serious thing for himself, and like-wise for his wife and children:
he admits that he shrinks from such a prospect; he will take pains
to protect himself from the risk; but he says that if duty requires
him to run the risk he will run it. This is the courage of the
civilized man as opposed to the blind, bull-dog insensibility of
the savage. This is courage--to know the existence of danger, but
to face it nevertheless. Here, under the influence of longer thought,
the pendulum has swung into common sense, though not quite back to
the point from which it started. Of course, it still keeps swinging
about in individual minds. The other day I read in a newspaper a
speech by a youthful rifleman, in which he boasted that no matter
to what danger exposed, his corps would never take shelter behind
trees and rocks, but would stand boldly out to the aim of the enemy.
I was very glad to find this speech answered in a letter to the
Times, written by a rifleman of great experience and proved bravery.
The experienced man pointed out that the inexperienced man was
talking nonsense: that true courage appeared in manfully facing risks
which were inevitable, but not in running into needless peril: and
that the business of a soldier was to be as useful to his country
and as destructive to the enemy as possible, and not to make needless
exhibitions of personal foolhardiness. Thus swings the pendulum as
to danger and fear. The point of departure, the primary impulse,
is,

1. An impulse to avoid danger at all hazards: i. e., to run away,
and save yourself, however discreditably.

The pendulum swings to the other extremity, and we have the secondary
impulse--