"Of course," he said, "she wanted to know why
I had done such a thing, and when I told her, she laughed a short sweet laugh,
most satisfactory to the younger ear, and said, "Nobody ever thought you
were a coward, my boy." I said that was all very well, but how could I
tell till I tried? "But you won't do it again? she said. I replied,
"Of course not-where would be the fun?"
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It was not that he had no fear: it was that he wanted to
convince himself that he was able to master his fear when the emergency came.
Having discovered that he had fear under his control there was no sense in
taking risks for the mere sake of taking them.
Most fears are purely subjective, the phantoms of a too
vivid mind. I was looking over a deserted house situated in large grounds in
the country the other day. It had been emptying since the beginning of the war.
up to then it had been occupied by a man in the shipping trade. On the day that
war was declared he rushed into the house and cried, "We have declared war
on Germany; I am ruined." Then he went out and shot himself. Had his mind
been disciplined against panic, he would have mastered his fears, and would
have discovered that he had the luck to be in a trade which has benefited by
the war more, perhaps, than any other.
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In this case it was the sudden impact of fear that overthrew
reason from its balance, but in other cases fear is a maggot in the brain that
grows by brooding. There is a story of Maupassant's, which illustrates how a
man who is not a coward may literally die of fright, by dwelling upon fear. He
had resented the conduct of a man in a restaurant, who has stared insolently at
the lady who was with him. His action led to a challenge from the offender, and
an arrangement to meet next morning. When he got home, instead of going to bed,
he began to wonder who his foe was, to hunt for his name in directories, to
recall the cold assurance of his challenge, and to invest him with all sorts of
terrors as a marksman. As the night advanced, he passed through all the stages
from anxious curiosity to panic, and when his valet called him at dawn, he
found a corpse. Like the ship owner, he had shot himself to escape the terrors
of his mind.
It is the imaginative people who suffer most
from fear. Give them only a hint of peril, and their minds will explore the
whole circumference of disastrous consequence. It is not a bad thing in this
world to be born a little dull and unimaginative. You will have a much more
comfortable time. And if you have not taken that precaution, you will do well
to a prosaic person handy to correct your fantasies. Therein Don Quixote showed
his wisdom. In the romantic theatre of his mind perils rose like giants on
every horizon; but there was always Sancho Panza on his donkey, ready to prick
the bubbles of his master with the broad word of his incomparable stupidity.
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