Francis. In the present day we
reject miracles and prodigies; we are on our guard against the mythology
of hero worship, just as we disbelieve in the eminent superiority of any
one of our contemporaries to another. We look less curiously into the
mythology of scandal; we accept easily and willingly stories disparaging
to illustrious persons in history, because similar stories are told and
retold with so much confidence and fluency among the political adversaries
of those who have the misfortune to be their successful rivals. The
absurdity of a calumny may be as evident as the absurdity of a miracle;
the ground for belief may be no more than a lightness of mind, and a less
pardonable wish that it may be true. But the idle tale floats in society,
and by and by is written down in books and passes into the region of
established realities.
The tendency to idolize great men and the tendency to depreciate them
arises alike in emotion; but the slanders of disparagement are as truly
legends as the wonder-tales of saints and warriors; and anecdotes related
of Caesar at patrician dinner-parties at Rome as little deserve attention
as the information so freely given upon the habits of modern statesmen in
the _salons_ of London and Paris. They are read now by us in classic
Latin, but they were recorded by men who hated Caesar and hated all that
he had done; and that a poem has survived for two thousand years is no
evidence that the author of it, even though he might be a Catullus, was
uninfluenced by the common passions of humanity.
Pages:
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663