ad sure thing--
And went for it there and then;
And Christ is not going to be too hard
On a man that died for men."

To which gallant poem of Colonel John Hay's--and he has written many
gallant and beautiful poems--I have but one demurrer: Jim Bludso did not
merely do his duty, but more than his duty. He did a voluntary deed, to
which he was bound by no code or contract, civil or moral; just as he who
introduced me to that poem won his Victoria Cross--as many a cross,
Victoria and other, has been won--by volunteering for a deed to which he,
too, was bound by no code or contract, military or moral. And it is of
the essence of self-sacrifice, and, therefore, of heroism, that it should
be voluntary; a work of supererogation, at least towards society and man:
an act to which the hero or heroine is not bound by duty, but which is
above though not against duty.

Nay, on the strength of that same element of self-sacrifice, I will not
grudge the epithet heroic, which my revered friend Mr. Darwin justly
applies to the poor little monkey, who once in his life did that which
was above his duty; who lived in continual terror of the great baboon,
and yet, when the brute had sprung upon his friend the keeper, and was
tearing out his throat, conquered his fear by love, and, at the risk of
instant death, sprang in turn upon his dreaded enemy, and bit and
shrieked till help arrived.

Some would now-a-days use that story merely to prove that the monkey's
nature and the man's nature are, after all, one and the same. Well: I,
at least, have never denied that there is a monkey-nature in man as there
is a peacock-nature, and a swine-nature, and a wolf-nature--of all which
four I see every day too much. The sharp and stern distinction between
men and animals, as far as their natures are concerned, is of a more
modern origin than people fancy. Of old the Assyrian took the eagle, the
ox, and the lion--and not unwisely--as the three highest types of human
capacity. The horses of Homer might be immortal, and weep for their
master's death. The animals and monsters of Greek myth--like the Ananzi
spider of Negro fable--glide insensibly into speech and reason. Birds--the
most wonderful of all animals in the eyes of a man of science or a
poet--are sometimes looked on as wiser, and nearer to the gods, than man.
The Norseman--the noblest and ablest human being, save the Greek, of whom
history can tell us--was not ashamed to say