This particular hero-worship is, to my thinking, so portentous that I have been tempted thus to study it at some length. For thousands of years, the human race has gone on adding one noble type to another in its Pantheon,--the old heathen patriotism and heroism of a Theseus, a Codrus, a Curtius, a Regulus, the modest wisdom of a Socrates, and the stoic grandeur of a Marcus Aurelius. Christianity added yet saintlier virtues to the ideal,--the charity, the purity, the religious fervor, and martyr devotion of a whole army of saints. Yet all these “stars of our mortal night” can, it seems, be obscured and forgotten; and men who might have known and honored and followed them, like the Magi of old, prefer to dance after such a flaring link-light as Schopenhauer lifted over his own head! Observing this, and how his desolate doctrine is gaining ground, and recognizing not a few of his personal characteristics (more especially his arrogance) among other thinkers nearer home, we are tempted to turn back fondly and regretfully to the humblest old-fashioned goodness. Many of us had confidently trusted that, when knowledge increased, wisdom and love would grow along with it; that, without losing the sacred lessons of the past, mankind would obtain still deeper insight into moral truth, and that phases of character would appear more beautiful, more joyous, more perfectly rounded in all the gifts and graces of humanity than the world yet has seen,--the long-severed virtues of the hero and the saint combined at last.