on which it is based (for valour is only courage in war), deserves a
closer examination. The ancients reckoned Courage among the virtues,
and cowardice among the vices; but there is no corresponding idea in
the Christian scheme, which makes for charity and patience, and in its
teaching forbids all enmity or even resistance. The result is that
with the moderns Courage is no longer a virtue. Nevertheless it must
be admitted that cowardice does not seem to be very compatible with
any nobility of character--if only for the reason that it betrays an
overgreat apprehension about one's own person.

Courage, however, may also be explained as a readiness to meet ills
that threaten at the moment, in order to avoid greater ills that
lie in the future; whereas cowardice does the contrary. But this
readiness is of the same quality as _patience_, for patience consists
in the clear consciousness that greater evils than those which are
present, and that any violent attempt to flee from or guard against
the ills we have may bring the others upon us. Courage, then, would
be a kind of patience; and since it is patience that enables us to
practise forbearance and self control, Courage is, through the medium
of patience, at least akin to virtue.

But perhaps Courage admits of being considered from a higher point of
view. The fear of death may in every case be traced to a deficiency
in that natural philosophy--natural, and therefore resting on mere
feeling--which gives a man the assurance that he exists in everything
outside him just as much as in his own person; so that the death of
his person can do him little harm. But it is just this very assurance
that would give a man heroic Courage; and therefore, as the reader
will recollect from my _Ethics_, Courage comes from the same source as
the virtues of Justice and Humanity. This is, I admit, to take a very