Duties relative to sentiment.—Have we any duties in regard to our sensibilities?—Kant’s objection: no one can love at will. Reply.—To distinguish sensibility from sentimentality.
157. Duties relative to the will.—Strength of soul.—One may justly ask whether there are any duties relating particularly to the will: for it would seem that all duties are generally duties of the will. There is no one that does not require the control of the will over the inclinations; and if we say that it is a duty to cultivate and exercise this control, is it not as if we said that it is a duty to learn to do our duty? But why could we not also suppose a third duty, commanding us to observe the former, and so ad infinitum?
We may then say that the duty to exercise one’s will and triumph over the passions, is nothing more than duty per se, the duty par excellence, of which all the other duties are but parts. This virtue, by which the soul commands its passions and does not allow itself to be subjugated by any of them, may be called courage or strength of soul. Courage thus understood is not only a virtue; it is virtue itself.[121] In fact, what is temperance, if it is not a certain kind of courage before the pleasures of the senses? what economy, if not courage before the temptations of fortune? what veracity, if not the courage to tell the truth under all circumstances? what justice and benevolence, if not the courage to sacrifice self-interest to the interest of others? We have already ([page 87]) made a similar observation in regard to prudence and wisdom, namely, that virtue in general is both wisdom and courage: for it presupposes at the same time strength and light. As strength, it is courage, energy, greatness of soul; as light, it is prudence and wisdom. All special virtues would, then, strictly speaking, be only factors, or component parts, of those two.
158. Courage.—Yet if courage, in its most general sense, is virtue itself, usage has given it a special meaning which defines it in a more particular manner, and makes of it a certain distinct virtue, on the same conditions as all the others. As of all the assaults which besiege us in life, death appears to be the most terrible and generally the most dreaded, it is not to be wondered then that this kind of energy which consists in braving death and, consequently, all that may lead to it, namely, peril, has been designated by a particular name. Courage, therefore, is the sort of virtue which braves peril and even death. Then, by extension, the same word was applied to every manifestation of strength of soul before misfortune, misery, grief. A man can be brave in poverty, in slavery, under humiliation even—that is, a humiliation which is due to outward circumstances, and which he has not deserved.
This courageous virtue seems to have been the particular feature of the ancients, and by dint of its excellence, still retains its hold on us, dazzling our imagination, as a privileged prestige. Yet is it only an illusion, and modern times are as rich in heroes as were ancient times: only we pay less attention to it perhaps; but, whether it be real superiority in this kind of virtue, or literary reminiscences and habits of education, nothing will ever erase that lively picture of ancient heroism so celebrated under the name of Plutarch’s heroes, and which has always captivated all great imaginations. Stoicism, that original philosophy of the Greek and Roman world, is above all the philosophy of courage. Its character proper is the strength to resist one’s self, to hold pain, death, all the accidents of humanity, in contempt. Its model is Hercules, the god of strength; all the great men of antiquity, whether consciously or not, were stoics: such were especially the ancient Roman citizens; they were austere, inexorable; slaves to duty and discipline, faithful to their oath, to their country;—Brutus, Regulus, Scævola, Decius, and thousands more like them. When stoicism came in contact with the last great Romans, it found material all ready for its doctrines; it then became the philosophy of the last republicans, the last heroes of a world which was fast disappearing.
The courage which most impresses men is military courage.
“The most honorable deaths occur in war,” says Aristotle, “for in war the danger is the greatest and most honorable. The public honors that are awarded in states and by monarchs attest this.
“Properly, then, he who in the case of an honorable death, and under circumstances close at hand which cause death, is fearless, may be called courageous; and the dangers of war are, more than any others, of this description.”[122]
In looking at it from this somewhat exclusive standpoint, Aristotle refuses to call courageous those who brave sickness and poverty; “for it is possible,” he says, “for cowards, in the perils of war, to bear with much firmness the losses of fortune;” nor does he allow to be called courageous “him who firmly meets the strokes of the whip he is threatened with.”
This is but a question of name and degree. Wherever there are any evils to brave, the firmness which meets and bears these evils can be called courage; on the other hand, the sense of the word can, if preferred, be restricted to military perils; but what Aristotle has most justly defined, and of which he makes a very subtle analysis, is the difference between apparent and true courage. Thus the courage of constraint and necessity—as, for instance, that of soldiers who would be mercilessly killed, if they retreated before the enemy—is not true courage, for one cannot be brave through fear. Nor should anger be confounded with courage: this were but the courage of wild beasts obeying a blind impulse under the sting of pain. At that rate, the donkeys even, when hungry, would be brave. That which determines true courage is the sentiment of honor, not passion. We should neither call brave him who is so only because he feels himself the strongest, like the drunkard full of confidence in the beginning, but who runs away when he does not succeed. For this reason is there truer courage in preserving one’s intrepidity and calm in sudden dangers, than in dangers long anticipated.[123] Finally, ignorance cannot be called courage either: to brave a danger one is ignorant of, is only to be apparently brave.