s us enthusiasm and love in her have been victorious over death.
Truly, that Greek did well to call enthusiasm "a god within," for love
is stronger than death.

The historian tells us that all the liberties, reforms and political
achievements of society have been gained by nations thrilling and
throbbing to one great enthusiasm. The Renaissance does not mean a
single Dante, nor Boccaccio, but a national enthusiasm and a "god
within all minds." The Reformation is not a single Savonarola, nor
Luther, but a universal enthusiasm and "a god within," all heart and
conscience. If we study these movements of society as typified by
their leaders, these heroes stand forth before us with hearts all
aflame and with minds that grow like suns. In times of great danger
men develop unsuspected physical strength, and the force of the whole
body seems to rush upward and compact itself with the thumb or fist.
And in the mental world lawyers and orators tell us that at heated
crises, when great issues hang upon their words, the memory achieves
feats otherwise impossible. In these hours the mind becomes luminous.
All the experience of the past passes before the orator with the
majesty of a mighty wave or a rushing storm. Similarly, the hero
inflamed with love or liberty becomes invincible. When some Garibaldi
or Lincoln appears, and the people behold his greatness and beauty and
magnanimity, every heart catches the sacred passion. Then the
narrow-minded youth tumbles down his little idols, sets up diviner
ideals, and finds new measurements for the thrones of heaven and
earth. Then, in a great abandonment of love, the nation pours out its
heart for the cause it loves.

Froude tells us that self-government has cost mankind hundreds of wars
and thousands of battle-fields. Tennyson writes of the boy who was
following his father's plow when the share turned up a human skull.
There, where the plow stayed, the patriot had fallen in battle.
Sitting upon the furrow with the child upon his knee, the father
caused his boy to see a million men in arms fighting for some great
principle; to see the battle-fields all red with blood; the hillsides
all billowy with graves; caused him to hear the shrieking shot and
shell; pointed out the army of cripples hobbling homeward. When the
child shivered in fear the father whispered, "Your ancestors would
have gladly died daily for the liberty they loved." And if to-day good
men brood over the wrongs of Armenia, a