. For even when he would not
fight, his "destructive wrath sent the souls of many valiant heroes to
Hades, and left themselves a prey to the dogs and birds of the air."
And when he returned to battle, what became of Hector? The song of the
Nibelungs opens by assuring us that the old stories tell of many
wonders, and of heroes worthy of praise _(von Helden lobebaeren)_,
and of great labours _(von grosser Arebeit)_. These "great labours"
consisted mainly in the slaying of other men. And this slaying was
obviously "worthy of praise"; for it gave us a model for all our own
struggle with evil. As for the heroes of history, of course, we love
to dwell upon their constructive labours. But, after all, what sort of
comparison is there in what the plain man, apart from a higher
enlightenment, usually calls glory, between Washington and Napoleon?
No doubt there will always be admirers of Napoleon who will think of
him as a misunderstood reformer labouring for the building up of an
ideal Europe. But even such admirers will join with the plain man in
dwelling, with especial fascination, upon the Napoleon of Austerlitz.
And they will not forget even Borodino. No doubt the lovers of
Washington find him glorious. But where, in his career, belongs the
glory of having put an end to the Holy Roman Empire, or of having
destroyed the polity of the Europe of the old maps?

{218}

Man the destroyer thus glories in his prowess, and adores the heroes
who were the ministers of death. And since, of course, his warfare is
always directed against something that he takes to be an evil, the
principle which directs his glorious conflicts seems to be one easy of
general statement, inconsistent as some of the reasonings founded upon
it seem to be. This principle is: "All evil ought to be destroyed.
There ought to be none. It should be swept out of existence."

Of course, when the principle of the warfare with evil is thus
abstractly stated, it does not tell us what we are to regard as an
evil. It leaves the wise estimate of good and evil to be learned
through a closer study of the facts of life. No doubt, then, Achilles,
and the other heroes of song and story, may have become as glorious as
they are by reason of our excessive love of destruction due to some
imperfect estimate of the true values of life. And therefore the mere
statement of the principle leaves open a very wide range for
difference of opinion and for inconsistency of view as to what it