His hero-worship did not lead him, however, to glorification at the expense of truth. He utters the thought, profoundly true and all too little understood, that every lack of harmony between life and its laws depends—even in great spirits—not upon their greatness, but upon their weaknesses. “But these weaknesses render them not less worthy of our love.... The idealism that will not recognize the truth is cowardice; there is only one heroism in the world: _to see the world as it is—and to love it_.” So without hesitation, Rolland points out weaknesses in Michael Angelo’s life, and inconsistencies in Tolstoy’s. He sees in both great specimens of the “type that will pass away”; the Christian—those who “have had their refuge in God and the everlasting life when this life has gone against them; those whose faith has often been expression for deficient belief in life, in the future, in themselves; a lack of courage and a lack of gladness.” “I know,” he continues, “of how many defeats your grievous victories are made, and therefore I pity you and admire you. You make the world more doleful but more beautiful. Praised be pain and praised be joy! Both are holy; they form the world and they broaden great souls: joy and pain are powers, are life, are God.”[5] [5] Epitome of the introduction to _Michael Angelo_. The three biographies that Rolland has thus far published are of Beethoven, Michael Angelo, and Tolstoy. In the first, it is the love of life and the courage of life; in the second, creative power and strength of belief; in the third, the ecstacy of life and the love of mankind, that he emphasizes. Such souls, he says, restore to us belief in life and in mankind, for from them “issues a current of social power and potent goodness.” II. Beethoven is Rolland’s own conception of life, and is nearest his heart. To that “soul of music, heroism, and goodness” Rolland has reared the only memorial worthy of Beethoven that art has created: _Jean Christophe_.