Heroes Every Child Should Know | Page 5

sun and stars; they have cut wood for their fires in the
forest, but they have noticed the life which goes on among the trees and
they have heard the mysterious sounds which often fill the air in the
remotest places. From the beginning men have not only used their
hands but their intellect and their imagination; they have had to work or
starve, but they have seen the world, thought about it and dreamed
about it.
They had worked and thought and dreamed only a little time before
they began to explain the marvelous earth on which they found
themselves and the strange things that happened in it; the vastness and

beauty of the fields, woods, sky and sea, the force of the wind, the
coming and going of the day and night, the warmth of summer when
everything grew, and the cold of winter when everything died, the rush
of the storm and the terrible brightness of the lightning. They had no
idea of what we call law or force; they could not think of anything
being moved or any noise being made unless there was some one like
themselves to move things and make sounds; and so they made stories
of gods and giants and heroes and nymphs and fawns; and the myths,
which are poetic explanations of the world and of the life of men in it,
came into being.
But they did not stop with these great matters; they began to tell stories
about themselves and the things they wanted to do and the kind of life
they wanted to lead. They wanted ease, power, wealth, happiness,
freedom; so they created genii, built palaces, made magic carpets which
carried them to the ends of the earth and horses with wings which bore
them through the air, peopled the woods and fields with friendly,
frolicsome or mischievous little people, who made fires for them if they
were friendly, or milked cows, overturned bowls, broke dishes and
played all kinds of antics and made all sorts of trouble if they were
mischievous or unfriendly. Beside the great myths, like wild flowers in
the shade of great trees, there sprang up among the people of almost all
countries a host of poetic, satirical, humorous or homely stories of
fairies, genii, trolls, giants, dwarfs, imps, and queer creatures of all
kinds; so that to the children of two hundred years ago the woods, the
fields, the solitary and quiet places everywhere, were full of folk who
kept out of sight, but who had a great deal to do with the fortunes and
fates of men and women.
From very early times great honor was paid to courage and strength;
qualities which won success and impressed the imagination in primitive
not less than in highly developed societies. The first heroes were gods
or demi-gods, or men of immense strength who did difficult things.
When men first began to live in the world they were in constant peril
and faced hardships of every kind; and from the start they had very
hard work to do. There were fields to be cultivated, houses to be built,
woods to be explored, beasts to be killed and other beasts to be tamed

and set to work. There were many things to be done and no tools to
work with; there were great storms to be faced and no houses for
protection; there was terrible cold and no fire or clothing; there were
diseases and no medicine; there were perils on land, in the water and in
the air, and no knowledge of the ways of meeting them.
At the very start courage and strength were necessary if life was to be
preserved and men were to live together in safety and with comfort.
When a strong man appeared he helped his fellows to make themselves
more at ease in the world. Sometimes he did this by simply making
himself more comfortable and thus showing others how to do it;
sometimes he did it by working for his fellows. No matter how selfish a
man may be, if he does any real work in the world he works not only
for himself but for others. In this way a selfish man like Napoleon does
the work of a hero without meaning to do it: for the world is so made
that no capable man or woman can be entirely selfish, no matter how
hard they try to get and keep everything for themselves.
It was not long before men saw that strong men could not work for
themselves without working for others, and there came in very early the
idea of service as part of the idea of heroism, and the demi- gods, who
were among the earliest heroes, were servants as well as masters.
Hercules, the