vagely surrounded,
savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow
lives: who should have blamed him had he been of a piece with his
destiny and a being merely barbarous? And we look and behold him instead
filled with imperfect virtues: infinitely childish, often admirably
valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down, amidst his momentary life,
to debate of right and wrong and the attributes of the Deity; rising up
to do battle for an egg or die for an idea; singling out his friends and
his mate with cordial affection; bringing forth in pain, rearing with
long-suffering solicitude, his young. To touch the heart of his mystery,
we find in him one thought, strange to the point of lunacy: the thought
of duty; the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to
his God: an ideal of decency, to which he would rise if it were
possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not
stoop. The design in most men is one of conformity; here and there, in
picked natures, it transcends itself and soars on the other side, arming
martyrs with independence; but in all, in their degrees, it is a bosom
thought:--Not in man alone, for we trace it in dogs and cats whom we
know fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of honour sways the
elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we know so little:--But in
man, at least, it sways with so complete an empire that merely selfish
things come second, even with the selfish: that appetites are starved,
fears are conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest shrinks
from the reproof of a glance, although it were a child's; and all but
the most cowardly stand amid the risks of war; and the more noble,
having strongly conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and
embrace death. Strange enough if, with their singular origin and
perverted practice, they think they are to be rewarded in some future
life: stranger still, if they are persuaded of the contrary, and think
this blow, which they solicit, will strike them senseless for eternity.
I shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct man
at large presents: of organised injustice, cowardly violence and
treacherous crime; and of the damning imperfections of the best. They
cannot be too darkly drawn. Man is indeed marked for failure in his
efforts to do right. But where the best consistently miscarry, how
tenfold more remarkable that all should continue to strive: and sur