HYPOCRISY AS A SOCIAL ELEVATOR. 601 



progress to the cleansing of the inside also, so as to still keep 

 ahead of those who emulate him by external purification of their 

 culinary utensils. Then their cleanliness as a principle becomes 

 merely a matter of time. 



National histories and the portraiture of the great men of the 

 past are all more or less flagrant pieces of hypocrisy. The histo- 

 rians of every nation carefully feed its self-esteem by the assidu- 

 ous elaboration of everything in its past that is noble, brave, and 

 enlightened, and the equally assiduous obscuration of all that is 

 mean, cowardly, barbarous, and otherwise discreditable. It is 

 true that modern historians have abandoned the ancient practice 

 of tracing the descent of their peoples directly from the immor- 

 tal gods, but they come as near it as the limitations of modern 

 thought will allow. Invariably they represent their people as 

 of exceptionally distinguished lineage and character and a pow- 

 erful factor for good from the moment of entrance upon the 

 stage of history. Its soldiers were godlike in courage and devo- 

 tion ; its statesmen divine in purity and wisdom. Higher motives 

 than desire to flatter the national vanity help to actuate the his- 

 torians in this misrepresentation. They believe that it is best to 

 make out of the past ideals for coming generations to emulate. 

 They desire to stimulate national virtue by high examples. 



The truth is, the early history of every great nation is like the 

 early history of men who have risen from the gutter to promi- 

 nence. There has been a long and dreary period of ignorant 

 frequently disreputable struggling of mean abilities, in mean 

 ways, with mean competitors and mean surroundings. Rightly 

 viewed, this is one of the most comforting facts in human history, 

 for it shows that nations, like men, constantly 



"rise to higher things, 

 With their dead selves as stepping-stones." 



Take, for example, the history of England. The impression 

 which has been studiously produced upon the mind of the aver- 

 age reader is that that great nation has, ever since the advent of 

 William the Conqueror (if not before), occupied the same proud 

 place at the head of the wealth, power, and civilization of the 

 world that she has for the past century. Nothing could be far- 

 ther from the truth for at least four centuries after the battle of 

 Hastings. Until usurper Henry VII snatched the scepter from 

 the lifeless hand of usurper Richard III, on Bosworth Field, in 

 1485, England was a thinly peopled, out-of-the-way island, of 

 almost as little importance to the rest of the world as Venezuela 

 is to-day. Such ignorant, dull, brutalized white men as the Eng- 

 lishmen of the Plantagenet period are not to be found to-day out- 

 side of a Russian village, or a community of Hungarian miners 



VOL. XXXVIII. 41 



