104 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



treated as relatively unimportant. Nay, the like happens when the 

 boy passes into the hands of his classical master, at home or elsewhere. 

 "Arms and the man" form the end of the story as they form its begin- 

 ning. After the mythology, which of course is all-essential, come the 

 achievements of rulers and soldiers from Agamemnon down to Csesar : 

 what knowledge is gained of social organization, manners, ideas, mor- 

 als, being such only as the biographical statements involved. And the 

 value of the knowledge is so ranked that while it would be a disgrace 

 to be wrong about the amours of Zeus, and while ignorance concerning 

 the battle of Marathon would be discreditable, it is excusable to know 

 little or nothing of the social arrangements that preceded Lycurgus or 

 the origin and functions of the Areopagus. 



Thus the great-man theory of history finds everywhere a ready- 

 prepared conception is, indeed, but the definite expression of that 

 which is latent in the thoughts of the savage, tacitly asserted in all 

 early traditions, and taught to every child by multitudinous illustra- 

 tions. The glad acceptance it meets with has sundry more special 

 causes. There is, first, this universal love of personalities, which, 

 active in the aboriginal man, dominates still a love seen in the child 

 which asks you to tell it a story, meaning, thereby, somebody's ad- 

 ventures ; a love gratified in adults by police-reports, court-news, 

 divorce-cases, accounts of accidents, and lists of births, marriages, and 

 deaths ; a love displayed even by conversations in the streets, where 

 fragments of dialogue, heard in passing, prove that mostly between 

 men, and always between women, the personal pronouns recur every 

 instant. If you want roughly to estimate any one's mental calibre, 

 you cannot do it better than by observing the ratio of generalities 

 to personalities in his talk how far simple truths about individuals 

 are replaced by truths abstracted from numerous experiences of man 

 and things. And, when you have thus measured many, you find but 

 a scattered few likely to take any thing more than a biographical view 

 of human affairs. 



In the second place, this great-man theory commends itself as prom- 

 ising instruction along with gratification. Being already fond of hear- 

 ing about people's sayings and doings, it is pleasant news that, to 

 understand the course of civilization, you have only to read diligently 

 the lives of conspicuous men. What can be a more acceptable doctrine 

 than that while you are satisfying an instinct not very remotely allied 

 to that of the village gossip while you are receiving through print, 

 instead of orally, l'emarkable facts concerning notable persons you are 

 gaining that knowledge which will make clear to you why things have 

 happened thus or thus in the world, and will prepare you for forming 

 a right opinion on each question coming before you as a citizen ? 



And then, in the third place, the interpretation of things thus given 

 is so beautifully simple seems so easy to comprehend. Providing you 

 ere content with conceptions that are out of focus, as most people's 



