must inevitably fall to pieces when confronted with the actual conditions of life and the distorted view which is formed of them. The force of circumstances is presented to the lower orders of society on a totally different level from that in which it acts upon rulers and princes. In Schiller's "Braut von Messina" Don Caesar is able to exclaim, and justly: "there stands no higher judge than myself!" And when he has to be punished he must himself give judgment and execute it. He is, in fact, subject to no external necessity of right and law, and even when punishment is the question is wholly dependent on himself. The characters in the Shakespearean drama do not entirely belong to the princely order and only partially are taken from mythical sources, but they are placed in the era of civil wars, in which the ties of social order and legislative enactment are either weakened or shattered, and they secure from such a condition the exceptional independence and self-sufficiency we are looking for. (_b_) If we transfer our attention now from the characteristic conditions of society we have hitherto mainly considered to the actual state of the world around us and its carefully articulated scheme of ethical, judicial, and political institutions, we shall not fail to observe that the material we have here offered us for figures of truly ideal type is of a very restricted character. The province here in which an entirely open field is presented for the display of independent purpose in its fullest individuality is limited both in its range and the measure of opportunity. The qualities that make a man thorough in his relations to his own family and his business, the ideals, in short, of honest citizens and excellent wives, in so far as will and activity are concentrated on the field in which it is still possible for a man to exercise his free personality, to carry out, in short, all that he has a mind to do, this is the prevailing feature of our modern society. Such ideals inevitably lack the depth of a fuller content, and the most significant feature of them is that of the attitude of the individual mind to their realization; for we find here the content is already presented by existing social institutions, and consequently the essential interest we take in it depends on the particular way in which that content is realized and appears in the _personal life_, its moral and inward significance. For this reason it is not possible, as in the case of former times, to create ideals from the positions of judgeship and kingship. If a man carries out his judicial functions nowadays in accordance with duty and the requirements of his office, he merely is acting within the bounds already marked out for him by legislative enactments in the social order as the sphere of his responsibilities. All that may characterize his tenure of office beyond this, as proceeding from personal qualities, such as suavity of demeanour or acuteness of