Even those with the most limited list, of the great names of history at their disposal, cannot fail to remember that simplicity and directness have in the persons of their highest exemplars been misunderstood; hunted down like wild beasts, burned, crucified, and then, when they were well out of the way, crowned and held up to humanity as the saviors of the race. We will have none of them when authority, faith, truth, courage, show us our distorted images in the mirror of their lives. Crucify him, crucify him! has always been the cry when such a one asserts his moral kingship, or his sonship to God, or his audacious intention to live his own life; and in less tragic fashion, but none the less along the same lines, the world tends to pick at, and to fray the moral garments of, its leaders still to-day. When such a one succeeds through sheer simplicity, then that last feeble epitaph of mediocrity is applied to him: "He is lucky," because so few people realize that "luck," is merely not to be dependent upon luck. It is apparent from the quotations I have given, and many more of the same tenor are at our disposal, that the personality we are studying has a very definite image of his place in the world, of the duties he is called upon to perform, of his rights according to his own conception of his authority and responsibilities, and of his intentions. It is equally apparent that he looks upon history in quite another way than that usually accepted by the modern scientific historian. Taine and Green may explain everything, even kings and emperors, by the forces of climate, environment, and the slow-heaving influence of the people. This school of historians will tell you how Charlemagne, and Luther, and Cromwell, and Napoleon are to be accounted for by purely material explanations. The German Emperor apparently believes that the history of the world and the development of mankind are due to a series of mighty factors, mysteriously endowed from on high and bearing the names of men, and not infrequently the names of emperors and kings. He is continually recalling his ancestors, the Great Elector, Frederick the Great, and William I, his grandfather. These men made Prussia and Prussia made the German Empire, he declares. To the Brandenburg Parliament he says: "It is the great merit of my ancestors that they have always stood aloof from and above all parties, and that they have always succeeded in making political parties combine for the welfare of the whole people."