extent than we ordinarily recognize, an imitation of literature. The illustrations which come most promptly to remembrance are perhaps life's imitations of religious literature. These come first to remembrance because it is so obvious that the power and the perpetuation of religion depend directly upon the possibility of governing men through their imaginations by inspiring them to imitate some supreme exemplar whose record is literary; so that what is most affecting in the history of ancient Stoicism is the imitation of Plato's Socrates, and the whole history of Christendom, its churches, its institutions, its saints, its sages, and the Holy Roman Empire itself, are imitations, more or less grotesque, of the Old and the New Testaments, just as the moral and spiritual life of Oriental peoples are imitations of the Vedas, and the Koran, and the sayings of Confucius and other eastern wise men.
When we reflect on the imitation of literature by life, we see that there is a third very great reason why literature is so formidable a power. To put the matter in the ordinary way, literature is responsible for calling in allies from the great nations of the dead to intimidate and overawe the living. Governors, still encumbered with the flesh, and the hot-breathed children of the
