An interesting boy of ten and I have been much together in the open
weather. We have learned many things, but nothing more important than
what a sham Fear is. I do not mean that we take chances or that it is
wise to risk life or limb. Fine discrimination is back of all training
in the arts of life; still we certainly have found that Fear is a
waster and diminisher of beauty and power--and that it can be mastered.
About the most fascinating thing that life has shown me is the way in
which fine examples of the younger generation learn the deeper matters
of life--matters of self-mastery which make the very presence of a
lad significant to a stranger, and which formerly were supposed to be
secrets for the sons of kings alone.
"Do you fear anything?" I ask. "Look deep. Listen deep--do you fear
anything?... It's like the pain that tells you of a weakness or
disease. Fear is an unerring reminder of a task of conquest ahead for
you. That which you fear most is the thing to conquer first."
There had been much of this talk of Fear before a laughable personal
experience showed me how much I asked.
I crossed a mesa and came to an abrupt drop-off--two hundred feet
sheer. It astonished me. I hadn't experienced anything like this quiver
of horror for years. All members and muscles bolted at the thought of
advancing closer to the edge. I sat down to think it out. It never had
occurred before that I _wasn't_ my nervous system, and must not let it
get me down.
The more I thought, the more I perceived that I must do the thing I
dreaded so. In fact, I had told trusting young people that they were
not their bodies, not their emotions, not even their minds--that these
must be made to obey. Here I had a chance to prove if I were less in
action than talk. I forced my fluttering young self to the edge....
Dizziness--wobbly limbs, fancied shoves from behind, the call of the
huge shadowed space below, a queer sense of parting in mid-air, the
body thumping down, another and liberated self gladly spurning the
ground--all these symptoms of panic followed swiftly.
I held until calm came, and I then could study this little coil of
forgotten fears--a civilised mess.... The weakness was absurdly easy to
overcome after the will was once aroused. There's no end or limitation
to will force when awakened. The greater the man, the more awe he has
for this subject. There's a glow that follows conquest of any kind; the
mere call of the will to action brings a sense of power in the heart.
There is no way more speedily to dispel pain, anger, passion, fear, or
any of these tentacles of personality--than to summon the power of will
to instant action. The particular matter of this precipice showed me a
trick about calling up the force--priceless to me afterward in bigger
tests, and for opening the way of self-conquest to boys.
One must decide what one wants to do--then carry it out to the death.
Discrimination, art, all culture and knowledge may be brought to bear
in making the decision--but after that, it must be carried out--just
that.
Fears belong to the abdomen. You can feel them there. They are quicker
than thought. Perhaps you had a twinge of nerves over some sight or
sound or odour, before your mind could tell you what you were afraid
of.... I have often told the young ones here--listening a bit to my own
voice--that there isn't anything living or dead, phantom, shell, or
living soul, that has got the authority to make the spirit of man quail.
Courage is spirit.
Most people don't care to try to deal with it; they let it have its
way.... Do you recall the fears of the dark room as a child--fear
always stealing behind--upstairs alone, the rush to the light, almost
screaming tension?... I heard a patter of steps the other evening and
knew the whole story--a boy of seven. He had been sent upstairs without
a light. I sent him back, told him to stay there until he got himself
in hand--to stay in the dark and think the bogie down. He was well
afterward.
I have known some under-fire work. A man soon gets himself in hand
to look straight at a white-fringed trench. Fear of sharks furnished
another test. From a child the deep-sea devourers had an exquisite
fascination for me--to be cut in two under brine, white belly,
backward mouth, black-rimmed, hairy pig eyes, the double-rows of
teeth.... Pacific Islanders swim in the same harbour with fourteen-foot
scavengers, careless of whole schools of monsters, yet scurry to their
boats at the sight of one solitary, _different_ fin. I had seen the
so-called, man-eating brutes, "grey nurses," dim grey horrors with dull
black spots. A well-fed imagination also came into play.
I went swimming in the surf with a splendid Australian chap--a doctor
home from the trenches.... He left me back in the surf lines and
started out to sea. I finished my swim decently in toward North
America, and lay on the strand. From time to time off in the sunset I
saw my friend's head.... I was glad to grab the beach-comber when he
came in.
"It's all perfectly sane and splendid," I said, "and I'm glad to have
you back for supper with us, and the billows out yonder are doubtless
all that you say, for an afternoon's lie-up, only I venture to
ask--what if a grey nurse should happen in from the lower islands?"
"You don't think about them," he said.
That's about all there is to the fear subject. You don't let it get
you. There is nothing worth fearing in or above or under the plane of
manifestation.... So I tried that out in deep water. The old horrors
succumbed like the fear of the precipice, but not so readily, quite.
One can imagine keenly in the dim deep; the touch of sea-weed quickens
all the monsters of the mind....
There's nothing fit to be afraid of, unless it is the _self_. When we
get the ape and the tiger, the peacock and the porpoise, the lizard
and the shark and the carcajou of our own natures mastered, there
isn't anything left to do but to tally them off outside, a friendly
finish with them all. No menagerie is complete as man's, and each of us
favours some species from time to time.
I have thought much about fear. In another place I told how we have
overcome inertia; how we developed senses through the hard administry
of fear and hunger, anger and the rest. Now, however, these must be
overcome.... One of the last physical fears to let go in my case is
that for the hangman's rope. I think Roger Casement really wanted the
axe in preference to the hemp. Steadily facing a repulsion, it surely
vanishes.
The point of it all is that you can teach self-command to the
children.... I took a girl of fourteen to my precipice--left her there
standing on the very edge. After a few minutes I called. Her face was
calm as if she had gazed from a porch....
"Did you feel any fear?" I asked.
"Only yours for me," she answered.
It was very true. I had the thing whipped for myself, but it had been
hard to leave her there.
Finally I took the smaller boys out for a test. They didn't know I was
testing them. Children haven't the fear of height such as we put on. I
recalled a score of episodes of my own boy-days, in which I startled
the elders by Sam Patch imitations. Also I have put the young ones
through some deep water affairs....
You may not be able to get it quite--but all fear is illusion. Every
inner beast mastered makes us stronger. These animals within are our
cosmos to rule. We do not know how beautiful they are until we lose
our fear for them. Boys and girls here are learning these things and
putting them in action.
The kingdom of heaven is also within. Fear, passion, anger, poverty,
and the like--all represent areas of our own kingdom not yet brought
under perfect cultivation.... After the emotional and physical
conquests come the psychic ones--hard matters of mastery pertaining to
the heart and mind--to know, to do, to dare, to keep silent--then the
finding of the hidden treasures of the subconscious, mystic fleets that
sail those dim seas, as yet uncharted for most of us.... After that,
the Soul. At last we must be potent enough to stand eye to eye in the
presence of the King Himself.
From looking steadily over an escarpment of two or three hundred feet
drop, to gazing at the world from the forward cockpit of an airplane
at two or three thousand feet, isn't such a long step as you would
imagine. The fact is, I was in no way terrified in my first flight, and
fear certainly crawled me full length as I stood that time at the edge
of the mesa. Our young people have the call to test the new dimension
of wings. This zeal corresponds in a unique way with the new education.
Intellect stays upon the ground. Intuition is the lifting of the wings
of the mind.
I had already begun to make friendly visits to an aerodrome at the edge
of the Pacific when the following letter came from the Abbot,[2] who
is now seventeen and in New York:
... Perhaps Steve told you that I had a ride in an airplane about three
weeks ago. Man! 'Tis the place for me! Next summer, soon as school
dissipates, I attach my name to the Royal Flying Corps. The psychic
effect of a flight is wonderful--like travelling over a very tall
bridge. The Atlantic coast for many miles lay in profile as a map, the
roads stretched as thin mathematical lines; forests as darker shadows
of the earth; New York as a blotch of smoke and curious patchwork.
For twenty minutes we sailed around and around, just as you've seen a
gull pinion, then we came to earth; waited until it got dark, then up
again.... Lights of the aerodrome lay like jewels upon the earth, but
up, up we went, faster and higher, the roar of the propeller providing
a steady nervous outlet. I could shout my lungs out--I had to relieve
myself of the excess thrill.
Then what should happen? Red, a tiny rim, like the disc of a golden
dollar, the sun began to lift up from the horizon again. The higher
we went, the higher it lifted, until there it hung, as a golden bulb,
a swollen orange off in the mighty stretches,--pure, golden,--while
below twinkled the town's lights. 'Twas the fullest, richest, most
brimming moment I've ever had. The awe of the cosmos overtakes the
heart and lays down its stupendous laws. The distance between sun and
'plane seemed a golden pathway that ever could absorb your flight. I
was aware only of worshipping God, and that roar of the machine made
one think of the roar of the planets, comets, meteors, all the suns,
roa-oa-ring. What a romance! Finding the sun!
... No discussion of the fear element whatsoever in the letter....
[2] Fred Jasperson.
The old thrills won't do for the new race. I took a pair of
screen-trained young ones to a circus recently and became absorbed at
their mild boredom. Alcohol is too slow and coarse for the wastrel
tendencies of the modern hour. The sad ones of the new generation
use high potency drugs to forget the drag of time and space. A new
dimension is required in all things. The young men of the new race make
light of our old dreads and are learning winged ways to heaven and to
hell.
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