Courage comes naturally to those who have the habit
of facing labor and danger, and who therefore know the power of their
arms and bodies; and courage or confidence in the mind comes to those
who know by use its wonderful forces and inspirations and returns.
Belief in its future is a reward kept only for those who use it. "To
me," said Goethe, "the eternal existence of my soul is proved from my
idea of activity. If I work incessantly till my death, nature is bound
to give me another form of existence, when the present can no longer
sustain my spirit."
It is a proverb of the world that good-will makes intelligence, that
goodness itself is an eye; and the one doctrine in which all religions
agree, is that new light is added to the mind in proportion as it uses
that which it has. "He that doeth the will of God abideth forever."
Ignorant people confound reverence for the intuitions with egotism.
There is no confusion in the things themselves. Health of mind consists
in the perception of law. Its dignity consists in being under the law.
Its goodness is the most generous extension of our private interests to
the dignity and generosity of ideas. Nothing seems to me so excellent as
a belief in the laws. It communicates nobleness, and, as it were, an
asylum in temples to the loyal soul.
I confess that everything connected with our personality fails. Nature
never spares the individual. We are always balked of a complete success.
No prosperity is promised to _that_. We have our indemnity only in the
success of that to which we belong. _That_ is immortal and we only
through that.
The soul stipulates for no private good. That which is private I see not
to be good. "If truth live, I live; if justice live, I live," said one
of the old saints, "and these by any man's suffering are enlarged and
enthroned."
The moral sentiment measures itself by sacrifice. It risks or ruins
property, health, life itself, without hesitation, for its thought, and
all men justify the man by their praise for this act. And Mahomet in the
same mind declared, "Not dead but living ye are to account all those who
are slain in the way of God."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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