But the case of the black sheep has a special significance for us.  The war has discovered the good that is in him, and has released it for useful service.  After all, the black sheep is often only black by the accident of circumstance, upbringing, or association.  He is a misfit.  In him, as in all of us, there is an infinite complexity—­good and ill together.  No one who has faithfully examined his own life can doubt how trifling a weight turns the scales for or against us.  An accidental meeting, a casual friendship, a phrase in a book—­and the current of life takes a definite direction this way or that.  There are no doubt people in whom the elements are so perfectly adjusted that the balance is never in doubt.  Their character is superior to circumstance.  But they are rare.  They are the stars that dwell apart from our human struggles.  Most of us know what it is to be on the brink of the precipice—­know, if we are quite honest with ourselves, how narrow a shave we have had from joining the black sheep.  Perhaps, if we are still honest with ourselves, we shall admit that the thing that turned the balance for us was not a very creditable thing—­that we were protected from ourselves not by any high virtue, but by something mean, a touch of cowardice, a paltry ambition, a consideration that we should be ashamed to confess.

We are so strangely compact that we do not ourselves know what the ordeal will discover in us.  You have no doubt read that incident of the sergeant who, in a moment of panic, fled, was placed under arrest and sentenced to be shot.  Before the sentence was ratified by the Commander-in-Chief, there came a moment of extreme peril to the line, when irretrievable disaster was imminent and every man who could fill a gap was needed.  The condemned man was called out to face the enemy, and, even in the midst of brave men, fought with a bravery that singled him out for the Victoria Cross.  Tell me—­which was the true man?  I saw the other day a letter from a famous doctor dealing with the question of the psychology of war.  He was against shooting a man for cowardice, because cowardice was not necessarily a quality of character.  It was often a temporary collapse due to physical fatigue, or a passing condition of mind.  “Five times,” he said, “I have been at work in circumstances in which my life was in imminent peril.  On four occasions I worked with a curious sense of exaltation.  On the fifth occasion I was seized with a sudden and unreasoning panic that paralysed me.  Perhaps it was a failure of digestion, perhaps a want of sleep.  Anyhow, at that moment I was a coward.”

The truth is that, except for the aforesaid stars who dwell apart, we all have the potential saint and the potential sinner, the hero and the coward, the honest man and the dishonest man within us.

There is a fine poem in A Shropshire Lad that puts the case of the black sheep as pregnantly as it can be put:—­