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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: Deeds," and said, "Obedience, at all costs and risks, is the very
essence of a soldier's life. It has the solid material, but it
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
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