Struggle for Rights a Personal Duty
pensable condition of his order, which, in its very nature, should be the incorporation of personal courage, and which cannot endure the cowardice of its members without sacrificing itself. With the officer, let us now compare the peasant, who defends his property with the greatest stubbornness, but evinces a surprising indifference as to his honor. Why? Because he, too, has a correct feeling of the peculiar conditions of his existence. He is not called upon to give proof of his courage, but to work. His property is only the visible form which his labor in the past has taken. The lazy peasant, who takes no care of his land or who dissipates his little fortune, is as much despised by other peasants as is the officer who lightly values his honor, by his colleagues. But one peasant will never reproach another because he has not fought a duel, or instituted a suit to avenge an insult; nor one officer another, because he has mismanaged his property. The piece of land which he tills, the cattle which he raises, are to the peasant the basis
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