A more obscure cause,
yet not wholly to be omitted, is afforded by the undoubted fact that
the exertion of the reasoning faculties tends to extinguish or bedim
those mysterious instincts of skill, which, though for the most part
latent, we nevertheless possess in common with other animals.
Or the proverb may be used invidiously; and folly in the vocabulary
of envy or baseness may signify courage and magnanimity. Hardihood
and fool-hardiness are indeed as different as green and yellow, yet
will appear the same to the jaundiced eye. Courage multiplies the
chances of success by sometimes making opportunities, and always
availing itself of them: and in this sense Fortune may be said to
favour fools by those who, however prudent in their own opinion, are
deficient in valour and enterprise. Again: an emiently good and
wise man, for whom the praises of the judicious have procured a high
reputation even with the world at large, proposes to himself certain
objects, and adapting the right means to the right end attains them;
but his objects not being what the world calls fortune, neither money
nor artificial rank, his admitted inferiors in moral and intellectual
worth, but more prosperous in their worldly concerns, are said to
have been favoured by Fortune and be slighted; although the fools did
the same in their line as the wise man in his; they adapted the
appropriate means to the desired end, and so succeeded.
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