he battle of life, even in times
when physical strength is apparently the only recognised power.

We are insensibly falling from our self-assumed judicial office into
that of advocacy; and sliding into what may be plausibly urged, rather
than standing fast on what we can surely affirm. Yet there are cases
when it is fitting for the judge to become the advocate of an undefended
prisoner; and advocacy is only plausible when a few words of truth are
mixed with what we say, like the few drops of wine which colour and
faintly flavour the large draught of water. Such few grains or drops,
whatever they may be, we must leave to the kindness of Reynard's friends
to distil for him, while we continue a little longer in the same strain.

After all, it may be said, what is it in man's nature which is really
admirable? It is idle for us to waste our labour in passing Reineke
through the moral crucible unless we shall recognise the results when we
obtain them; and in these moral sciences our analytical tests can only
be obtained by a study of our own internal experience. If we desire to
know what we admire in Reineke, we must look for what we admire in
ourselves. And what is that? Is it what on Sundays, and on set
occasions, and when we are mounted on our moral stilts, we are pleased
to call goodness, probity, obedience, humility? Is it? Is it really? Is
it not rather the face and form which Nature made--the strength which is
ours, we know not how--our talents, our rank, our possessions? It
appears to us that we most value in ourselves and most admire in our
neighbour, not acquisitions, but _gifts_. A man does not praise himself
for being good. If he praise himself he is not good. The first condition
of goodness is forgetfulness of self; and where self has entered, under
however plausible a form, the health is but skin-deep, and underneath
there is corruption. And so through everything; we value, we are vain
of, proud of, or whatever you please to call it, not what we have done
for ourselves, but what has been done for us--what has been given to us
by the upper powers. We look up to high-born men, to wealthy men, to
fortunate men, to clever men. Is it not so? Whom do we choose for the
county member, the magistrate, the officer, the minister? The good man
we leave to the humble enjoyment of his goodness, and we look out for
the able or the wealthy. And again of the wealthy, as if on every side
to witness to the same universal law, the