ignorance of danger and difficulty sometimes actually assists in
procuring; inasmuch as it precludes the despondence, which might have
kept the more foresighted from undertaking the enterprise, the
depression which would retard its progress, and those overwhelming
influences of terror in cases where the vivid perception of the
danger constitutes the greater part of the danger itself. Thus men
are said to have swooned and even died at the sight of a narrow
bridge, over which they had ridden, the night before, in perfect
safety; or at tracing the footmarks along the edge of a precipice
which the darkness had concealed from them. A more obscure cause,
yet not wholly to be omitted, is afforded by the undoubted fact that
the exertion of the reasoning faculties tends to extinguish or bedim
those mysterious instincts of skill, which, though for the most part
latent, we nevertheless possess in common with other animals.

Or the proverb may be used invidiously; and folly in the vocabulary
of envy or baseness may signify courage and magnanimity. Hardihood
and fool-hardiness are indeed as different as green and yellow, yet
will appear the same to the jaundiced eye. Courage multiplies the
chances of success by sometimes making opportunities, and always
availing itself of them: and in this sense Fortune may be said to
favour fools by those who, however prudent in their own opinion, are
deficient in valour and enterprise. Again: an emiently good and
wise man, for whom the praises of the judicious have procured a high
reputation even with the world at large, proposes to himself certain
objects, and adapting the right means to the right end attains them;
but his objects not being what the world calls fortune, neither money
nor artificial rank, his admitted inferiors in moral and intellectual
worth, but more prosperous in their worldly concerns, are said to
have been favoured by Fortune and be slighted; although the fools did