one in the inescapability of a certain specific leadership, usually their own, which will lead us to this future. Sometimes they do both. We also shall see that to deny the inescapability of the main line of historical action does not necessarily mean that what it will be always depends upon the character of the leadership. There are more things in history than “laws of destiny” and “great men.” As far as the historical role of leadership is concerned, it is a question of degree and types of situation. Our task will be to indicate roughly to what degrees and in what types of situation, it is legitimate to say that leadership does redetermine the historical trends by which it is confronted, and in what type of situations it is legitimate to say that it does not.
2. Another source of interest in the hero is to be found in the attitudes developed in the course of educating the young. The history of every nation is represented to its youth in terms of the exploits of great individuals—mythical or real. In some ancient cultures the hero was glorified as the father of a nation, like Abraham by the Israelites, or as the founder of a state, like Romulus by the Romans. Among modern cultures the heroic content of historical education in the early years has remained comparatively unaffected by changing pedagogical fashions. This may be due to the dramatic effect of the story form that naturally grows up when history is treated as a succession of personal adventures. Or perhaps it reflects the simplest approach to the moralistic understanding of the child. Reinforced by folklore and legend, this variety of early education leaves a permanent impress upon the plastic minds of the young. To ascend from the individual to social institutions and relations between individuals is to go from the picturesque and concrete to an abstraction. Without adequate training the transition is not always easy. This undoubtedly accounts for the tendency of many people to personify “social forces,” “economic laws,” and “styles of culture.” These abstractions compel and decree and rule, face and conquer obstacles almost like the heroes of old. Behind the metaphor in much orthodox Marxist writing one can almost see “the forces of production” straining at the shackles with which Capital and Profit have fettered them while human beings, when they are not tugging on one side or another, watch with bated breath for the outcome.
Even on higher levels of instruction the “heroic” approach to history has not been abandoned. The school of American historians who clustered around James Harvey Robinson and
