This little excursion into the borders of psychology should enable us to render fair judgment upon current types of disillusioning biography. To the extent that a biographer burrows into weaknesses under the assumption that the worst in a man is the real clue to him--to this extent the supposedly enlightened writer reproduces the wholesale naturalism that endeavored to offset the equally wholesale theology. Such biography is pre-psychological. On the other hand, why should we object to the publication of any well-authenticated fact concerning any public character? We have every reason to expect that minute scrutiny will reveal some sort of smallness in any great man. What we should beware of is the obscuring of what is admirable by the dust that goes into the air when these smallnesses are dug out. That hero-worship has had a setback is not a matter for regret, but rather for congratulation. For not only was it careless of historical truth, but it separated from us those who are of us, making us feel unduly inferior to good men, and (as the psychoanalyst would say with some show of reason) making a false compensation for our own defects by adulation of men who were supposed not to have them. There are other reasons, too, for rejoicing at the growth of realistic methods in the appraisals of men. For it is not merely historical distance that creates illusion, but social distance also, and likewise interests that are served by making distances appear where they do not exist. Let me speak without reserve. The achievement of success in any commonly accepted sense of “success” ordinarily produces self-gratulation of an expansive sort. That is, one attributes to oneself admirable qualities other than those that produced the success. Jack Horner said “What a big boy am I!” Moreover, the successful man’s neighbors, too, admire the whole man instead of merely the particular acts and qualities that bring him into notice. Thus it is that practically any successful man is overestimated by both himself and his contemporaries.