We do not feel that our individualities are being lost, but that they are for the first time being found. We have discovered in another personality all those best things for which our hearts have been hungering, and we are simply helping ourselves to that which is in reality our own. Our hero gives of himself inexhaustibly, and we take freely and gladly what we need. It is thus that we stock up with our first store of spiritual values. It is from the treasury of a great and good personality that we receive the first confirmation of ourselves. In the hero-personality, we see our own dim, baby ideals objectified. Their splendor encourages us, and nerves us for the struggle to make them thoroughly our own. There is a certain pathos in the fact that parents are so seldom the heroes from whom the children derive this revelation of their own personality. It is more often some teacher or older friend or even a poet or reformer whom the youth has never seen and knows only through his words and writings. But for this the parents are partly responsible. They are sufficiently careful about the influences which play upon their young children. They give care and prayers and tears to their bringing-up in the years when the children are almost immune to any except the more obvious mechanical influences, and learn of ideals and values only in a parrot-like fashion. But when the child approaches youth, the parent is apt to relax vigilance and, with a cry of thanksgiving and self-congratulation that the child has been brought safely through so many perils to the desired haven, to surrender him to his own devices. Just at the time when he becomes really sensitive for the first time to spiritual influences, he is deprived of this closest and warmest influence of the home. But he has not been brought into a haven, but launched into a heaving and troubled sea. This is the time when his character lies at stake, and the possibility of his being a radical, individual force in the world hangs in the balance. Whether he will become this force depends on the pressures that he is able to dodge, and on the positive ideals he is able to secure. And they will depend largely on the heroes he worships, upon his finding the personalities that seem to contain all the best for which he yearns. Hero-worship is the best preservative against cheapness of soul, that besetting sin of modern youth. It directs our attention away from the light and frothy things of the world, which are wont to claim so much of youth’s interest, to qualities that are richer and more satisfying. Yet hero-worship is no mere imitation. We do not simply adopt new qualities and a new character. We rather impregnate our hitherto sterile ideals with the creative power of a tested and assured personality, and give birth to a new reliance and a new faith. Our heroes anticipate and provide for our doubts and fears, and fortify us against the sternest assaults of the world. We love our heroes because