To touch
the heart of his mystery, we find, in him one thought, strange to
the point of lunacy: the thought of duty; the thought of something
owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his God: an ideal of
decency, to which he would rise if it were possible; a limit of
shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not stoop. The
design in most men is one of conformity; here and there, in picked
natures, it transcends itself and soars on the other side, arming
martyrs with independence; but in all, in their degrees, it is a
bosom thought: - Not in man alone, for we trace it in dogs and
cats whom we know fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of
honour sways the elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we
know so little: - But in man, at least, it sways with so complete
an empire that merely selfish things come second, even with the
selfish: that appetites are starved, fears are conquered, pains
supported; that almost the dullest shrinks from the reproof of a
glance, although it were a child's; and all but the most cowardly
stand amid the risks of war; and the more noble, having strongly
conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and embrace death.
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