ing
his opinions much too far, when he ventures to assail this great
principle of human action; "a principle," its advocates might perhaps
exclaim, "the extinction of which, if you could succeed in your rash
attempt, would be like the annihilation in the material world of the
principle of motion; without it all were torpid and cold and
comfortless. We grant," they might go on to observe, "that we never
ought to deviate from the paths of duty in order to procure the applause
or to avoid the reproaches of men, and we allow that this is a rule too
little attended to in practice. We grant that the love of praise is in
some instances a ridiculous, and in others a mischievous passion; that
to it we owe the breed of coquettes and coxcombs, and, a more serious
evil, the noxious race of heroes and conquerors. We too are ready, when
it appears in the shape of vanity, to smile at it as a foible, or in
that of false glory, to condemn it as a crime. But all these are only
its perversions; and on account of them to contend against its true
forms, and its legitimate exercise, were to give into the very error
which you formerly yourself condemned, of arguing against the use of a
salutary principle altogether, on account of its being liable to
occasional abuse. When turned into the right direction, and applied to
its true purposes, it prompts to every dignified and generous
enterprise. It is erudition in the portico, skill in the lycaeum,
eloquence in the senate, victory in the field. It forces indolence into
activity, and extorts from vice itself the deeds of generosity and
virtue. When once the soul is warmed by its generous ardor, no
difficulties deter, no dangers terrify, no labours tire. It is this
which, giving by its stamp to what is virtuous and honourable its just
superiority over the gifts of birth and fortune, rescues the rich from a
base subjection to the pleasures of sense, and makes them prefer a
course of toil and hardship to a life of indulgence and ease. It
prevents the man of rank from acquiescing in his hereditary greatness,
and spurs him forward in pursuit of _personal_ distinction, and of a
nobility which he may justly term his own. It moderates and qualifies
the over-great inequalities of human conditions; and reaching to those
who are above the sphere of laws, and extending to cases which fall not
within their province, it limits and circumscribes the power of the
tyrant on his throne, and gives gentleness to war,