In this selfsame way we
habitually build for ourselves ideal characters out of dead and living
men, by dwelling on that part of their career which we most admire or
love as showing their characteristic selves. Napoleon is the conqueror,
St. Francis the priest, Washington the great citizen, only by this
method. They are not thereby de-humanized; neither do the ideal types of
imagination fail of humanization because they are thus fragmentarily,
but consistently, presented.
The type must make this human appeal under all circumstances. Its whole
meaning and virtue lie in what it contains of our common humanity, in
the clearness and brilliancy with which it interprets the man in us, in
the force with which it identifies us with human nature. If it is
separated from us by a too high royalty or a too base villany, it loses
intelligibility, it forfeits sympathy, it becomes more and more an
object of simple curiosity, and removes into the region of the unknown.
Even if the type passes into the supernatural, into fairyland or the
angelic or demoniac world, it must not leave humanity behind.
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