of the heroes of history he cannot be called. Was not his
failure to attain to still loftier heights partly due to the fact that
his character was not on a level with the elevation of his mind?

And yet that character, a very complicated one, though he took himself
to be the simplest man in the world, was determined by the same factors
which determined the structure of his mind. Again and again we find in
his inclinations the correlates of his convictions.

At the root of his moral being we find--a key to the understanding of
his character--that same profound need of purity which drove him to the
sources of sacred science. Purity in the material and the moral sense is
what he desires for himself and others, always and in all things. Few
things revolt him so much as the practices of vintners who doctor wine
and dealers who adulterate food. If he continually chastens his language
and style, or exculpates himself from mistakes, it is the same impulse
which prompts his passionate desire for cleanliness and brightness, of
the home and of the body. He has a violent dislike of stuffy air and
smelly substances. He regularly takes a roundabout way to avoid a
malodorous lane; he loathes shambles and fishmongers' shops. Fetors
spread infection, he thinks. Erasmus had, earlier than most people,
antiseptic ideas about the danger of infection in the foul air of
crowded inns, in the breath of confessants, in baptismal water. Throw
aside common cups, he pleaded; let everybody shave himself, let us be
cleanly as to bed-sheets, let us not kiss each other by way of greeting.
The fear of the horrible venereal disease, imported into Europe during
his lifetime, and of which Erasmus watched the unbridled propagation
with solicitude, increases his desire for purity. Too little is being
done to stop it, he thinks. He cautions against suspected inns; he wants
to have measures taken against the marriages of syphilitic persons. In
his undignified attitude towards Hutten his physical and moral aversion
to the man's evil plays an unmistakable part.

Erasmus is a delicate soul in all his fibres. His body forces him to be
that. He is highly sensitive, among other things very susceptible to
cold, 'the scholars' disorder', as he calls it. Early in life already
the painful malady of the stone begins to torment him, which he resisted
so bravely when his work was at stake. He always speaks in a coddling
tone about his little body, which cannot stand fasti