psychologically. Even in our most solemn hours of doubt it is rare
that we know not where we should look for the fixed point of duty,
its unalterable summit; but we feel that there stretches a distance
too wide to be travelled between the actual thing to be done and
this mountain-peak, that glitters afar in its solitude. And yet it
is proved by man's whole history--by the life of each one of us--
that it is on the loftiest summit that right has always its
dwelling; and that to this summit we too at the end must climb,
after much precious time has been lost on many an intermediate
eminence. And what is a sage, a great man, a hero, if not one who
has dared to go, alone and ahead of the others, to the deserted
table-land that lay more or less within sight of all men?

21. We do not imply that Louis XVI. should necessarily have been a
man of this stamp, a man of genius; although to have genius seems
almost the duty of him who sways in his hands the destiny of vast
numbers of men. Nor do we claim that the best men among us to-day
would have been able to escape his errors, or the misfortunes to
which they gave rise. And yet there is one thing certain: that of
all these misfortunes none had super-human origin; not one was
supernaturally, or too mysteriously, inevitable. They came not from
another world; they were launched by no monstrous god, capricious
and incomprehensible. They were born of an idea of justice that men
failed to grasp; an idea of justice that suddenly had wakened in
life, but never had lain asleep in the reason of man. And is there a
thing in this world can be more reassuring, or nearer to us, more
profoundly human, than an idea of justice? Louis XVI. may well have
regretted that this idea, that shattered his peace, should have
awakened during his reign; but this was the only reproach he could
level at fate; and when we murmur at fate ourselves our complaints