revived, and prepared for consummation, his long cherished idea when affairs pertaining to Louisiana were assuming their most serious aspects and just before their culmination. In the one matter there was consummate, practical statesmanship, in the other there may have been the conscious, clever move of an astute statesman; there surely was the motive and penetration of the seer and idealist. Before passing to the argument to substantiate this claim a word of comment is offered on the special character of the significance of a seer-fostered enterprise in history.
As the Project of a Seer and Idealist the Meaning of the Lewis and Clark Exploration Reaches Down the Ages.
As the project of a seer this event was out of the ordinary in history. Seers but rarely make history so directly and so exclusively. The typical event of history is the spontaneous outcome of contemporary conditions that are pressing to issue. There may or may not be present the shaping, or more or less controlling, influence of a master mind; arid yet, essentially, the regular course of events is the outcome of an onward sweep of tendencies. Great events—those of deep and wide significance—are due, then, to a peculiar meeting, coalescence, and culmination of world or national tendencies; but the Lewis and Clark exploration was solely a projection from the brain of Thomas Jefferson. He furnished the suggestion and plans and did the promoting, organizing, and instructing. The Lewis and Clark exploration, then, issued from an ideal; whereas events, in general, are the outcome of conditions. To understand the inception of typical events we have to note the great forces active at the time converging upon them; but to comprehend the peculiar origin of the Lewis and Clark expedition we
