'
*
Hope, they say, deserts us at no period of our existence.
From first .to last, and in the face of smarting
disillusions, we continue to expect good fortune, better
health, and better conduct; and that so confidently, that
we judge it needless to deserve them.
*
'Do I, indeed, lack courage?' inquired Mr. Archer of
himself. 'Courage, the footstool of the virtues, upon
which they stand? Courage, that a poor private carrying a
musket has to spare of; that does not fail a weasel or a
rat; that is a brutish faculty? I to fail there, I wonder?
But what is courage? The constancy to endure oneself or to
see others suffer? The itch of ill-advised activity: mere
shuttle-wittedness, or to be still and patient? To inquire
of the significance of words is to rob ourselves of what we
seem to know, and yet, of all things, certainly to stand
still is the least heroic.'
*
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of
becoming, is the only end of life.
*
But let the man learn to love a woman as far as he is
capable of love; and for this random affection of the body
there is substituted a steady determination, a consent of
all his powers and faculties, which supersedes, adopts, and
commands the others. The desire survives, strengthened,
perhaps, but taught obedience, and changed in scope and
character. Life is no longer a tale of betrayals and
regrets; for the man now lives as a whole; his
consciousness now moves on uninterrupted like a river;
through all the extremes and ups and downs of passion, he
remains approvingly conscious of himself.
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