62.  But we find ourselves here far away from the noble Antigone and the eternal problem of unproductive virtue.  It is certain that destiny—­understood in the ordinary sense of the word as meaning the road that leads only to death—­is wholly disregardful of virtue.  This is the gulf, to which all systems of morality must come, as to a central reservoir, to be purified or troubled for ever; and here must each man decide whether he will justify fate or condemn it.  Antigone’s sacrifice may well be regarded as the type of all such as are made in the cause of duty.  Do we not all of us know of heroic deeds whose reward has been only misfortune?  A friend of my own, one day, as he lay on the bed he was never to leave save for that other one only which is eternal, pointed out to me, one after the other, the different stratagems fate had contrived to lure him to the distant city, where the draught of poisonous water awaited him that he was to swallow, wherefrom he must die.  Strangely clear were the countless webs that destiny had spun round this life; and the most trivial event seemed endowed with marvellous malice and forethought.  Yet had my friend journeyed forth to that city in fulfilment of one of those duties that only the saint, or the hero, the sage, detects on the horizon of conscience.  What can we say?  But let us leave this point for the moment, to return to it later.  My friend, had he lived, would on the morrow have gone to another city, called thither by another duty; nor would he have paused to inquire whether it was indeed duty that summoned him.  There are beings who do thus obey the commands that their heart whispers low.  They fret not at fortune’s injustice; they care not though virtue be thankless; theirs it is only to fight the injustice of men, which is the only injustice whereof they, as yet, seem aware.

Ought we never to hesitate, then? and is our duty most faithfully done when we ourselves are wholly unconscious that this thing that we do is a duty?  Is it most essential of all that we should attain a height whence duty no longer is looked on as the choice of our noblest feelings, but as the silent necessity of all the nature within us?

63.  There are some who wait and question themselves, who ponder, consider, and then at length decide.  They too are right, for it matters but little whether the duty fulfilled be result of instinct or intellect.  The gestures of instinct will often recall the delicate, naive and vague, unexpected beauty that clings to the child’s least movement, and touches us deeply; but the gestures of matured resolve have a beauty, too, of their own, more earnest and statelier, stronger.  It is given to very few hearts to be naively perfect, nor should we go seek in them for the laws of duty.  And besides, there is many a sober-hued duty that instinct will fail to perceive, that yet will be clearly espied by mature resolution, bereft though this be of illusion; and man’s moral value is doubtless established by the number of duties he sees and sets forth to accomplish.