Genuine history, both in respect to aim and performance, only begins at the point where the heroic age, which in its origination it is the part of poetry and art to vindicate, ceases, for the reason that we have here the moment when the distinct outlines and prose of life, in its actual conditions, no less than the way they are conceived and represented, come into being. Herodotus does not for instance describe the Greek expedition to Troy, but the Persian wars, and takes pains, in a variety of ways, with tedious research and careful reflection, to base the narrative proposed on genuine knowledge. The Hindoos, indeed we may say the Orientals generally, with almost the single exception of the Chinese, do not possess this instinct of prose sufficiently to produce a genuine history. They invariably digress either into an interpretation and reconstruction of facts of a purely religious character, or such as are fantastic inventions. The element of prose then native to the historical age of any folk may be briefly described as follows. In the _first_ place, in order that we may have history we must presuppose a common life, whether we consider the same on its religious side, or that of a polity, with its law, institutions, and the like, established on their own account, and possessing originally or in their subsequent modification a validity as laws or conditions of general application. It is out of such a common life, _secondly_, that we mark the birth of definite activities for the preservation or change of the same, which may be of universal import, and in fact constitute the end or motive of their continuance, and to complete and carry into effect which we have to presuppose individuals fitted for such a task. These individuals are great and eminent in so far as they show themselves, through their effective personality, in co-operation with the common end, which underlies the ideal notion of the conditions which confront them: they are little when they fail to rise in stature to the demand thus made on their energy: they are depraved when, instead of facing as combatants of the practical needs of the times,[10] they are content merely to give free rein to an individual force which is, with its implied caprice, foreign to all such common ends. Where, however, any of such conditions obtain we do not have either a genuine content or a condition of the world such as we established in the first part of our inquiry as essential to the art of poetry. Even in the case of personal greatness the substantive aim of its devotion is to a large or less extent something given, presupposed, and enforced upon it, and to that extent the unity of individuality is excluded, wherein the universal, that is the entire personality should be selfidentical, an end exclusively for itself, an independent whole in short. For however much these individuals discover their aims in their own resources, it is for