understood the greater is the power of the imagination in supplying a meaning. A certain dimness and mystery or quality of incomprehensibility invariably adds to the respect and awe paid to works of art and their creators, officially labelled as "great." Sometimes mere age or distance produces the requisite dimness. Racine considered this atmosphere of distance a necessary device of stagecraft for the proper presentation of a hero. "On peut dire que le respect que l'on a pour les héros augmente à mesure qu'ils s'éloignent de nous."[75] In the same way the intensity of horror bestowed upon the arch-villain of the piece is increased in proportion to the distance away from which he is regarded; in other words, the less you know about him. But this does not hold good for the heroes of the histrionic stage more truly than for the heroes and arch-villains of the wider stage of the world. The principle can be applied equally to the heroes of art, religion, politics or war. It is not, of course, the dimness or distance _per se_ which magnifies the object of appreciation; unaided that would merely have the opposite effect. The factor of dimness, by placing the object further from the grasp of _reason_, enables the playwright, politician, or critic, as the case may be, to play with greater ease and certainty upon the emotions of his audience, and by force of suggestion to endue his puppet more completely with the symbolic quality he wishes to present. In spite of Medici prints, oleographic processes and the extension of culture which renders any one liable to receive choice samples of the Italian Masters free with a packet of cigarettes, what William Hazlitt said with reference to Michael Angelo is still literally true. "We know," he writes, "nothing of him but his name. It is an abstraction of fame and greatness. Our admiration of him supports itself, and our idea of his superiority seems self-evident, because it is attached to his name only."