sufficiently to warrant the statement that the
historian need not be a man of the world. Books are written by men and
treat of the thoughts and actions of men and a good study may be made of
human character without going beyond the walls of a library.

Drawing upon my individual experience again I feel that the two authors
who have helped me most in this study of human character are
Shakespeare and Homer. I do not mean that in the modern world we meet
Hamlet, Iago, Macbeth, and Shylock, but when we perceive "the native hue
of resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," when we come
in contact with the treachery of a seeming friend, with unholy ambition
and insensate greed, we are better able to interpret them on the page of
history from having grasped the lessons of Shakespeare to mankind. A
constant reading of Shakespeare will show us unchanging passions and
feelings; and we need not make literal contrasts, as did the British
matron who remarked of "Antony and Cleopatra" that it was "so unlike the
home life of our beloved queen." Bernard Shaw, who has said much in
detraction of Shakespeare, writes in one of his admiring moods, "that
the imaginary scenes and people he has created become more real to us
than our actual life--at least until our knowledge and grip of actual
life begins to deepen and glow beyond the common. When I was twenty,"
Shaw continues, "I knew everybody in Shakespeare from Hamlet to
Abhorson, much more intimately than I knew my living contemporaries; and
to this day, if the name of Pistol or Polonius catches my eye in a
newspaper, I turn to the passage with curiosity."[28]

Homer's character of Ulysses is a link between the ancient and the
modern world. One feels that Ulysses would be at home in the twentieth
century and would adapt himself to the conditions of modern political
life. Perhaps, indeed, he would have preferred to his militant age our
industrial one where prizes are often won by craft and persuasive
eloquence rather than by strength of arm. The story of Ulysses is a
signal lesson in the study of human character, and receives a luminous
commentary in Shakespeare's adaptation of it. The advice which Ulysses
gives to Achilles[29] is a piece of worldly wisdom and may well be acted
on by those who desire advancement in life and are little scrupulous in
regard to means. The first part of Goethe's "Faust" is another book
which has profoundly affected my view of life. I read it firs