“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.