Robert Bridges, ed. (18441930). The Spirit of Man: An Anthology. 1916.
From Pulvis et umbra
Robert Louis Stevenson (18501894)
POOR1 soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives: who shd have blamed him had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous? And we look and behold him instead filled with imperfect virtues: sitting down, amidst his momentary life, to debate of Right and Wrong and the attributes of the Deity .. To touch the heart of his mystery, we find in him the thought of Duty; the thought of something owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his God: an ideal of decency, to which he would rise if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be possible, he will not stoop .. It matters not where we look, under what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of ignorance, burthened with what erroneous morality; by camp-fires in Assiniboia, the snow powdering his shoulders, the wind plucking his blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet and uttering his grave opinions like a Roman senator; in ships at sea, a man inured to hardships and vile pleasures; in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent millions to mechanical employments,.. a fool, a thief, the comrade of thieves, even here keeping the point of honour and the touch of pity, often repaying the worlds scorn with service, often standing firm upon a scruple, and at a certain cost rejecting riches:everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere some decency of thought and carriage, everywhere the ensign of mans ineffectual goodness:ah! if I could show you this! if I could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls! They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot; it is not alone their privilege and glory, but their doom; they are condemned to some nobility; all their lives long, the desire of good is at their heels, the implacable hunter ..