THE terms of my title were favorites of William Faulkner's, as well as the sum and substance of his Nobel Prize speech of 1950. As I hope to show, they also correlate with the distinction between two kinds of heroism drawn by Erik H. Erikson in his Jefferson Lectures of 1973. We may be struck immediately by the common sentiments linking the name of a fictional place - Jefferson, Mississippi - that has become legendary in American culture with a distinguished series of lectures in the humanities designed to become a national institution. Furthermore, the European-born Erikson has been one of the most persuasive observers of native and other American lives. His respect for tribal communities within the larger society has been like Faulkner's, and his principal subject of study, personal identity, is the same that the novelist claimed to have explored in Light in August.

In the Jefferson Lectures, Erikson summarizes his findings about identity in the broadest possible terms. Personal identity is, of course, supported by the kinds of behavior that the community holds up to admiration. Two ideals of heroism, in effect, fend against the dread of having “lived the wrong life or not really lived at all” - disasters worse than death for even quite ordinary people. The first ideal is apparently more common, or more variously represented, in monuments or histories: