must each man decide whether he will justify fate or condemn it.
Antigone's sacrifice may well be regarded as the type of all such as
are made in the cause of duty. Do we not all of us know of heroic
deeds whose reward has been only misfortune? A friend of my own, one
day, as he lay on the bed he was never to leave save for that other
one only which is eternal, pointed out to me, one after the other,
the different stratagems fate had contrived to lure him to the
distant city, where the draught of poisonous water awaited him that
he was to swallow, wherefrom he must die. Strangely clear were the
countless webs that destiny had spun round this life; and the most
trivial event seemed endowed with marvellous malice and forethought.
Yet had my friend journeyed forth to that city in fulfilment of one
of those duties that only the saint, or the hero, the sage, detects
on the horizon of conscience. What can we say? But let us leave this
point for the moment, to return to it later. My friend, had he
lived, would on the morrow have gone to another city, called thither
by another duty; nor would he have paused to inquire whether it was
indeed duty that summoned him. There are beings who do thus obey the
commands that their heart whispers low. They fret not at fortune's
injustice; they care not though virtue be thankless; theirs it is
only to fight the injustice of men, which is the only injustice
whereof they, as yet, seem aware.

Ought we never to hesitate, then? and is our duty most faithfully
done when we ourselves are wholly unconscious that this thing that
we do is a duty? Is it most essential of all that we should attain a
height whence duty no longer is looked on as the choice of our
noblest feelings, but as the silent necessity of all the nature
within us?