Art Ross - Student Choice 4, "The Man In The Arena

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship In A Republic

I feel Aslan in this passage. Aslan, as a symbol of the ultimate Myth, always has to abstract the greater Realities of the world so Narnians can understand them. In the same way Roosevelt takes the larger Platonic concepts of Manhood and Heroism that can't be articulated and translates them into speech. As Lewis says in Myth Became Fact "myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to." In the case of the Narnia universe Aslan is the isthmus that connects the world to the Real and in the case of Roosevelt his words are reflections of the Real, reflections of the ultimate Man, that lead us from the "streams of truth" to the "mountain of Myth."