with it a whole series of new terrors, through our power of
anticipating and picturing possible calamities; while our increased
sensitiveness as well as our more sentimental morality expose us to yet
another range of fears. Consider the dread which many of us feel at the
prospect of a painful interview, our avoidance of an unpleasant scene,
our terror of arousing anger. The basis of all this is the primeval
dread of personal violence. We are afraid of arousing anger, not
because we expect to be assailed by blows and wounds, but because our
far-off ancestors expected anger to end in an actual assault. We may
know that we shall emerge from an unpleasant interview unscathed in
fortune and in limb, but we anticipate it with a quite irrational
terror, because we are still haunted by fears which date from a time
when injury was the natural outcome of wrath. It may be our duty, and
we may recognise it to be our duty, to make a protest of an unpleasant
kind, or to withstand the action of an irritable person; but though we
know well enough that he has no power to injure us, the flashing eye,
the distended nostril, the rising pallor, the uplifted voice have a
disagreeable effect on our nerves, although we know well that no
physical disaster will result from it. Mrs. Browning, for instance,
though she had high moral courage and tenacity of purpose, could not
face an interview with her father, because an exhibition of his anger
caused her to faint away on the spot. One does not often experience
this whiff of violent anger in middle life; but the other day I had
occasion to speak to a colleague of mine on a Board of which I am a
member, at the conclusion of a piece of business in which I had
proposed and carried a certain policy. I did not know that he
disapproved of the policy in question, but I found on speaking to him
that he was in a towering passion at my having opposed the policy which
he preferred. He grew pale with rage; the hair on his head seemed to
bristle, his eyes flashed fire; he slammed down a bundle of papers in
his hand on the table, he stamped with passion; and I confess that it
was profoundly disturbing and disconcerting. I felt for a moment that
sickening sense of misgiving with which as a little boy one confronted
an angry schoolmaster. Though I knew that I had a perfect right to my
opinion, though I recognised that my sensations were quite irrational,
I felt myself confronted with something demoniacal and insane, and the
basis of it was, I am sure, physical and not moral terror. If I had
been bullied or chastised as a child, I should be able to refer the
discomfort I felt to old associations. But I feel no doubt that my
emotion was something far more primeval than that, and that the dumb
and atrophied sense of self-preservation was at work. The fear then
that I felt was an instinctive thing, and was experienced in the inner
nature and not in the rational mind; and the perplexity of the
situation arises from the fact that such fear cannot be combated by
rational considerations. Though no harm whatever resulted or could
result from such an interview, yet I am certain that the prospect of
such an outbreak would make me in the future far more cautious in
dealing with this particular man, more anxious to conciliate him, and
probably more disposed to compromise a matter.
Such an incident makes one unpleasantly aware of the quality of one's
nature and temperament. It shows one that though one may have a strong
moral and intellectual sense of what is the right and sensible course
to take, one may be sadly hampered in carrying it out, by this secret
and hidden instinct of which one may be rationally ashamed, but which
is characteristic of what seems to be the stronger and more vital part
of one's self.
The whole of civilisation is a combat between these two forces, a
struggle between the rational and the instinctive parts of the mind.
The instinctive mind bids one follow profit, need, advantage, the
pleasure of the moment; the rational part of the mind bids one abstain,
resist, balance contingencies, act in accordance with a moral standard.
Many such abstentions become a mere matter of habit. If one is hungry
and thirsty, and meets a child carrying bread or milk, one has no
impulse to seize the food and eat it. One does not reflect upon the
possible outcome of following the impulse of plunder; it simply does
not enter one's head so to act. And there is of course a slow process
going on in the world by which this moral restraint is becoming
habitual and instinctive; but notably in the case of fear our instinct
is a belated one, and results in many causeless and baseless anxieties
which our reason in vain assures us are wholly false.
What then is our practical way of escape from the dominion of these
shadows? Not, I am sure, in any resolute attempt to combat them by
rational weapons; the rational argument, the common-sense consolation,
only touches the rational part of the mind; we have got to get behind
and below that, we have got somehow to fight instinct by instinct, and
quell the terror in its proper home. By our finite nature we are
compelled to attend to one thing at a time, and thus if we use rational
argument, we are recognising the presence of the irrational fear; it is
of little use then to array our advantages against our disadvantages,
our blessings against our sufferings, as Michael Finsbury did with such
small effect in The Wrong Box; our only chance is to turn tail
altogether, and try to set some other dominant instinct at work; while
we remember, we shall continue to suffer; our best chance lies in
forgetting, and we can only do that by calling some other dominant
emotion into play.
And here comes in the peculiarly paralysing effect of these baser
emotions. As Victor Hugo once said, in a fine apophthegm, "Despair
yawns." Fear and anxiety bring with them a particular kind of physical
fatigue which makes us listless and inert. They lie on the spirit with
a leaden dullness, which takes from us all possibility of energy and
motion. Who does not know the instinct, when one is crushed and
tortured by depression, to escape into solitude and silence, and to let
the waves and streams flow over one. That is a universal instinct, and
it is not wholly to be disregarded; it shows that to torture oneself
into rational activity is of little use, or worse than useless.
When I was myself a sufferer from long nervous depression, and had to
face a social gathering, I used out of very shame, and partly I think
out of a sense of courtesy due to others, to galvanise myself into a
sort of horrid merriment. The dark tide flowed on beneath in its sore
and aching channels. It was common enough then for some sympathetic
friend to say, "You seemed better to-night--you were quite yourself;
that is what you want; if you would only make the effort and go out
more into society, you would soon forget your troubles." There is
something in it, because the sick mind must be persuaded if possible
not to grave its dolorous course too indelibly in the temperament; but
no one else could see the acute and intolerable reaction which used to
follow such a strain, or how, the excitement over, the suffering
resumed its sway over the exhausted self with an insupportable agony. I
am sure that in my long affliction I never suffered more than after
occasions when I was betrayed by excitement into argument or lively
talk, and the worst spasms of melancholy that I ever endured were the
direct and immediate results of such efforts.
The counteracting force in fact must be an emotional and instinctive
one, not a rational and deliberate one; and this must be our next
endeavour, to see in what direction the counterpoise must lie.
In depression then, and when causeless fears assail us, we must try to
put the mind in easier postures, to avoid excess and strain, to live
more in company, to do something different. Human beings are happiest
in monotony and settled ways of life; but these also develop their own
poisons, like sameness of diet, however wholesome it may be. It is, I
believe, an established fact that most people cannot eat a pigeon a day
for fourteen days in succession; a pigeon is not unwholesome, but the
digestion cannot stand iteration. There is an old and homely story of a
man who went to a great doctor suffering from dyspepsia. The doctor
asked him what he ate, and he said that he always lunched off bread and
cheese. "Try a mutton chop," said the doctor. He did so with excellent
results. A year later he was ill again and went to the same doctor, who
put him through the same catechism. "What do you have for luncheon?"
said the doctor. "A chop," said the patient, conscious of virtuous
obedience. "Try bread and cheese," said the doctor. "Why," said the
patient, "that was the very thing you told me to avoid." "Yes," said
the doctor, "and I tell you to avoid a chop now. You, are suffering not
from diet, but from monotony of diet--and you want a change."
The principle holds good of ordinary life; it is humiliating to confess
it, but these depressions and despondencies which beset us are often
best met by very ordinary physical remedies. It is not uncommon for
people who suffer from them to examine their consciences, rake up
forgotten transgressions, and feel themselves to be under the anger of
God. I do not mean that such scrutiny of life is wholly undesirable;
depression, though it exaggerates our sinfulness, has a wonderful way
of laying its finger on what is amiss, but we must not wilfully
continue in sadness; and sadness is often a combination of an old
instinct with the staleness which comes of civilised life; and a return
to nature, as it is called, is often a cure, because civilisation has
this disadvantage, that it often takes from us the necessity of doing
many of the things which it is normal to man by inheritance to
do--fighting, hunting, preparing food, working with the hands. We
combat these old instincts artificially by games and exercises. It is
humiliating again to think that golf is an artificial substitute for
man's need to hunt and plough, but it is undoubtedly true; and thus to
break with the monotony of civilisation, and to delude the mind into
believing that it is occupied with primal needs is often a great
refreshment. Anyone who fishes and shoots knows that the joy of
securing a fish or a partridge is entirely out of proportion to any
advantages resulting. A lawyer could make money enough in a single week
to buy the whole contents of a fishmonger's shop, but this does not
give him half the satisfaction which comes from fishing day after day
for a whole week, and securing perhaps three salmon. The fact is that
the old savage mind, which lies behind the rational and educated mind,
is having its fling; it believes itself to be staving off starvation by
its ingenuity and skill, and it unbends like a loosened bow.
We may be enjoying our work, and we may even take glad refuge in it to
stave off depression, but we are then often adding fuel to the fire,
and tiring the very faculty of resistance, which hardly knows that it
needs resting.
The smallest change of scene, of company, of work may effect a
miraculous improvement when we are feeling low-spirited and listless.
It is not idleness as a rule that we want, but the use of other
faculties and powers and muscles.
And thus though our anxieties may be a real factor in our success, and
may give us the touch of prudence and vigilance we want, it does not do
to allow ourselves to drift into vague fears and dull depressions, and
we must fight them in a practical way. We must remember the case of
Naaman, who was vexed at being told to go and dip himself in a
mud-stained stream running violently in rocky places, when he might
have washed in Abana and Pharpar, the statelier, purer, fuller streams
of his native land. It is just the little homely torrent that we need,
and part of our cares come from being too dignified about them. It is
pleasanter to think oneself the battle-ground for high and tragical
forces of a spiritual kind, than to realise that some little homely bit
of common machinery is out of gear. But we must resist the temptation
to feel that our fears have a dark and great significance. We must
simply treat them as little sicknesses and ailments of the soul.
I therefore believe that fears are like those little fugitive gliding
things that seem to dart across the field of the eye when it is weak
and ailing, vague clusters and tangles and spidery webs, that float and
fly, and can never be fixed and truly seen; and that they are best
treated as we learn to treat common ailments, by not concerning
ourselves very much about them, by enduring and evading them and
distracting the mind, and not by facing them, because they will not be
faced; nor can they be dispelled by reason, because they are not in the
plane of reason at all, but phantoms gathered by the sick imagination,
distorted out of their proper shape, evil nightmares, the horror of
which is gone with the dawn. They are the shadows of our childishness,
and they show that we have a long journey before us; and they gain
their strength from the fact that we gather them together out of the
future like the bundle of sticks in the fable, when we shall have the
strength to snap them singly as they come.
The real way to fight them is to get together a treasure of interests
and hopes and beautiful visions and emotions, and above all to have
some definite work which lies apart from our daily work, to which we
can turn gladly in empty hours; because fears are born of inaction and
idleness, and melt insensibly away in the warmth of labour and duty.
Nothing can really hurt us except our own despair. But the problem
which is difficult is how to practise a real fulness of life, and yet
to keep a certain detachment, how to realise that what we do is small
and petty enough, but that the greatness lies in our energy and
briskness of action; we should try to be interested in life as we are
interested in a game, not believing too much in the importance of it,
but yet intensely concerned at the moment in playing it as well and
skilfully as possible. The happiest people of all are those who can
shift their interest rapidly from point to point, and throw themselves
into the act of the moment, whatever it may be. Of course this is
largely at first a matter of temperament, but temperament is not
unalterable; and self-discipline working along the lines of habit has a
great attractiveness, the moment we feel that life is beginning to
shape itself upon real lines.
XVI
FEAR OF LIFE
Let us divide our fears up into definite divisions, and see how it is
best to deal with them. Lowest and worst of all is the shapeless and
bodiless fear, which is a real disease of brain and nerves. I know no
more poignant description of this than in the strange book Lavengro:
"'What ails you, my child,' said a mother to her son, as he lay on a
couch under the influence of the dreadful one; 'what ails you? you seem
afraid!'
"Boy. And so I am; a dreadful fear is upon me.
"Mother. But of what? there is no one can harm you; of what are you
apprehensive?
"Boy. Of nothing that I can express; I know not what I am afraid of,
but afraid I am.
"Mother. Perhaps you see sights and visions; I knew a lady once who was
continually thinking that she saw an armed man threaten her, but it was
only an imagination, a phantom of the brain.
"Boy. No armed man threatens me; and 'tis not a thing that would cause
me any fear. Did an armed man threaten me, I would get up and fight
him; weak as I am, I would wish for nothing better, for then, perhaps,
I should lose this fear; mine is a dread of I know not what, and there
the horror lies.
"Mother. Your forehead is cool, and your speech collected. Do you know
where you are?
"Boy. I know where I am, and I see things just as they are; you are
beside me, and upon the table there is a book which was written by a
Florentine. All this I see, and that there is no ground for being
afraid. I am, moreover, quite cool, and feel no pain--but--but--
"And then there was a burst of 'gemiti, sospiri ed alti guai.' Alas,
alas, poor child of clay! as the sparks fly upward, so wast thou born
to sorrow--Onward!"
That is a description of amazing power, but of course we are here
dealing with a definite brain-malady, in which the emotional centres
are directly affected. This in a lesser degree no doubt affects more
people than one would wish to think; but it may be considered a
physical malady of which fear is the symptom and not the cause.
Let us then frankly recognise the physical element in these irrational
terrors; and when one has once done this, a great burden is taken off
the mind, because one sees that such fear may be a real illusion, a
sort of ghastly mockery, which by directly affecting the delicate
machinery through which emotion is translated into act, may produce a
symptom of terror which is both causeless and baseless, and which may
imply neither a lack of courage nor self-control.
And, therefore, I feel, as against the Ascetic and the Stoic, that I am
meant to live and to taste the fulness of life; and that if I begin by
choosing the wrong joys, it is that I may learn their unreality. I have
learned already to compromise about many things, to be content with
getting much less than I desire, to acquiesce in missing many good
things altogether. But asceticism for the sake of prudence seems to me
a wilful error, as though a man practised starvation through uneasy
days, because of the chance that he might some day find himself with
not enough to eat. The only self-denial worth practising is the
self-denial that one admires, and that seems to one to be fine and
beautiful.
For we must emphatically remember that the saint is one who lives life
with high enjoyment, and with a vital zest; he chooses holiness because
of its irresistible beauty, and because of the appeal it makes to his
mind. He does not creep through life ashamed, depressed, anxious,
letting ordinary delights slip through his nerveless fingers; and if he
denies himself common pleasures, it is because, if indulged, they
thwart and mar his purer and more lively joys.
The fear of life, the frame of mind which says, "This attractive and
charming thing captivates me, but I will mistrust it and keep it at
arm's length, because if I lose it, I shall experience discomfort,"
seems to me a poor and timid handling of life. I would rather say, "I
will use it generously and freely, knowing that it may not endure; but
it is a sign to me of God's care for me, that He gives me the desire
and the gratification; and even if He means me to learn that it is only
a small thing, I can learn that only by using it and trying its
sweetness."
This may be held a dangerous doctrine; but I do not mean that life must
be a foolish and ingenuous indulgence of every appetite and whim. One
must make choices; and there are many appetites which come hand in hand
with their own shadow. I am not here speaking of tampering with sin; I
think that most people burn their fingers over that in early life. But
I am speaking rather of the delights of the body that are in no way
sinful, food and drink, games and exercise, love itself; and of the
joys of the mind and the artistic sense; free and open relations with
men and women of keen interests and eager fancies; the delights of
work, professional success, the doing of pleasant tasks as vigorously
and as perfectly as one can--all the stir and motion and delight of
life.
To shrink back in terror from all this seems to me a sort of cowardice;
and it is a cowardice too to go on indulging in things which one does
not enjoy for the sake of social tradition. One must not be afraid of
breaking with social custom, if one finds that it leads one into dreary
and useless formalities, stupid and expensive entertainments, tiresome
gatherings, dull and futile assemblies. I think that men and women
ought gaily and delightedly to choose the things that minister to their
vigour and joy, and to throw themselves willingly into these things, so
long as they do not interfere with plainer and simpler duties.
Another way of escape from the importunities of fear is to be very
resolute in fighting against our personal claims to honour and esteem.
We are sorely wounded through our ambitions, whether they be petty or
great; and it is astonishing to find how frail a basis often serves for
a sense of dignity. I have known lowly and unimportant people who were
yet full of pragmatical self-concern, and whose pride took the form not
so much of exalting their own consequence as of thinking meanly of
other people. It is easy to restore one's own confidence by dwelling
with bitter emphasis on the faults and failings of those about one, by
cataloguing the deficiencies of those who have achieved success, by
accustoming oneself to think of one's own lack of success as a sign of
unworldliness, and by attributing the success of others to a cynical
and unscrupulous pursuit of reputation. There is nothing in the world
which so differentiates men and women as the tendency to suspect and
perceive affronts, and to nurture grievances. It is so fatally easy to
think that one has been inconsiderately treated, and to mistake
susceptibility for courage. Let us boldly face the fact that we get in
this world very much what we earn and deserve, and there is no surer
way of being excluded and left out from whatever is going forward than
a habit of claiming more respect and deference than is due to one. If
we are snubbed and humiliated, it is generally because we have put
ourselves forward and taken more than our share. Whereas if we have
been content to bear a hand, to take trouble, and to desire useful work
rather than credit, our influence grows silently and we become
indispensable. A man who does not notice petty grumbling, who laughs
away sharp comments, who does not brood over imagined insults, who
forgets irritable passages, who makes allowance for impatience and
fatigue, is singularly invulnerable. The power of forgetting is
infinitely more valuable than the power of forgiving, in many
conjunctions of life. In nine cases out of ten, the wounds which our
sensibilities receive are the merest pin-pricks, enlarged and fretted
by our own hands; we work the little thorn about in the puncture till
it festers, instead of drawing it out and casting it away.
Very few of the prizes of life that we covet are worth winning, if we
scheme to get them; it is the honour or the task that comes to us
unexpectedly that we deserve. I have heard discontented men say that
they never get the particular work that they desire and for which they
feel themselves to be suited; and meanwhile life flies swiftly, while
we are picturing ourselves in all sorts of coveted situations, and
slighting the peaceful happiness, the beautiful joys which lie all
around us, as we go forward in our greedy reverie.
I have been much surprised, since I began some years ago to receive
letters from all sorts of unknown people, to realise how many persons
there are in the world who think themselves unappreciated. Such are not
generally people who have tried and failed;--an honest failure very
often brings a wholesome sense of incompetence;--but they are generally
persons who think that they have never had a chance of showing what is
in them, speakers who have found their audiences unresponsive, writers
who have been discouraged by finding their amateur efforts unsaleable,
men who lament the unsuitability of their profession to their
abilities, women who find themselves living in what they call a
thoroughly unsympathetic circle. The failure here lies in an incapacity
to believe in one's own inefficiency, and a sturdy persuasion of the
malevolence of others.
Here is a soil in which fears spring up like thorns and briars.
"Whatever I do or say, I shall be passed over and slighted, I shall
always find people determined to exclude and neglect me!" I know
myself, only too well, how fertile the brain is in discovering almost
any reason for a failure except what is generally the real reason, that
the work was badly done. And the more eager one is for personal
recognition and patent success, the more sickened one is by any hint of
contempt and derision.