Also belonging to this fourth aspect of the ideal is the idealizing of a historical or legendary person, of a dramatic character of the past, a personality who is not before one. This one can maintain better, for it gives one scope for adding all the goodness and beauty one wishes to add; and at the same time it will never disappoint one, because it will never appear different from that which one has made of it in one's heart. The gods and goddesses of the ancient Egyptians, Indians, and Greeks were made to represent certain types of character, and in order that a worshipper might be impressed by a certain character these gods and goddesses were held up as objects of devotion, as something to keep before one, as an ideal. Besides the great prophets and teachers and saviours of humanity have been the ideals made for centuries by writers, by poets, by devotees, by thinkers, as good and as beautiful as they could be made. No doubt others have looked at them differently and have held the ideal of someone else to be less than their own; nevertheless the benefit that they derived from devotion to such an ideal lay in the seeking of a character, of a certain beauty, of a virtue, which would always help them to arrive at that stage which is the desired goal of all beings.