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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: battle cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has
suggested. It is a lost battle, and lost for ever. One thing
remained to you in your defeat - some rags of common honour; and
these you have made haste to cast away.
Common honour; not the honour of having done anything right, but
the honour of not having done aught conspicuously foul; the honour
of the inert: that was what remained to you. We are not all
expected to be Damiens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly,
he may love his comforts better; and none will cast a stone at him
for that. But will a gentleman of your reverend profession allow
me an example from the fields of gallantry? When two gentlemen
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