Like the revolutionary dramas, the new creative cycle was preluded by a manifesto, a new call to greatness. The preface to _Beethoven_ proclaims: "The air is fetid. Old Europe is suffocating in a sultry and unclean atmosphere. Our thoughts are weighed down by a petty materialism.... The world sickens in a cunning and cowardly egoism. We are stifling. Throw the windows wide; let in the free air of heaven. We must breathe the souls of the heroes." What does Rolland mean by a hero? He does not think of those who lead the masses, wage victorious wars, kindle revolutions; he does not refer to men of action, or to those whose thoughts engender action. The nullity of united action has become plain to him. Unconsciously in his dramas he has depicted the tragedy of the idea as something which cannot be divided among men like bread, as something which in each individual's brain and blood undergoes prompt transformation into a new form, often into its very opposite. True greatness is for him to be found only in solitude, in struggle waged by the individual against the unseen. "I do not give the name of heroes to those who have triumphed, whether by ideas or by physical force. By heroes I mean those who were great through the power of the heart. As one of the greatest (Tolstoi) has said, 'I recognize no other sign of superiority than goodness. Where the character is not great, there is neither a great artist nor a great man of action; there is nothing but one of the idols of the crowd; time will shatter them together.... What matters, is to be great, not to seem great.'" A hero does not fight for the petty achievements of life, for success, for an idea in which all can participate; he fights for the whole, for life itself. Whoever turns his back on the struggle because he dreads to be alone, is a weakling who shrinks from suffering; he is one who with a mask of artificial beauty would conceal from himself the tragedy of mortal life; he is a liar. True heroism is that which faces realities. Rolland fiercely exclaims: "I loathe the cowardly idealism of those who refuse to see the tragedies of life and the weaknesses of the soul. To a nation that is prone to the deceitful illusions of resounding words, to such a nation above all, is it necessary to say that the heroic falsehood is a form of cowardice. There is but one heroism on earth--to know life and yet to love it."