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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: to the chivalrous and romantic portion of the community; but it does,
in truth, contain a far higher moral. Does it not show the necessity
for a new species of education? Does it not invoke, from the
enlightened solicitude of the ministers of Public Instruction, the
creation of chairs of anthropology,--a science in which Germany
outstrips us? Modern myths are even less understood than ancient ones,
harried as we are with myths. Myths are pressing us from every point;
they serve all theories, they explain all questions. They are,
according to human ideas, the torches of history; they would save
empires from revolution if only the professors of history would force
the explanations they give into the mind of the provincial masses. If
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