at fears not to die, fears nothing.... There
is a time to live, and a time to die. A good death is far better and
more eligible than an ill life. A wise man lives but so long as his life
is worth more than his death. The longer life is not always the better."]

[Footnote 146: Mr. J. S. Mill, in his book 'On Liberty,' describes "the masses," as
"collective mediocrity." "The initiation of all wise or noble things,"
he says, "comes, and must come, from individuals--generally at first
from some one individual. The honour and glory of the average man is
that he is capable of following that imitation; that he can respond
internally to wise and noble things, and be led to them with his eyes
open.... In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere
refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely
because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a
reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that
people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded when and
where strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity
in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius,
mental vigour, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now
dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time."--Pp. 120-1.]

[Footnote 147: Mr. Arthur Helps, in one of his thoughtful books, published in 1845,
made some observations on this point, which are not less applicable now.
He there said: "it is a grievous thing to see literature made a vehicle
for encouraging the enmity of class to class. Yet this, unhappily, is
not unfrequent now. Some great man summed up the nature of French novels
by calling them the Literature of Despair; the kind of writing that I
deprecate may be called the Literature of Envy.... Such writers like
to throw their influence, as they might say, into the weaker scale. But
that is not the proper way of looking at the matter. I think, if they
saw the ungenerous nature of their proceedings, that alone would stop
them. They should recollect that literature may fawn upon the masses
as well as the aristocracy; and in these days the temptation is in the
former direction. But what is most grievous in this kind of writing is
the mischief it may do to the working-people themselves. If you have
their true welfare at heart, you will not only care for their being
fed and clothed, but you will be anxious not to encourage unreasonable
exp