You will be pushed into that towards which you ought to advance like a soldier. Root out this idea from your soul otherwise your apprehensions will remain undecided and will thus check the impulse to action. You cannot “still braver go,” if you are persuaded that those things are the real evils. Yield not to evils, but, still braver, go Where’er thy fortune shall allow. There is no element of fear in any of its actions. For virtue accomplishes its plans only when the spirit is in harmony with itself. Hence he is torn in different directions and if this happens, the glory of his act is gone. On the one side is the motive which bids him carry out his purpose on the other, the motive which restrains him and makes him flee from something which has aroused his apprehension or leads to danger. When, however, a man goes to face an evil, either through fear of worse evils or in the hope of goods whose attainment is of sufficient moment to him that he can swallow the one evil which he must endure,-in that case the judgment of the agent is drawn in two directions. Besides, no deed that a man does is honourable unless he has devoted himself thereto and attended to it with all his heart, rebelling against it with no portion of his being. But nothing glorious can result from unwillingness and cowardice virtue does nothing under compulsion. It is not in the order of nature that a man shall proceed with a great heart to a destiny which he believes to be evil he will go sluggishly and with reluctance. Human mind? For the mind will never rise to virtue if it believes that death is an evil but it will so rise if it holds that death is a matter of indifference. Nostri quidem videri volunt Zenonis interrogationem Eximendum hoc e pectore est alioqui haesitabit inpetum moratura suspicio. Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito Qua tua te fortuna sinet.ġ9 Non ibis audentior, si mala illa esse credideris. Virtus enim concordi animo decreta peragit. Igitur in diversa distrahitur si hoc est, perit gloria. Hinc est, quod iubeat proposita perficere, illinc, quod retrahat et ab re suspecta ac periculosa fugiat. Ubi autem ad malum acceditur aut peiorum metu aut spe bonorum, ad quae pervenire tanti sit devorata unius mali patientia, dissident inter se iudicia facientis. Adice nunc, quod nihil honeste fit, nisi cui totus animus incubuit atque adfuit, cui nulla parte sui repugnavit. Non est autem gloriosum, quod ab invito et tergiversante fit nihil facit virtus, quia necesseġ8 est. Non recipit rerum natura, ut aliquis magno animo accedat ad id, quod malum iudicat pigre veniet et cunctanter. Inter maxima opera mentis humanae? Quae numquamĪd virtutem exsurget, si mortem malum esse crediderit exsurget, si putabit indifferens esse.
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