Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

" Virginibus Puerisque " 41
manly note, it were perhaps better to have
no conscience at all. But there is a vast
difference between teaching flight, and show-
ing points of peril that a man may march
the more warily. And the true conclusion
of this paper is to turn our back on appre-
hensions, and embrace that shining and
courageous virtue, Faith. Hope is the boy,
a blind, headlong, pleasant fellow, good to
chase swallows with the salt ; Faith is the
grave, experienced, yet smiling man. Hope
lives on ignorance ; open-eyed Faith is built
upon a knowledge of our life, of the tyranny
of circumstance and the frailty of human
resolution. Hope looks for unqualified
success ; but Faith counts certainly on
failure, and takes honourable defeat to be a
form of victory. Hope is a kind old pagan ;
but Faith grew up in Christian days, and
early learnt humility. In the one temper, a
man is indignant that he cannot spring up
in a clap to heights of elegance and virtue ;
in the other, out of a sense of his infirmities,
he is filled with confidence because a year