accepts as embodiments of its secrets,
hopes, and aims. It is a significant
fact that, in portraying the Greek of
his time, Homer has given us also
the ideal Greek and the Greek ideals.
His insight went to the soul of the
persons he described, and he struck
into that spiritual order in which the
ideal is not only a reality, but, in a
sense, the only reality.

Cervantes, in the very act of de-
stroying a false Idealism, convention-
ally conceived and treated, made one
of the most beautiful revelations of a
true Idealism which the world has yet
received. Shakespeare's presentation
of the facts of life is, on the whole,
the most comprehensive and impres-
sive which has yet been made; in the
disclosure of tragic elements it is un-
surpassed; and yet what a host of
ideal figures move through the plays

[[267]]

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v?