"Do this, and you may be sure you will watch your regiments at their manoeuvres with as much delight as if they were a chorus in the dance." [19] "And then," continued Cyrus, "to rouse enthusiasm in the men, there can be nothing, I take it, like the power of kindling hope ?" "True," answered his father, "but that alone would be as though a huntsman were for ever rousing his pack with the view-halloo.

At first, of course, the hounds will answer eagerly enough, but after they have been cheated once or twice they will end by refusing the call even when the quarry is really in sight.

And so it is with hope.

Let a man rouse false expectations often enough, and in the end, even when hope is at the door, he may cry the good news in vain.

Rather ought he to refrain from speaking positively himself when he cannot know precisely; his agents may step in and do it in his place; but he should reserve his own appeal for the supreme crises of supreme danger, and not dissipate his credit." "By heaven, a most admirable suggestion!" cried Cyrus, "and one much more to my mind! [20] As for enforcing obedience, I hope I have had some training in that already; you began my education yourself when I was a child by teaching me to obey you, and then you handed me over to masters who did as you had done, and afterwards, when we were lads, my fellows and myself, there was nothing on which the governors laid more stress.
Our laws themselves, I think, enforce this double lesson:--'Rule thou and be thou ruled.' And when I come to study the secret of it all, I seem to see that the real incentive to obedience lies in the praise and honour that it wins against the discredit and the chastisement which fall on the disobedient." [21] "That, my son," said the father, "is the road to the obedience of compulsion.