Nor would there have been any plaudits for MARCUS CURTIUS when he leapt into the gulf, had he been so drunk as not to know what he was about.

The will which depends on unscrupulousness is like the benumbed hand or intoxicated soul.

Quench conscience, as a sense of right and obligation, and you can, of course, do a great deal from which another would shrink--and therefore be called "weak-minded" by the fools.
There is another type of person who imposes on the world and on self as being strong-minded and gifted with Will.

It is the imperturbable cool being, always self-possessed, with little sympathy for emotion.
In most cases such minds result from artificial training, and they break down in real trials.

I do not say that they cannot weather a storm or a duel, or stand fire, or get through what novelists regard as superlative stage trials; but, in a moral crisis, the gentleman or lady whose face is all Corinthian brass is apt like that brass in a fire to turn pale.