le
meaning and virtue lie in what it contains of our common humanity, in
the clearness and brilliancy with which it interprets the man in us, in
the force with which it identifies us with human nature. If it is
separated from us by a too high royalty or a too base villany, it loses
intelligibility, it forfeits sympathy, it becomes more and more an
object of simple curiosity, and removes into the region of the unknown.
Even if the type passes into the supernatural, into fairyland or the
angelic or demoniac world, it must not leave humanity behind. These
spheres are in fact fragments of humanity itself, projections of its
sense of wonder, its goodness, and its evil, in extreme abstraction
though concretely felt. Fairy, angel, and devil cease to be conceivable
except as they are human in trait, however the conditions of their
nature may be fancied; for we have no other materials to build with save
those of our life on earth, though we may combine them in ways not
justified by reason. In so far as these worlds are in the limits of
rational imagination, they are derived from humanity, partial
interpretations of some of its moods, portions of itself; and the beings
who inhabit them are impaired for the purposes of art in the degree to
which their abstract nature is felt as stripping them of complete
humanity. For this reason in dealing with such simple types, being
natures all of one strain, it has been found best in practice to import
into them individually some quality widely common to men in addition to
that limited quality they possess by their conception. Some touch of
weakness in an angel, some touch of pity in a devil, some unmerited
misfortune in an Ariel, bring them home to our bosoms; just as the
frailty of the hero, however great he be, humanizes him at a stroke.
Thus these abstract fragments also are reunited with humanity, with the
whole of life in ourselves.

Types, then, whether simple or complex, whether apparently physical or
purely spiritual, whether given fragmentary or as wholes of personality,
express human character in its essential traits. They may be narrow or
broad generalizations; but if to know ourselves be our aim, those
types, which show man his common and enduring nature, are the most
valuable, and rank first in importance; in proportion as they are
specialized, they are less widely interpretative; in proportion as they
escape from time and place, race, culture, and religion, and present man
ete