Under her pen name George Elliot, Mary Anne Evans wrote these words in her 1871–72 novel Middlemarch:

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Setting aside the question of whether the world is growing in goodness or not, how often do we consider the profound truth presented in this single, graceful sentence? What unknown debts do we owe to the dead—the forgotten souls who lived a simple, hidden life of love and duty, inhabiting quiet homes and quiet lanes far from the madding crowd?

We open the pages of dust-clothed history books and find names glistening with honor and heroism, leaping from the page with their epoch-making deeds. There’s no shortage of these heroes. But surely, when we consider all the good in the world, a great portion of it is not due to names etched in granite or marble. A great portion of it is due to names etched only in the hearts of their loved ones—or, maybe, in no hearts at all.

After all, any hero who has arisen in an hour of need to do great deeds was prepared for that role by smaller deeds and quiet happenings, including the encouragement, example, and corrections of parents, siblings, uncles, aunts, grandparents, friends, teachers, and mentors. Without these people no one has ever become great.

As St. Catherine of Siena tells us, any virtue we have, we learn from our neighbors. And so the victories of the conquering hero memorialized for all time are, in part, the fruit of seeds planted long ago by someone else. But most of these people are lost to memory.

Similarly, many of the villains of history are such because someone (often their fathers) failed them. None of this removes personal responsibility or free will, of course—plenty of people have been dealt a poor hand in life and yet risen above it—but it does indicate how much others influence our character.

In the movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, Galadriel speaks this truth to Frodo: “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.” The movie comes from the fiction series by J.R.R. Tolkien, who placed at the center of his fantasy epics not some great warlord or clever nobleman but a simple, home-loving “halfling” or hobbit from a land much like provincial England once was. A “small person” can greatly affect the lives of others, even though living a simple, hidden life.

Apart from historic deeds entirely, it seems to me that the goodness of individuals acts as a kind of leaven on society, elevating the whole thing in an invisible and mysterious way. Heroism may go unnoticed by the public, but it will not go unrewarded in the end. To live a long life of quietly fulfilling duty; suppressing evil inclinations; caring for others; being a reliable employee, a loyal citizen, a loving mother or father, a caring nurse or teacher, a diligent police officer or plumber; and staying faithful to the bitter end (and we all face our bitter ends, our moments of ultimate trial, the seeming dissolution of our lives)—all that takes a heroism we don’t often recognize.

In all of history, a vast network of unseen valor is constantly at work, holding back untold evils and making life worth living. How easily you or I might have inherited a far harder and far more miserable life than the one we have if just one of the people in our genealogy had failed in some crucial responsibility.

I said “apart from historic deeds” above, and yet, giving future generations a legacy and foundation for a fulfilling life or a meaningful home—is that not “historic,” even if no newspapers report on it?

All of this means, I suppose, that if we receive the fruits of centuries of right action, we also—disquietingly—sow the seeds that will be reaped by as-yet-unborn generations. Traditionally, the Iroquois held to the Seventh Generation Principle: the idea that each decision should be weighed according to its impact not just today or tomorrow but seven generations hence.

I often think about the impact that my decisions right now will have on my daughter in the future. When she’s an old woman, will she think gratefully of what her father did or tried to do, or will she have cause to blame him?

And the story extends much further than that. Her children will have a certain kind of life because of the kind of person that she is. The kind of life she lives is shaped, in part, by me. And the same for her children’s children. And beyond. To the seventh generation. Hundreds of people’s lives will be touched in some way, for better or for worse, by me, whose name they will not know.

The same river that we touch now, either polluting or purifying, will kiss the feet and fingers of others, far away. In the words of John Keats, it will travel “past the near meadows … up the hill-side … buried deep … in the next valley-glades.” This is a thought both consoling and sobering.

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