M. set the highest value on friendship among “men” with its “handshake at moments of danger,” “battle,” competition for women, common language, and shared jokes. The idea of “battle,” as I have already said, struck me as comic, but he was preparing for it in earnest. In our life, civic courage is a much rarer thing than military valor. People distinguished by utter cowardice in public life could prove to be brave officers or soldiers. How is this possible? The reason is, no doubt, that at the front they were under discipline and simply carried out orders. This was not “battle,” but doing one’s duty, which require not courage, but only stamina and submission to discipline rather than to a moral imperative. Indeed, a man who has lost his personality often regains a sense of his worth as a soldier, during a war. In this country he remains under discipline in peacetime as well, continuing to obey orders even if they run counter to his ideas of honor and duty (how many people still know what these are?). Dreadful as it may seem, the Second World War brought inward relief to some people, because it put an end to the divided feelings so characteristic of peacetime. M. did not survive until the outbreak of war, and in his moment of danger there was not one “man” ready to shake him by the hand. There was, however, a woman to mourn him: Akhmatova, the last person he thought of as a member of his circle. Her farewell kiss meant much more than anything the puny “men” of our era would have been capable of.
Courage seems to me to be dependent on cultural definition. By this I do not mean only that it is a word that blesses different behaviors in different cultures, though that is clearly true. I mean also, and more importantly, that courage is rarely expressed except where there is sufficient consensus to support it. Theologians used to write about a prevenient grace, which enables the soul to accept grace itself. Perhaps there must also be a prevenient courage to nerve one to be brave. It is we human beings who give one another permission to show courage, or, more typically, withhold such permission. We also internalize prohibitions, enforcing them on ourselves — prohibitions against, for example, expressing an honest doubt, or entertaining one. This ought not to be true in a civilization like ours, historically committed to valuing individual conscience and free expression. But it is.
Physical courage is remarkably widespread in this population. There seem always to be firefighters to deal with the most appalling conflagrations and doctors to deal with the most novel and alarming illnesses. It is by no means to undervalue courage of this kind to say it is perhaps expedited by being universally recognized as courage. Those who act on it can recognize the impulse and act confidently, even at the greatest risk to themselves.
Moral and intellectual courage are not in nearly so flourishing a state, even though the risks they entail — financial or professional disadvantage, ridicule, ostracism — are comparatively minor. I propose that these forms of courage suffer from the disadvantage of requiring new definitions continually, which must be generated out of individual perception and judgment. They threaten or violate loyalty, group identity, the sense of comme il faut. They are, intrinsically, outside the range of consensus.