HOPE AND FEAR ARE THE BANE OF HUMAN LIFE.
No man can be said to be perfectly happy that runs the risk of
disappointment: which is the case of every man that _fears_ or _hopes_
for anything. For _hope_ and _fear_, how distant soever they may seem
to be the one from the other, they are both of them yet coupled in the
same chain, as the guard and the prisoner; and the one treads upon
the heels of the other. The reason of this is obvious, for they are
passions that look forward, and are ever solicitous for the future;
only _hope_ is the more plausible weakness of the two, which in truth,
upon the main, are inseparable; for the one cannot be without the
other: but where the _hope_ is stronger than the _fear_, or the _fear_
than the _hope_, we call it the one or the other; for without _fear_ it
were no longer _hope_, but _certainty_; as without _hope_ it were no
longer _fear_ but _despair_.
We may come to understand whether our disputes are vain or not, if we
do but consider that we are either troubled about the _present_, the
_future_ or _both_. If the present, it is easy to judge, and the future
is uncertain. It is a foolish thing to be miserable beforehand for
fear of misery to come; for a man loses the present, which he might
enjoy, in expectation of the future: nay, the fear of losing anything
is as bad as the loss itself. I will be as prudent as I can, but not
timorous or careless; and I will bethink myself, and forecast what
inconveniences may happen before they come. It is true, a man may fear,
and yet not be fearful; which is no more than to have the affection of
fear without the vice of it; but yet a frequent admittance of it runs
into a habit. It is a shameful and an unmanly thing to be doubtful,
timorous, and uncertain; to set one step forward, and another backward;
and to be irresolute. Can there be any man so fearful, that had not
rather fall once than hang always in suspense?
Our miseries are endless, if we stand in fear of all possibilities;
the best way, in such a case, is to drive out one nail with another,
and a little to qualify fear with hope; which may serve to palliate a
misfortune; though not to cure it. There is not anything that we fear,
which is so certain to come, as it is certain that many things which
we do fear will not come; but we are loth to oppose our credulity when
it begins to move us, and so to bring our fear to the test. Well! but
“what if the thing we fear should come to pass?” Perhaps it will be
the better for us. Suppose it be _death_ itself, why may it not prove
the glory of my life? Did not poison make Socrates famous? and was not
Cato’s sword a great part of his honor? “Do we fear any misfortune to
befall us?” We are not presently sure that it will happen. How many
deliverances have come unlooked for? and how many mischiefs that we
looked for have never come to pass? It is time enough to lament when it
comes, and, in the _interim_, to promise ourselves the best. What do I
know but something or other may delay or divert it? Some have escaped
out of the fire; others, when a house has fallen over their head,
have received no hurt: one man has been saved when a sword was at his
throat; another has been condemned, and outlived his headsman: so that
ill-fortune, we see, as well as good, has her levities; peradventure
it will be, peradventure not; and until it comes to pass, we are not
sure of it: we do many times take words in a worse sense than they were
intended, and imagine things to be worse taken than they are. It is
time enough to bear a misfortune when it comes, without anticipating it.
He that would deliver himself from all apprehensions of the future,
let him first take for granted, that all fears will fall upon him; and
then examine and measure the evil that he fears, which he will find
to be neither great nor long. Beside, that the ills which he fears he
may suffer, he suffers in the very fear of them. As in the symptoms of
an approaching disease, a man shall find himself lazy and listless: a
weariness in his limbs, with a yawning and shuddering all over him; so
it is in the case of a weak mind, it fancies misfortunes, and makes a
man wretched before his time. Why should I torment myself at present
with what, perhaps, may fall out fifty years hence? This humor is a
kind of voluntary disease, and an industrious contrivance of our own
unhappiness, to complain of an affliction that we do not feel. Some
are not only moved with grief itself, but with the mere opinion of
it; as children will start at a shadow, or at the sight of a deformed
person. If we stand in fear of violence from a powerful enemy, it is
some comfort to us, that whosoever makes himself terrible to others is
not without fear himself: the least noise makes a lion start; and the
fiercest of beasts, whatsoever enrages them, makes them tremble too: a
shadow, a voice, an unusual odor, rouses them.
The things most to be feared I take to be of three kinds; _want_,
_sickness_, and those _violences_ that may be imposed upon us by a
_strong hand_. The last of these has the greatest force, because it
comes attended with noise and tumult; whereas the incommodities of
poverty and diseases are more natural, and steal upon us in silence,
without any external circumstances of horror: but the other marches in
pomp, with fire and sword, gibbets, racks, hooks; wild beasts to devour
us; stakes to impale us; engines to tear us to pieces; pitched bags to
burn us in, and a thousand other exquisite inventions of cruelty. No
wonder then, if that be the most dreadful to us that presents itself in
so many uncouth shapes; and by the very solemnity is rendered the most
formidable. The more instruments of bodily pain the executioner shows
us, the more frightful he makes himself: for many a man that would have
encountered death in any generous form, with resolution enough, is
yet overcome with the _manner_ of it. As for the calamities of hunger
and thirst, inward ulcers, scorching fevers, tormenting fits of the
stone, I look upon these miseries to be at least as grievous as any
of the rest; only they do not so much affect the fancy, because they
lie out of sight. Some people talk high of danger at a distance; but
(like cowards) when the executioner comes to do his duty, and show us
the fire, the ax, the scaffold, and death at hand, their courage fails
them upon the very pinch, when they have most need of it. Sickness, (I
hope) captivity, fire, are no new things to us; the fall of houses,
funerals, and conflagrations, are every day before our eyes. The man
that I supped with last night is dead before morning; why should I
wonder then, seeing so many fall about me, to be hit at last myself?
What can be greater madness than to cry out, “Who would have dreamed
of this?” And why not, I beseech you? Where is that estate that may
not be reduced to beggary? that dignity which may not be followed with
banishment, disgrace, and extreme contempt? that kingdom that may not
suddenly fall to ruin; change its master, and be depopulated? that
prince that may not pass the hand of a common hangman? That which is
one man’s fortune may be another’s; but the foresight of calamities to
come breaks the violence of them.