An enquiry into the nature of courage

Abstract

It may at first thought appear to be presumptuous to write about courage when we have just fought our way through six years of a most formidable war in which thousands paid for our victory with their life and in the course of which seme 4000 of our New Zealand soldiers alone have been awarded medals and ribbons for the courage they displayed. (N.Z. Official Year Book 1945). However, we think that just because of this victory we should make an enquiry into the nature of courage, and in doing so, we propose to investigate a variety of actions all of which are customarily graced with the epithet "courageous". It will be our object to show that courage is to our mind something different from what it is popularly held to be. Our enquiry will be divided into two main parts: first we shall try to show that the classical idea of a virtue of courage is not sufficient to show us what courage is or how it can be attained; secondly we shall investigate and analyse instances of courage and sift out those which approach most our ideal of courage.