CONDUCT AND DUTY. 23$ 



In former days it was essential to the social well-being 

 that personal loyalty should amount to something like 

 devotion. And that quality, being essential to the 

 very existence of a community, underwent development 

 until, and even long after, this state of things ceased.. 

 Tt remains, then, a characteristic of many of the best 

 "men of a time when personal loyalty no longer has the 

 specific value which it had in former times. Men who 

 analyse the sentiment find, perhaps, in devotion to the 

 King of Brentford, nothing specially virtuous ; or, 

 tracing his descent from those who first founded his 

 family, they find small reason, perhaps, for regarding 

 with respect the ground of the family's claim to loyal 

 devotion. Men whose views of this particular duty 

 have thus progressed, may be divided between twa 

 duties : one, that of teaching those around them the 

 avoidance of certain actions which appear to themselves 

 derogatory to the dignity of manhood ; the other, that 

 of avoiding such offences as must arise from their not 

 conforming to the type defined by the healthy condi- 

 tion of the social organism. They may do more harm 

 by inculcating what they hold to be truth, and still 

 more by doing what they consider theoretically just, 

 than by conforming outwardly to the conditions of 

 society as it exists around them. An officer, again, 

 who ridicules that devotion to the colours which has 

 led many a brave soldier to die rather than let the 

 enemy take them, may in principle be very right, for a 

 brave soldier is worth more than a blood-stained, shot- 

 riddled rag ; and he who, in trying to save one, loses 



