Overview

In every country boasting a history there may be observed a tendency to make its leaders or great men superhuman. Whether we turn to the legends of the East, the folklore of Europe, or the traditions of the native peoples of America, we find a mythology based upon the acts of man gifted with superhuman powers. In the unscientific, primeval periods in which these beliefs were born and elaborated into oral and written form, their origin is not surprising. But to all who have studied the creation of a mythology, no phase is a more curious one than that the keen, practical American of today should engage in the same process of hero-building which has given us Jupiter, Wotan, King Arthur, and others. By a slow evolution we have willingly discarded from the lives of our greatest men of the past all human faults and feelings; have enclosed their greatness in glass of the clearest crystal, and hung up a sign, "Do not touch." Indeed, with such characters as Washington, Franklin, and Lincoln we have practically adopted the English maxim that" the king can do no wrong." In place of men, limited by human limits, and influenced by human passions, we have demigods, so stripped of human characteristics as to make us question even whether they deserve much credit for their sacrifices and deeds.