Heroism is the splendid and wonderful triumph of the soul over the
flesh; that is to say, over fear--the fear of poverty, suffering,
calumny, disease, isolation and death. There is no true piety without
this dazzling concentration of courage.

Duty has this great value--it makes us feel reality of the positive
world, while yet it detaches us from it.

How vulnerable am I! If I were a father, what a host of sorrows a child
could bring on me! As a husband, I should suffer in a thousand ways,
because a thousand conditions are necessary to my happiness. My heart is
too sensitive, my imagination anxious, and despair is easy. The "might
be" spoils for me what is, the "should be" devours me with melancholy;
and this reality, present, irreparable, inevitable, disgusts or
frightens me. So it is that I put away the happy images of family life.
Every hope is an egg which may hatch a serpent instead of a dove; every
joy that fails is a knife-wound; every seed-time entrusted to destiny
has its harvest of pain.

What is duty? Is it to obey one's nature at its best and most spiritual;
or is it to vanquish one's nature? That is the deepest question. Is life
essentially the education of the spirit and of the intelligence, or is
it the education of the will? And does will lie in power or in
resignation?

Therefore are there two worlds--Christianity affords and teaches
salvation by the conversion of the will; but humanism brings salvation
by the emancipation of the spirit. The first seizes upon the heart, and