There is no harm in confronting our disorders or misfortunes.
On the contrary, the attempt is wholesome.
Much of what we dread is really due to indistinctness
of outline. If we have the courage to say to
ourselves, What is this thing, then? let the worst
come to the worst, and what then? we shall frequently
find that after all it is not so terrible. What
we have to do is to subdue tremulous, nervous, insane
fright. Fright is often prior to an object; that
is to say, the fright comes first and something is
invented or discovered to account for it. There
are certain states of body and mind which are productive
of objectless fright, and the most ridiculous thing
in the world is able to provoke it to activity.
It is perhaps not too much to say that any calamity
the moment it is apprehended by the reason alone loses
nearly all its power to disturb and unfix us.
The conclusions which are so alarming are not those
of the reason, but, to use Spinoza’s words, of
the “affects.”
FAITH
Faith is nobly seen when a man, standing like Columbus
upon the shore with a dark, stormy Atlantic before
him, resolves to sail, and although week after week
no land be visible, still believes and still sails
on; but it is nobler when there is no America as the
goal of our venture, but something which is unsubstantial,
as, for example, self-control and self-purification.
It is curious, by the way, that discipline of this
kind should almost have disappeared. Possibly
it is because religion is now a matter of belief in
certain propositions; but, whatever the cause may
be, we do not train ourselves day by day to become
better as we train ourselves to learn languages or
science. To return from this parenthesis, we
say that when no applause nor even recognition is
expected, to proceed steadily and alone for its own
sake in the work of saving the soul is truer heroism
than that which leads a martyr cheerfully to the stake.
Faith is at its best when we have to wrestle with
despair, not only of ourselves but of the Universe;
when we strain our eyes and see nothing but blackness.
In the Gorgias Socrates maintains, not only that it
is always better to suffer injustice than to commit
it, but that it is better to be punished for injustice
than to escape, and better to die than to do wrong;
and it is better not only because of the effect on
others but for our own sake. We are naturally
led to ask what support a righteous man unjustly condemned
could find, supposing he were about to be executed,
if he had no faith in personal immortality and knew
that his martyrdom could not have the least effect
for good. Imagine him, for example, shut up
in a dungeon and about to be strangled in it and that
not a single inquiry will be made about him—where
will he look for help? what hope will compose him?
He may say that in a few hours he will be asleep,
and that nothing will then be of any consequence to
Copyrights
Pages from a Journal with Other Papers from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
