along, the
hopeless inferiority of voluntary to instinctive action. He has
deliberately to overcome his inhibitions; the genius with the inborn
passion seems not to feel them at all; he is free of all that inner
friction and nervous waste. To a Fox, a Garibaldi, a General Booth, a
John Brown, a Louise Michel, a Bradlaugh, the obstacles omnipotent over
those around them are as if non-existent. Should the rest of us so
disregard them, there might be many such heroes, for many have the wish
to live for similar ideals, and only the adequate degree of
inhibition-quenching fury is lacking.[146]

[146] The great thing which the higher excitabilities give is COURAGE;
and the addition or subtraction of a certain amount of this quality
makes a different man, a different life. Various excitements let the
courage loose. Trustful hope will do it; inspiring example will do it;
love will do it, wrath will do it. In some people it is natively so
high that the mere touch of danger does it, though danger is for most
men the great inhibitor of action. "Love of adventure" becomes in such
persons a ruling passion. "I believe," says General Skobeleff, "that
my bravery is simply the passion and at the same time the contempt of
danger. The risk of life fills me with an exaggerated rapture. The
fewer there are to share it, the more I like it. The participation of
my body in the event is required to furnish me an adequate excitement.
Everything intellectual appears to me to be reflex; but a meeting of
man to man, a duel, a danger into which I can throw myself
headforemost, attracts me, moves me, intoxicates me. I am crazy for
it, I love it, I adore it. I run after danger as one runs after women;
I wish it never to stop. Were it always the same, it would always
bring me a new pleasure.

When I throw myself into an adventure in which I hope to find it, my
heart palpitates with the uncertainty; I could wish at once to have it
appear and yet to delay. A sort of painful and delicious shiver shakes
me; my entire nature runs to meet the peril with an impetus that my
will would in vain try to resist. (Juliette Adam: Le General Skobeleff,
Nouvelle Revue, 1886, abridged.) Skobeleff seems to have been a cruel
egoist; but the disinterested Garibaldi, if one may judge by his
"Memorie," lived in an unflagging emotion of similar danger-seeking
excitement.

The difference between willing and merely wishing, between having
ideals that are