When psychoanalytic in investigation, which usu­ally contents itself with frail human material, ap­proaches the great personages of humanity, it is not impelled to it by motives which are often attribu­ted to it by laymen. It does not strive *to blacken the radiant and to drag the sublime into the mire*; it finds no satisfaction in diminishing the distan­ce between the perfection of the great and the ina­dequacy of the ordinary objects. But it cannot help finding that everything is worthy of understanding that can be perceived through those prototypes, and it also believes that none is so big as to be ashamed of being subject to the laws which control the nor­mal and morbid actions with the same strictness.