“——all night long his face before her lived, Dark-splendid, speaking in the silence, full Of noble things, and held her from her sleep.” It is true of races, as of individuals, that the more vitality and onwardness they have, the more they need ideals and a leadership that gives form to them. A strenuous people like the Anglo-Saxon must have something to look forward and up to, since without faith of some sort they must fall into dissipation or despair; they can never be content with that calm and symmetrical enjoyment of the present which is thought to have been characteristic of the ancient Greeks. To be sure it is said, and no doubt with truth, that the people of Northern Europe are less hero-worshippers than those of the South, in the sense that they are less given to blind enthusiasm for popular idols; but this, I take it, only means that the former, having more constructive power in building up ideals from various personal sources, and more persistence in adhering to them when thus built up, are more sober and independent in their judgment of particular persons, and less liable to extravagant admiration of the hero of the moment. But their idealism is all the more potent for this, and at bottom is just as dependent upon personal suggestion for its definition. Thus it is likely that all leadership will be found to be such by virtue of defining the possibilities of the mind. “If we survey the field of history,” says Professor William James, “and ask what feature all great periods of revival, of expansion of the human mind, display in common, we shall find, I think, simply this; that each and all of them have said to the human being, ‘the inmost nature of the reality is congenial to _powers_ which you possess’”;[82] and the same principle evidently applies to personal leadership.