The greatness of individuals can be decided only by those who live after them, not by their contemporaries.

Generally, a great person is lionized after his death. It is more relevant in politics where even the toughest, and unlikely opponent praise the dead. The prompt states that individual greatness should be gauged as a function of time. Although contemporaries are generally correct on deciding the greatness of a person, barring some outlying examples, sometimes the contemporaries do not have a good idea about how the great person’s vision span out in time. Hence, I mostly agree with the prompt but concede that there are some ways where the argument does not hold water.
As mentioned earlier, human sympathy reaches its peak when the person is dead. All his wrong deeds are forgotten and he is lionized by his later contemporaries. Take an example of Thomas Elba Edison. He was prone to vituperations by most of his contemporaries for his “business”-minded approach to science. Although his contemporary Nikola Tesla was arguably more respected and more praised among the scientific community, nowadays Edison is more remembered for his invention of the electric bulb. His science contemporaries did not regard his invention as tantamount to the electric flux theorem developed by Tesla, but the electric bulb stands out as the important development of the 20th century.
Additionally, compatriots generally protect any law or theory intransigently. In fact, most people resist change. The fact that Earth revolves around the sun is a well-known fact even for 8 years old. Galileo who first postulated this theorem about 400 years was ridiculed and even threaten to kill as well. Most of his comrades protected the traditional view. In fact, his inventions had profound consequences over the past centuries. In the above two ways, the given statement might be true.
However, history is apparently written by the winning side or the dominating side. In fact, most of the ancient histories are subjective analysis by a group of individual. For example, the Veda, Hindu’s oldest books were written about 8000 years ago which were later destroyed by the intruders. Later on, the knowledge which was passed as a “word of mouth”, was recompiled by later writers. One can assume the story might have fabricated many a time before the later writers decided to recompile it. As books are generally prone to qualitative bias, history books, which record the historical greatness of an individual, can definitely color our perspective of an individual’s greatness.
In conclusion, the greatness of a person is not so well predicted by his contemporaries. Although history books can sometimes be colored with a subjective point of view, time is a good parameter for an individual’s greatness.

Votes
Average: 5.8 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 344, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
...r on, the knowledge which was passed as a 'word of mouth', was recompil...
^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
apparently, but, first, hence, however, if, so, well, for example, in conclusion, in fact

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.5258426966 123% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.4196629213 48% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 14.8657303371 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 10.0 11.3162921348 88% => OK
Pronoun: 23.0 33.0505617978 70% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 58.6224719101 87% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 12.9106741573 62% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2301.0 2235.4752809 103% => OK
No of words: 433.0 442.535393258 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.31408775982 5.05705443957 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56165014514 4.55969084622 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.27016381542 2.79657885939 117% => OK
Unique words: 245.0 215.323595506 114% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.565819861432 0.4932671777 115% => OK
syllable_count: 721.8 704.065955056 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59117977528 107% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 6.24550561798 80% => OK
Article: 7.0 4.99550561798 140% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 3.10617977528 161% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.77640449438 113% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.38483146067 114% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 20.2370786517 128% => OK
Sentence length: 16.0 23.0359550562 69% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 49.338523902 60.3974514979 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 88.5 118.986275619 74% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.6538461538 23.4991977007 71% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.42307692308 5.21951772744 66% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.97078651685 101% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 7.80617977528 13% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 10.2758426966 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 5.13820224719 136% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.83258426966 186% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.121862318981 0.243740707755 50% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0339219666488 0.0831039109588 41% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0486366127636 0.0758088955206 64% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0800997193678 0.150359130593 53% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0572937440154 0.0667264976115 86% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.9 14.1392134831 84% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 46.78 48.8420337079 96% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.92365168539 111% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.1743820225 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.22 12.1639044944 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.59 8.38706741573 102% => OK
difficult_words: 114.0 100.480337079 113% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 11.8971910112 71% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.4 11.2143820225 75% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.7820224719 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.