(_a_) _The extolling of courage_, or more precisely the exhortation to make the supreme virtue Man’s aptitude to face death, while all other virtues, however lofty, are placed below it. This teaching, openly the teaching of Nietzsche, Sorel, Péguy, Barrès, was always the teaching of poets and generals, but is entirely new among the ‘clerks’, I mean among men who put before the world a scale of values in the name of philosophical reflection, or who are willing to be considered as such. From Socrates to Renan they had considered courage as a virtue, but on a lower plane. All, more or less openly, teach with Plato: ‘In the first rank of virtue are wisdom and temperance; courage only comes afterwards.’[119] The impulses they exhort man to venerate are not those whereby he strives to quench his thirst for placing himself in the real, but those whereby he moderates it. It was reserved for our time to see the priests of the spiritual placing in the first rank of forms of soul that which is indispensable to man if he is to conquer and to lay foundations.[120] However, this practical value of courage, plainly expressed by Nietzsche and Sorel, is not equally so expressed by all the modern moralists who praise this virtue. This brings another of their teachings before us:-- (_b_) _The extolling of honour_, by which is meant all those impulses which cause a man to risk his life for no practical interest--to be precise, from desire of glory--_but which are an excellent school of practical courage_, and were always extolled by those who lead men to the conquest of material things. In this connection, let the reader think of the respect in which the institution of the duel has always been held in armies, in spite of certain repressions inspired solely by practical considerations.[121] Here again, the position attributed to these impulses by so many modern moralists is something new among them, especially in the country of Montaigne, Pascal, La Bruyère, Montesquieu, Voltaire and Renan, who, when they extol honour, mean something very different from man’s cult of his own glory.[122] Nevertheless, the most remarkable thing about all this is that the cult of man for his own glory is currently preached by the Churchmen as a virtue which leads Man to God. Is it not amazing to hear words like the following from a Christian pulpit? ‘The love of grandeurs is the path to God, and the heroic impulse which fully coincides with the search for glories in their cause, permits him who had forgotten God or who thought he knew not God to re-invent Him, to discover this last summit after temporary ascents have rendered him accustomed to the dizziness and air of altitudes.’[123] One cannot forebear quoting the lesson given by a true disciple of Jesus to a Christian teacher who had also strangely forgotten his Master’s word:--