The virtue which maintains superiority over external things and forces is courage.—In primitive times the chief form of fortune was physical danger, and superiority to fear of physical injury was the original meaning of courage. Courage involves this physical bravery still; but it has come to include a great deal more. In a civilized community, physical danger is comparatively rare. Courage to do right when everyone around us is doing wrong; courage to say "No" when everyone is trying to make us say "Yes"; courage to bear uncomplainingly the inevitable ills of life;—these are the forms of courage most frequently demanded and most difficult to exercise in the peaceful security of a civilized community. This courage which presents an unruffled front to trouble, and bears bravely the steady pressure of untoward circumstance, we call by the special names of fortitude or patience. Patience and fortitude are courage exercised in the conditions of modern life. The essence of courage is superiority to outside forces and influences. When men were beset by lions and tigers, by Indians and hostile armies, then courage showed itself by facing and fighting these enemies. Now that we live with civilized and friendly men and women like ourselves, courage shows itself chiefly by refusing to surrender our convictions of what is true and right just because other people will like us better if we pretend to think as they do; and by enduring without flinching the rubs and bumps and bruises which this close contact with our fellows brings to us.
Moral courage.—The brave man everywhere is the man who has a firm purpose in his own breast, and goes forth to carry out that purpose in spite of all opposition, or solicitation, or influence of any kind that would tend to make him do otherwise. He does the same, whether men blame or approve; whether it bring him pain or pleasure, profit or loss. The purpose that is in him, that he declares, that he maintains, that he lives to realize; in defense of that he will lay down wealth, reputation, and, if need be, life itself. He will be himself, if he is to live at all. Men must approve what he really is, or he will have none of their praise, but their blame rather. By no pretense of being what he is not, by no betrayal of what he holds to be true and right, will he gain their favor. The power to stand alone with truth and right against the world is the test of moral courage. The brave man plants himself on the eternal foundations of truth and justice, and bids defiance to all the forces that would drive him from it.
Wordsworth, in his character of "The Happy Warrior," has portrayed the kind of courage demanded of the modern man:
'Tis he whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends.
Who if he rise to station of command
Rises by open means, and there will stand
On honorable terms, or else retire,
And in himself possess his own desire:
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state;
Whom they must follow, on whose head must fall
Like showers of manna, if they come at all.
'Tis finally the man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a nation's eye,
Or left unthought of in obscurity,
Who with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not,
Plays in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won:
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray;
Who, not content that former worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
This is the happy warrior; this is he
That every man in arms should wish to be.
THE REWARD.
Courage universally honored.—There is something in this strong, steady power of self-assertion that compels the admiration of everyone who beholds it. When we see a man standing squarely on his own feet; speaking plainly the thoughts that are in his mind; doing fearlessly what he believes to be right; or no matter how widely we may differ from his views, disapprove his deeds, we cannot withhold our honor from the man himself. No man was ever held in veneration by his countrymen; no man ever handed down to history an undying fame, who did not have the courage to speak and act his real thought and purpose in defiance of the revilings and persecutions of his fellows.
THE TEMPTATION.
To take one's fortune into his own hands and work out, in spite of opposition and misfortune, a satisfactory career tasks strength and resolution to the utmost.—It is so much more easy to give over the determination of our fate to some outside power that the abject surrender to fortune is a serious temptation. Air-castles and day-dreams, and idle waiting for something to turn up, are the feeble forms of this temptation. The impulse to run away from danger, and the impulse to plunge recklessly into risks, are the two forms of temptation which lead to the more pronounced and prevalent vices.
THE VICE OF DEFECT.
Yielding to outward pressure, contrary to our own conviction of what is true and right, is moral cowardice.—In early times the coward was the man who turned his back in battle. To-day the coward is the man who does differently when people are looking at him from what he would do if he were alone; the man who speaks what he thinks people want to hear, instead of what he knows to be true; the man who apes other people for fear they will think him odd if he acts like himself; the man who tries so hard to suit everybody that he has no mind of his own; the man who thinks how things will look, instead of thinking how things really are. Whenever we take the determination of our course of conduct ultimately from any other source than our own firm conviction of what is right and true, then we play the coward. We do in the peaceful conditions of modern life just what we despise a soldier for doing on the field of battle. We acknowledge that there is something outside us that is stronger than we are; of which we are afraid; to which we surrender ourselves as base and abject slaves.
