Courage is in itself a formal virtue, because it is the highest abstraction of freedom from all particular purposes, possessions, enjoyment, and life, yet [effects] this negation in an externally actual way; and because the renunciation, as accomplishment, is not in itself of a spiritual nature — its inner disposition may be this or that ground, and its actual result likewise cannot be for itself, but only for others.
The military estate is the estate of universality, to which the defense of the state falls, and which has the duty of bringing ideality into existence in its own self, that is, of sacrificing itself. Bravery, to be sure, is of different kinds. The courage of the animal, of the robber, bravery for the sake of honor, chivalric bravery — these are not yet the true forms. The true bravery of civilized peoples is the readiness for self-sacrifice in the service of the state, such that the individual constitutes only one among many. Not personal courage, but integration into the universal, is what matters here. In India five hundred men were victorious over twenty thousand who were not cowardly, but who simply lacked this disposition to act in concert, united with others.
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