Why The Mentor? What’s in the name? We might have chosen any one of fifty names beside The Mentor. We had a list of fully 100 names before we made our selection. And the material that we have supplied under the name of “Mentor” would have served its purpose as well under another name. But we chose our name very carefully. There’s a reason for “Mentor.” And yet, although we are now a little over three years old and number nearly 100,000 in membership, no one has asked the reason--at least until a few weeks ago. Then one of our earliest members put the question, “What or who is The Mentor?” The question was slow in coming, but I am glad it is here, because the answer is worth while. * * * * * Mentor was a very worthy individual of ancient Greece. You can read about him in Homer’s “Odyssey.” He was the son of Alcimus and the faithful friend of Ulysses (Odysseus). When Ulysses set forth on his long wanderings, he consigned his household and his family, including his son Telemachus to the care of his friend Mentor. So faithful was Mentor in his attention to Telemachus and so serviceable to him in precept and example that his name has now come to be used in the sense of a wise and trustworthy advisor--“a wise and faithful guide and friend” as a modern dictionary phrases it. * * * * * The name of Mentor was brought down nearer to our time by the eminent French writer, philosopher, and churchman, Fenelon, archbishop of Cambria. He lived in the time of the Grand Monarch, Louis XIV, and so wise and cultivated was he that the king made him tutor to his grandson, the Duke of Burgundy, eldest son of the dauphin, and eventual heir to the throne. In the course of his tutorship, and for purposes of instruction, Fenelon wrote several remarkable books--prose poems, in their way, but each having a distinct moral purpose either religious or political. In one of these, published in 1699, and entitled “Telemaque,” Fenelon recounts the adventures of the son of Ulysses in search of his father. It is a Utopian novel dealing with conditions of life in an idealistic way, and hovering between dreams and realities. Its object was to educate the young Duke of Burgundy’s mind to the highest purposes of life as they should be regarded by royalty--to keep before his eyes the “great and holy maxim that kings exist for the sake of their subjects, not subjects for the sake of kings.” In this book the character of “Mentor” figures prominently. His aims are educational in a gentle, lofty way, his hope being, as he puts it himself, “to change the tastes and habits of the people.” * * * * *