high school. After finishing grammar school, he worked as a machinist’s apprentice in Detroit, then as a repairman, then as an engineer. He was still a young man when, in 1885, Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler (working independently) invented their automobiles and started to market them.

Ford quickly became interested in these “horseless carriages,” and by 1896 he had constructed an automobile of his own design. In spite of his talents, however, his first two business ventures were unsuccessful, and had Ford died at forty he would have been deemed a failure.

But Ford was not easily discouraged. In 1903 he tried again, and it was through this third venture, the Ford Motor Company, that he achieved wealth, fame, and lasting importance. The company’s rapid success was due in large part to Ford’s basic concept which, as started in an early advertisement, was

…to construct and market an automobile specially designed for everyday wear and tear—business, professional and family use;…a machine which will be admired by man, woman, and child alike for its compactness, its simplicity, its safety, its all-round convenience, and—last but not least—its exceedingly reasonable price, which places it within the reach of many thousands who could not think of paying the comparatively fabulous prices asked for most machines.

His earliest models, though fairly good, did not quite achieve those lofty goals. But his famous Model T, introduced in 1908, came pretty close. It was surely the most celebrated car ever produced; and eventually more than 15 million of them were sold.

Early on, Ford realized that in order to sell his cars at a low price he would have to make his production costs very low. To accomplish this, he introduced a set of very efficient production techniques into his plants. These included (a) completely interchangeable parts; (b) an extreme degree of division of labor; and (c) the assembly line. These were all designed to increase the efficiency of the individual worker.

It was crucial, Ford believed, not to waste the worker’s time by forcing him to fetch the materials and parts he needed, or even to list them off the floor before he could start work on them. Instead, Ford arranged to bring the work to the worker by means of conveyor belts, slides, or overhead trolleys. The items were delivered at waist level, where the worker could perform his task most quickly.

Production methods should be analyzed carefully, in a constant attempt to find better, more efficient techniques. Complex tasks should be broken down into simple ones, so that they can be carried out by unskilled workers (some of whom might be of low intelligence, uneducated, or handicapped), and without long periods of training.

None of these ideas were original with Ford. Eli Whitney had utilized interchangeable parts more than a century before; the well-known efficiency expert, Frederick Winslow Taylor, had advocated all of those ideas in his writings; and several smaller firms had already used assembly lines in their operations. But Ford was the first major manufacturer to apply these ideas wholeheartedly.

The results were astounding: In 1908, the cheapest Model T sold for $825. By 1913, the price was down to only $500. In 1916, it was reduced to $360. Finally, in 1926, the retail price hit a rock bottom $290. As the price came down, sales zoomed. The U.S. became a “nation on wheels,” and Ford became the world’s wealthiest private citizen.

As Ford’s workers became more productive, he could afford to pay them higher salaries. In 1914, he astonished the industrial world by raising the minimum wage in his plant to five dollars a day—an enormous figure for that time, and nearly twice as much as the company’s average wage had introduced spread through the country, the overall result was to bring factory workers out of poverty and into the middle class.

But Ford’s innovations had an even boarder impact. He was not secretive about his mass production techniques. On the contrary, he was eager to publicize them. Other manufacturers, seeing his success, copied his production methods. The result was a tremendous increase in productivity throughout the country, and eventually the world.

After Ford achieved financial success, he became active in various political causes. The results of these activities, however, must have disappointed him. His strenuous pacifist efforts during the early years of World War I fell on deaf ears. In the 1920s he embarked on a campaign of anti-Semitic propaganda; but this merely brought him discredit, and he eventually made a public retraction. In the 1930s, he bitterly fought the introduction of unions into his company. But this just antagonized his workers, and brought the company no benefits; so he eventually abandoned this struggle too.

However, these later activities, though they damaged his reputation, had relatively little effect on the world. They do not affect the importance of his role in revolutionizing industrial production, and thereby vastly increasing the productivity and income of workers.

The Most Influencial People in the World: MENCIUS c. 371 B.C.- c. 289 B.C.

The Chinese philosopher Mencius was the most important successor to Confucius. His teachings, as set forth in the Book of Mencius, were highly esteemed in China for many centuries. He was often referred to as “the Second Sage,” that is, second in wisdom only to Confucius himself, whom he followed by about two hundred years.

Mencius was born about 371 B.C., in the small state of Tsou, in what is now the Shantung province of China. The era in which he was born, the last stage of the Chou dynasty, is referred to by the Chinese as “the Period of the Warring States,” since China was politically disunited at that time. Mencius, though he had been reared in the Confucian tradition and was always a strong supporter of Confucian theories and ideals, eventually became respected as a scholar and philosopher in his own right.

Mencius spent much of his adult life travelling about China and offering his advice to various rulers. Several rulers listened respectfully to him, and for a while he was an official in the state of Ch’i; but by and large, he held no permanent, policy-making government position. In 312 B.C., when he was about fifty-nine years old, he returned to his home state of Tsou, where he remained until his death. The year of his death is uncertain, but was probably 289 B.C.

Mencius made disciples during his own lifetime, but his influence upon China derives mainly from the Book of Mencius, in which his principal teachings are set forth. Although the book may have been subjected to some editing by his disciples, there seems little doubt that it basically represents Mencius’s own ideas.

The tone of the Book of Mencius is idealistic and optimistic, reflecting Mencius’s firm conviction that human nature is basically good. In many ways, his political ideas are very much like those of Confucius; in particular, Mencius firmly believed that a king should rule primarily by moral example rather than by force. Mencius, however, was much more of a “people’s man” than Confucius was. “Heaven sees as the people see; heaven hears as the people hear,” is one of his best-known statements.

Mencius stress that the most important component of any state is the people, rather than their ruler. It is a ruler’s duty to promote the welfare of his people; in particular, he should provide them with moral guidance and with suitable conditions for their livelihood. Among the governmental policies he advocated were: free trade; light taxes; conservation of natural resources; a more equal sharing of the wealth than generally prevailed; and government provision for the welfare of aged and disadvantaged persons. Mencius believed that a king’s authority derives from heaven; but a king who ignores the welfare of the people will lose the “mandate of Heaven,” and will, rightly, be overthrown. Since the last part of that sentence effectively overrules the first part, Mencius was a fast to revolt against unjust rulers. It was an idea that became generally accepted in China.

Now generally speaking, through most of history, the sorts of policies that Mencius advocated have been more popular with subjects than with their rulers. It is therefore hardly surprising that Mencius’s proposals were not adopted by the Chinese rulers of his own day. In the course of time, however, his views became increasingly popular with Confucian scholars and with the Chinese people. Mencius’s reputation, which was already high, became even greater in China following the rise of neo-Confucianism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

In the West, of course, Mencius has had virtually no influence whatsoever. This is only partly due to the fact that he wrote in Chinese. The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu, which was written in China at roughly the same time as the Book of Mencius, has been translated into European languages many times simply because so many people find the ideas expressed in that book intriguing. But relatively few Westerners have found the Book of Mencius particularly original or incisive.

It may sound attractive for the government to concern itself with the welfare of the aged and the disadvantaged; it also sounds attractive to be in favor of low taxes. However, an American politician who announced that he was in favor of those two policies, without being a lot more specific, would be likely to be mistrusted by liberals and conservatives alike. Similarly, Mencius indicates on the one hand that he favors a more equitable sharing of the wealth, and on the other hand indicates his approval of free trade and low taxes, without ever really coming to grips with the possible conflicts between those policies. This may sound a bit unfair to Mencius, who after all was not running for Congress. There is something to be said for a philosopher who presents a set of worthy (though partly inconsistent) general principles, even if he does not specifically indicate how the conflicts between those principles are to be resolved. Nevertheless, in the long run, if he does not specifically indicate how the conflicts between those principles are to be resolved. Nevertheless, in the long run, a philosopher such as Machiavelli, who expressed his priorities more clearly than Mencius did, has had more influence upon human thought.

But Mencius’s writings have certainly influenced the Chinese. Though his importance to Confucianism is not nearly as great as St. Paul’s importance to Christianity (for one thing, Mencius lacked Paul’s unusual proselytizing ability), he was unquestionably an immensely influential writer. For roughly twenty-two centuries, his ideas were studied throughout a region that included over 20 percent of the world’s population. Only a few philosophers anywhere have had so great an influence.

The Most Influencial People in the World: ZOROASTER c. 628 B.C.-c. 551 B.C.

The Iranian prophet Zoroaster was the founder of Zoroastrianism, a religion that has endured for over 2,500 years and still had adherents today. He was also the author of the Gathas, the oldest part of the Avesta, the sacred scriptures of the Zoroastrians.

Our biographical information concerning Zoroaster (Zarathustra, in Old Iranian) is sketchy, but it appears that he was born about 628 B.C., in what is now northern Iran. Little is known of his early life. As an adult, he preached the new religion that he had formulated. It met with opposition at first; however, when he was about forty, he was successful in converting King Vishtaspa, the ruler of a region in northeast Iran, to his new religion. Thereafter, the king was his friend and protector. According to Iranian tradition, Zoroaster lived to the age of seventy-seven; his death can therefore be placed somewhere around the year 551 B.C.

Zoroastrian theology is an interesting mixture of monotheism and dualism. According to Zoroaster, there is only one true God, whom he calls Ahura Mazda (“the Wise Lord”) encourages righteousness and truthfulness. However, Zoroastrians also believe in the existence of an evil spirits, Angra Mainyu (in modern Persian, Ahriman) who represents evil and falsehood. In the real world there is a constant struggle between the forces of Ahura Mazda on the one side, and those of Ahriman on the other. Each individual person is free to make his own choice of whether to side with Ahura Mazda or with Ahriman. Although the struggle between the two sides may be close at present, Zoroastrians believe that in the long run the forces of Ahura Mazda will win. Their theology also includes a strong belief in an afterlife.

In ethical matters, the Zoroastrians religion stresses the importance of righteousness and truthfulness. Asceticism is opposed, as is celibacy. Zoroastrians practice various interesting religious rituals, some of them centered about their reverence for fire. For example, a sacred flame is always kept burning in a Zoroastrian temple. However, by far their most distinctive religious practice is their method of disposing of the dead, who are neither buried nor cremated, but put on towers to be eaten by vultures. (The birds normally strip the bones bare within a couple of hours.)

Although Zoroastrianism has various elements in common with the older Iranian religions, it does not appear to have spread widely during Zoroaster’s own lifetime. However, the region in which he had lived was incorporated into the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great in the middle of the sixth century B.C., about the time that Zoroaster died. In the course of the next two centuries, the religion was adopted by the Persian Empire was conquered by Alexander the Great, in the last half of the fourth century B.C., the Zoroastrian religion underwent a severe decline. Eventually, however, the Persians regained their political independence, Hellenistic influences declined, and there was a revival of Zoroastrianism. During the Sassanid dynasty (c. 226-651 A.D.) Zoroastrianism was adopted as the state religion of Persia.

After the Arab conquest of the seventh century A.D., the bulk of the Persian population was gradually converted to Islam (in some cases forcibly, although in principle the Moslemstolerated the older religion). About the tenth century, some of the remaining Zoroastrians fled from Iran to Hormuz, an island in the Persian Gulf. From there, they or their descendants went to India, where they formed a small colony. The Hindus referred to them as Parsees, because of their Persian origin. There are well over one hundred thousand Parsees in Indian today, most of them living in or near the city of Bombay, where they constitute a fairly prosperous community. Zoroastrianism has never died out completely in Iran; however, only about twenty thousand followers remain in that country.

Today, there are fewer Zoroastrians in the world than either Mormons or Christian Scientists. But Mormonism and Christian Science are of fairly recent origin; over the course of history, the total number of followers of Zoroaster has been far larger. That is the major reason why Zoroaster has been included in this book while Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy have been omitted.

Moreover, the theology of Zoroastrianism has influenced other religions, such as Judaism and Christianity. Even greater was the influence of Zoroastrianism on Manichaeism, the religion founded by Mani, who took over the Zoroastrian idea of a struggle between good and evil spirits and elaborated it into a complex and compelling theology. For a while, the new faith that he founded was a major world religion, although it has since died out completely.

Zoroastrianism, of course, though one of the oldest religions extant, has always been basically a local religion rather than a major world faith. It therefore cannot compare in importance with religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.