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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Sanitary and Social Lectures by Charles Kingsley: has hardly the exceptional brightness, of a golden deed."
I know that it is very difficult to draw the line between mere
obedience to duty and express heroism. I know also that it would
be both invidious and impertinent in an utterly unheroic personage
like me, to try to draw that line; and to sit at home at ease,
analysing and criticising deeds which I could not do myself; but--
to give an instance or two of what I mean:
To defend a post as long as it is tenable is not heroic. It is
simple duty. To defend it after it has become untenable, and even
to die in so doing, is not heroic, but a noble madness, unless an
advantage is to be gained thereby for one's own side. Then,
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