<SPAN name="chap02"></SPAN>
<h3> II </h3>
<h3> SHAPES OF FEAR </h3>
<p>Now as I look back a little, I see that some of my worst experiences
have not hurt or injured me at all. I do not claim more than my share
of troubles, but "I have had trouble enough for one," as Browning
says,—bereavements, disappointments, the illness of those I have
loved, illness of my own, quarrels, misunderstandings, enmities,
angers, disapprovals, losses; I have made bad mistakes, I have failed
in my duty, I have done many things that I regret, I have been
unreasonable, unkind, selfish. Many of these things have hurt and
wounded me, have brought me into sorrow, and even into despair. But I
do not feel that any of them have really injured me, and some of them
have already benefited me. I have learned to be a little more patient
and diligent, and I have discovered that there are certain things that
I must at all costs avoid.</p>
<p>But there is one thing which seems to me to have always and invariably
hampered and maimed me, whenever I have yielded to it, and I have often
yielded to it; and that is Fear. It can be called by many names, and
all of them ugly names—anxiety, timidity, moral cowardice. I can never
trace the smallest good in having given way to it. It has been from my
earliest days the Shadow; and I think it is the shadow in the lives of
many men and women. I want in this book to track it, if I can, to its
lair, to see what it is, where its awful power lies, and what, if
anything, one can do to resist it. It seems the most unreal thing in
the world, when one is on the other side of it; and yet face to face
with it, it has a strength, a poignancy, a paralysing power, which
makes it seem like a personal and specific ill-will, issuing in a sort
of dreadful enchantment or spell, which renders it impossible to
withstand. Yet, strange to say, it has not exercised its power in the
few occasions in my life when it would seem to have been really
justified. Let me quote an instance or two which will illustrate what I
mean.</p>
<p>I was confronted once with the necessity of a small surgical operation,
quite unexpectedly. If I had known beforehand that it was to be done, I
should have depicted every incident with horror and misery. But the
moment arrived, and I found myself marching to my bedroom with a
surgeon and a nurse, with a sense almost of amusement at the adventure.</p>
<p>I was called upon once in Switzerland to assist with two guides in the
rescue of an unfortunate woman who had fallen from a precipice, and had
to be brought down, dead or alive. We hurried up through the
pine-forest with a chair, and found the poor creature alive indeed, but
with horrible injuries—an eye knocked out, an arm and a thigh broken,
her ulster torn to ribbons, and with more blood about the place in
pools than I should have thought a human body could contain. She was
conscious; she had to be lifted into the chair, and we had to discover
where she belonged; she fainted away in the middle of it, and I had to
go on and break the news to her relations. If I had been told
beforehand what would have had to be done, I do not think I could have
faced it; but it was there to do, and I found myself entirely capable
of taking part, and even of wondering all the time that it was possible
to act.</p>
<p>Again, I was once engulfed in a crevasse, hanging from the ice-ledge
with a portentous gulf below, and a glacier-stream roaring in the
darkness. I could get no hold for foot or hand, my companions could not
reach me or extract me; and as I sank into unconsciousness, hearing my
own expiring breath, I knew that I was doomed; but I can only say,
quite honestly and humbly, that I had no fear at all, and only dimly
wondered what arrangements would be made at Eton, where I was then a
master, to accommodate the boys of my house and my pupils. It was not
done by an effort, nor did I brace myself to the situation: fear simply
did not come near to me.</p>
<p>Once again I found myself confronted, not so long ago, with an
incredibly painful and distressing interview. That indeed did oppress
me with almost intolerable dread beforehand. I was to go to a certain
house in London, and there was just a chance that the interview might
not take place after all. As I drove there, I suddenly found myself
wondering whether the interview could REALLY be going to take
place—how often had I rehearsed it beforehand with anguish—and then
as suddenly became aware that I should in some strange way be
disappointed if it did not take place. I wanted on the whole to go
through with it, and to see what it would be like. A deep-seated
curiosity came to my aid. It did take place, and it was very bad—worse
than I could have imagined; but it was not terrible!</p>
<p>These are just four instances which come into my mind. I should be glad
to feel that the courage which undoubtedly came had been the creation
of my will; but it was not so. In three cases, the events came
unexpectedly; but in the fourth case I had long anticipated the moment
with extreme dread. Yet in that last case the fear suddenly slipped
away, without the smallest effort on my part; and in all four cases
some strange gusto of experience, some sense of heightened life and
adventure, rose in the mind like a fountain—so that even in the
crevasse I said to myself, not excitedly but serenely, "So this is what
it feels like to await death!"</p>
<p>It was this particular experience which gave me an inkling into that
which in so many tragic histories seems incredible—that men often do
pass to death, by scaffold and by stake, at the last moment, in
serenity and even in joy. I do not doubt for a moment that it is the
immortal principle in man, the sense of deathlessness, which comes to
his aid. It is the instinct which, in spite of all knowledge and
experience, says suddenly, in a moment like that, "Well, what then?"
That instinct is a far truer thing than any expectation or imagination.
It sees things, in supreme moments, in a true proportion. It asserts
that when the rope jerks, or the flames leap up, or the benumbing blow
falls, there is something there which cannot possibly be injured, and
which indeed is rather freed from the body of our humiliation. It is
but an incident, after all, in a much longer and more momentous voyage.
It means only the closing of one chapter of experience and the
beginning of another. The base element in it is the fear which dreads
the opening of the door, and the quitting of what is familiar. And I
feel assured of this, that the one universal and inevitable experience,
known to us as death, must in reality be a very simple and even a
natural affair, and that when we can look back upon it, it will seem to
us amazing that we can ever have regarded it as so momentous and
appalling a thing.</p>
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