out-springing, reverential activity which makes the person forget
himself in devotion to his objects, than Fear. A bold heart in a sound
head,--that is the condition of energetic thinking, of the thought that
thinks round things and into things and through things; but fear freezes
activity at its inmost fountains. "There is nothing," says Montaigne,
"that I fear so much as fear." Indeed, an educated man, who creeps
along with an apologetic air, cringing to this name and ducking to that
opinion, and hoping that it is not too presumptuous in him to beg the
right to exist,--why, it is a spectacle piteous to gods and hateful to
men! Yet think of the many knots of monitory truisms in which activity
is likely to be caught and entangled at the outset,--knots which a brave
purpose will not waste time to untie, but instantly cuts. First, there
is the nonsense of students killing themselves by over-study,--some few
instances of which, not traceable to over-eating, have shielded the
short-comings of a million idlers. Next, there is the fear that the
intellect may be developed at the expense of the moral nature,--one of
those truths in the abstract which are made to do the office of lies in
the application, and which are calculated not so much to make good men
as _goodies_,--persons rejoicing in an equal mediocrity of morals and
mind, and pertinent examples of the necessity of personal force to
convert moral maxims into moral might. The truth would seem to be, that
half the crimes and sufferings which history records and observation
furnishes are directly traceable to want of thought rather than to bad
intention; and in regard to the other half, which may be referred to
the remorseless selfishness of unsanctified intelligence, has that
selfishness ever had more valuable allies and tools than the mental
torpor that cannot think and the conscientious stupidity that will not?
Moral laws, indeed, are intellectual facts, to be investigated as
well as obeyed; and it is not a blind or blear-eyed conscience, but a
conscience blended with intelligence and consolidated with character,
that can both see and act.

But curtly dismissing the fallacy, that the moral and spiritual
faculties are likely to find a sound basis in a cowed and craven reason,
we come to a form of fear that practically paralyzes independent thought
more than any other, while it is incompatible with manliness and
self-respect. This fear is compounded of self-distrust and th