imperfect may be the process, gradually to obtain the mastery; and that the great religions of the races, while indicating the intellectual and moral shortcomings of mankind, indicate also the gradual advance of ethical ideals, worked out by the natural and essential tendencies of the race. And thus, as it seems to me, this conception of the mode of growth of religions and of morality, which gathers strength as we come to take a more reasonable view of the world's history, is closely connected with the doctrine that, instead of ascribing all good achievement to the hero who drops from heaven, or springs spontaneously from the earth, we should steadily remember that he is only possible, and his work can only be successfully secured, by the tacit co-operation of the innumerable unknown persons in whose hearts his words find an echo because they are already feeling after the same ideal which is in him more completely embodied. In our judgment of such cases there is, then, an injustice so far as we make a false estimate of the right distribution of praise and gratitude. It would be an injustice, in a stricter sense, to the persons ignored, if we regarded such gratitude as the appropriate and main reward of a noble life. I need not repeat the commonplaces of moralists as to the real value of posthumous fame, nor inquire whether it implies an illusion, nor how far the desire for such fame is, in point of fact, a strong motive with many people. This only I will note--that obscurity is a condition, and by no means an altogether unpleasant condition, of much of the very best work that is done. The general or the statesman is conspicuous in connection with successful enterprise in which his subordinates necessarily do a great part of the labour. It is impossible for the outside world to form a correct judgment in such cases; and, therefore, there is no hardship to the particular persons concerned, if they are simply ignored where they would, certainly, be misjudged; and if they, therefore, work in obscurity, content with the approval of the very few who can estimate their merits. There is a compensation, as we see, when we reflect upon the moral disadvantages of conspicuous station. Literary people, for example, must be very unobservant if they do not notice how demoralising is the influence of public applause, and the constant inducement to court notoriety. It is unwholesome to live in an atmosphere which constantly stimulates and incites the weaknesses to which we are most liable. And many of our first writers must, I should fancy, feel pangs of self-humiliation when they contrast the credit which they have got for popular work with the very scanty recognition which comes to many who have applied equal talents to the discharge of duties often far more beneficial to mankind, but, from their nature, performed in the shade. "I," such a man, I fancy, must sometimes say to himself, "am quoted in every newspaper; I am puffed, and praised, and