On a man that died for men.


To which gallant poem of Colonel John Hay's--and he has written
many gallant and beautiful poems--I have but one demurrer: Jim
Bludso did not merely do his duty but more than his duty. He did
a voluntary deed, to which he was bound by no code or contract,
civil or moral; just as he who introduced me to that poem won his
Victoria Cross--as many a cross, Victoria and other, has been won-
-by volunteering for a deed to which he, too, was bound by no code
or contract, military or moral. And it is of the essence of self-
sacrifice, and therefore of heroism, that it should be voluntary;
a work of supererogation, at least towards society and man; an act
to which the hero or heroine is not bound by duty, but which is
above though not against duty.

Nay, on the strength of that same element of self-sacrifice, I
will not grudge the epithet "heroic," which my revered friend Mr.
Darwin justly applies to the poor little monkey, who once in his
life did that which was above his duty; who lived in continual
terror of the great baboon, and yet, when the brute had sprung
upon his friend the keeper, and was tearing out his throat,
conquered his fear by love, and, at the risk of instant death,
sprang in turn upon his dreaded enemy, and bit and shrieked till
help arrived.

Some would nowadays use that story merely to prove that the
monkey's nature and the man's nature are, after all, one and the
same. Well: I, at least, have never denied that there is a
monkey-nature in man, as there is a peacock-nature, and a swine-