HEROES.[1]
Any attempt to meditate on the records of the past, with a view to using the results for guidance in the present, at once raises questions which are incapable of solution. It is impossible to appraise human activity by any fixed standard or to determine its limitations. On the one hand, we feel that great events or great movements are only intelligible when described in the terms of individual endeavour; on the other hand, there are times when we begin to doubt if their appropriation by individuals can after all be justified. There is no doubt that we can only understand ideas when they are exhibited in their application to actual life. In themselves they are abstract, remote, inoperative. They only show their power as they excite our interest; and they claim that interest only when they are set forth in the actions or aspirations of men like ourselves. Indeed, it is not too much to say that all our mental possessions come to us in the first instance by the process of imitation. The child appropriates its mother's sayings, and adopts unconsciously its mother's attitude towards life. This is the source of its learning long before it pays any attention to its mother's pre-
- ↑ An address given to the Social and Political Education League on 4th November, 1898.
