require them to do
so--to surrender, I say, with the same calm dignity and unbroken
courage that Lee showed in his interview with Grant at Appomattox, and
that inspired him in the years of defeat and of new toils through
which he had still to live after the war. That is, the warrior, if
rightly inspired, is as ready for life as for death, is as ready for
peace as for war; and despises defeat as much as danger--fearing only
sloth and dishonour and abandonment of the service. The other test is
whether the warrior is ready to recognise and to honour, with clear
cordiality, this same spirit when it is manifested in another calling,
or in another service, and, in particular, is manifested by his enemy.
For then the warrior knows that warfare itself is only the accident of
fortune, and that the true spirit of his own act is one which could be
manifested without regard to the special occasion that has required
him to face death just here or to fight on this side. If the spirit of
the warrior bears these tests, his faithfulness is of the type that
could be shown as well by the lonely light-tender in her grief as by
the hero for whom glory waits. And again, this spirit is the very one
that martyrs have shown when they died for their faith; that patient
mothers and fathers, however obscure and humble, show when they toil,
in true devotion, for their homes; that lovers mean to express when
they utter such words as the ones which we earlier quoted from Mrs.
Browning. And lest all these {195} instances should impress you with
the idea that the spirit in question has to do only with brilliant
emotional colourings, such as those which fill our imaginations when
we think of war, and of brave deaths, and of heroic triumph over
grief, and of lovers' vows, let me turn at once to what some of you
may think to be the other extreme of life. Let me say that, to my
mind, the calm and laborious devotion to a science which has made
possible the life-work of a Newton, or of a Maxwell, or of a Darwin is
still another example, and a very great example, of this same
spirit--an example full of the same strenuousness, the same fascinated
love of an idealised object, and, best of all, full of the willingness
to face unknown fortunes, however hard, and to abandon, when that is
necessary, momentary joys, however dear, in a pursuit of one of the
principal goods which humanity needs--namely, an understanding of the
wonderful world in which we mortals are re