We are forced to acknowledge that it was not a very virtuous age in which Reineke made himself a great man; but that was the fault of the age as much as the fault of him.  His nature is to succeed wherever he is.  If the age had required something else of him, then he would have been something else.  Whatever it had said to him “do, and I will make you my hero,” that Reineke would have done.  No appetite makes a slave of him—­no faculty refuses obedience to his will.  His entire nature is under perfect organic control to the one supreme authority.  And the one object for which he lives, and for which, let his lot have been cast in whatever century it might, he would always have lived, is to rise, to thrive, to prosper, and become great.

The world as he found it said to him—­Prey upon us, we are your oyster; let your wit open us.  If you will only do it cleverly—­if you will take care that we shall not close upon your fingers in the process, you may devour us at your pleasure, and we shall feel ourselves highly honoured.  Can we wonder at a fox of Reineke’s abilities taking such a world at its word?

And let it not be supposed that society in this earth of ours is ever so viciously put together, is ever so totally without organic life, that a rogue, unredeemed by any merit, can prosper in it.  There is no strength in rottenness; and when it comes to that, society dies and falls in pieces.  Success, as it is called, even worldly success, is impossible, without some exercise of what is called moral virtue, without some portion of it, infinitesimally small, perhaps, but still some.  Courage, for instance, steady self-confidence, self-trust, self-reliance—­ that only basis and foundation-stone on which a strong character can rear itself—­do we not see this in Reineke.  While he lives he lives for himself; but if it comes to dying, he can die like his betters; and his wit is not of that effervescent sort which will fly away at the sight of death and leave him panic-stricken.  It is true there is a meaning to that word courage, which was perhaps not to be found in the dictionary in which Reineke studied.  “I hope I am afraid of nothing, Trim,” said my uncle Toby, “except doing a wrong thing.”  With Reineke there was no “except.”  His digestive powers shrank from no action, good or bad, which would serve his turn.  Yet it required no slight measure of courage to treat his fellow-creatures with the steady disrespect with which Reineke treats them.  To walk along among them, regardless of any interest but his own; out of mere wantonness to hook them up like so many cock-chafers, and spin them for his pleasure; not like Domitian, with an imperial army to hold them down during the operation, but with no other assistance but his own little body and large wit; it was something to venture upon.  And a world which would submit to be so treated, what could he do but despise?

To the animals utterly below ourselves, external to our own species, we hold ourselves bound by no law.