When Richard Lovell Edgeworth, towards the close of his life, became very popular in his neighbourhood, he said one day to his daughter: "Maria, I am growing dreadfully popular; I shall be good for nothing soon; a man cannot be good for anything who is very popular." Probably he had in his mind at the time the Gospel curse of the popular man, "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! for so did their fathers to the false prophets." Intellectual intrepidity is one of the vital conditions of independence and self-reliance of character. A man must have the courage to be himself, and not the shadow or the echo of another. He must exercise his own powers, think his own thoughts, and speak his own sentiments. He must elaborate his own opinions, and form his own convictions. It has been said that he who dare not form an opinion, must be a coward; he who will not, must be an idler; he who cannot, must be a fool. But it is precisely in this element of intrepidity that so many persons of promise fall short, and disappoint the expectations of their friends. They march up to the scene of action, but at every step their courage oozes out. They want the requisite decision, courage, and perseverance. They calculate the risks, and weigh the chances, until the opportunity for effective effort has passed, it may be never to return. Men are bound to speak the truth in the love of it. "I had rather suffer," said John Pym, the Commonwealth man, "for speaking the truth, than that the truth should suffer for want of my speaking." When a man's convictions are honestly formed, after fair and full consideration, he is justified in striving by all fair means to bring them into action. There are certain states of society and conditions of affairs in which a man is bound to speak out, and be antagonistic--when conformity is not only a weakness, but a sin. Great evils are in some cases only to be met by resistance; they cannot be wept down, but must be battled down. The honest man is naturally antagonistic to fraud, the truthful man to lying, the justice-loving man to oppression, the pureminded man to vice and iniquity. They have to do battle with these conditions, and if possible overcome them. Such men have in all ages represented the moral force of the world. Inspired by benevolence and sustained by courage, they have been the mainstays of all social renovation and progress. But for their continuous antagonism to evil conditions, the world were for the most part given over to the dominion of selfishness and vice. All the great reformers and martyrs were antagonistic men--enemies to falsehood and evildoing. The Apostles themselves were an organised band of social antagonists, who contended with pride, selfishness, superstition, and irreligion. And in our own time the lives of such men as Clarkson and Granville Sharpe, Father Mathew and Richard Cobden, inspired by singleness of purpose, have shown what highminded social antagonism can effect.