Society and solitude: Twelve chapters
protection which a house, a family, neighborhood and property, even
the first accumulation of savings, gives go in all times to generate
this taint of the respectable classes. Voltaire said, “One of the
chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.” Those
political parties which gather-in the well-disposed portion of the
community,--how infirm and ignoble! what white lips they have! always
on the defensive, as if the lead were intrusted to the journals, often
written in great part by women and boys, who, without strength, wish
to keep up the appearance of strength. They can do the hurras, the
placarding, the flags,--and the voting, if it is a fair day; but the
aggressive attitude of men who will have right done, will no longer be
bothered with burglars and ruffians in the streets, counterfeiters in
public offices, and thieves on the bench; that part, the part of the
leader and soul of the vigilance committee, must be taken by stout and
sincere men who are really angry and determined. In ordinary, we have
a snappish criticism which watches and contradicts the opposite party.
We want the will which advances and dictates. When we get an advantage,
as in Congress the other day, it is because our adversary has committed
a fault, not that we have taken the initiative and given the law.
Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be
defended. Complaining never so loud, and with never so much reason, is
of no use. One heard much cant of peace-parties long ago in Kansas and
elsewhere, that their strength lay in the greatness of their wrongs,
and dissuading all resistance, as if to make this strength greater. But
were their wrongs greater than the negro’s? and what kind of strength
did they ever give him? It was always invitation to the tyrant, and
bred disgust in those who would protect the victim. What cannot stand
must fall; and the measure of our sincerity, and therefore of the
respect of men, is the amount of health and wealth we will hazard in
the defence of our right. An old farmer, my neighbor across the fence,
when I ask him if he is not going to town-meeting, says: “No; ’tis no
use balloting, for it will not stay; but what you do with the gun will
stay so.” Nature has charged every one with his own defence as with
his own support, and the only title I can have to your help is when I
have manfully put forth all the means I possess to keep me, and, being
overborne by odds, the by-standers have a natural wish to interfere
and see fair play.
But with this pacific education, we have no readiness for bad times.
I am much mistaken if every man who went to the army in the late war
had not a lively curiosity to know how he should behave in action.
Tender, amiable boys, who had never encountered any rougher play than
a base-ball match or a fishing excursion, were suddenly drawn up to
face a bayonet charge or capture a battery. Of course, they must each
go into that action with a certain despair. Each whispers to himself:
“My exertions must be of small account to the result; only will the
benignant Heaven save me from disgracing myself and my friends and my
State. Die! O yes, I can well die; but I cannot afford to misbehave;
and I do not know how I shall feel.” So great a soldier as the old
French Marshal Montluc acknowledges that he has often trembled with
fear, and recovered courage when he had said a prayer for the occasion.
I knew a young soldier who died in the early campaign, who confided to
his sister that he had made up his mind to volunteer for the war. “I
have not,” he said, “any proper courage, but I shall never let any one
find it out.” And he had accustomed himself always to go into whatever
place of danger, and do whatever he was afraid to do, setting a dogged
resolution to resist this natural infirmity. Coleridge has preserved
an anecdote of an officer in the British Navy, who told him that when
he, in his first boat expedition, a midshipman in his fourteenth year,
accompanied Sir Alexander Ball, “as we were rowing up to the vessel we
were to attack, amid a discharge of musketry, I was overpowered with
fear, my knees shook, and I was ready to faint away. Lieutenant Ball
seeing me, placed himself close beside me, took hold of my hand and
whispered, ‘Courage, my dear boy! you will recover in a minute or so; I
was just the same when I first went out in this way.’ It was as if an
angel spoke to me. From that moment I was as fearless and as forward
as the oldest of the boat’s crew. But I dare not think what would have
become of me, if, at that moment, he had scoffed and exposed me.”
Knowledge is the antidote to fear,--Knowledge, Use, and Reason, with
its higher aids. The child is as much in danger from a staircase,
or the fire-grate, or a bath-tub, or a cat, as the soldier from a
cannon or an ambush. Each surmounts the fear as fast as he precisely
understands the peril, and learns the means of resistance. Each is
liable to panic, which is, exactly, the terror of ignorance surrendered
to the imagination. Knowledge is the encourager, knowledge that takes
fear out of the heart, knowledge and use, which is knowledge in
practice. They can conquer who believe they can. It is he who has done
the deed once who does not shrink from attempting it again. It is the
groom who knows the jumping horse well who can safely ride him. It is
the veteran soldier, who, seeing the flash of the cannon, can step
aside from the path of the ball. Use makes a better soldier than the
most urgent considerations of duty,--familiarity with danger enabling
him to estimate the danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not
afflicted with imagination; knows practically Marshal Saxe’s rule, that
every soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead.
The sailor loses fear as fast as he acquires command of sails and
spars and steam; the frontiersman, when he has a perfect rifle and has
acquired a sure aim. To the sailor’s experience every new circumstance
suggests what he must do. The terrific chances which make the hours
and the minutes long to the passenger, he whiles away by incessant
application of expedients and repairs. To him a leak, a hurricane, or
a water-spout is so much work--no more. The hunter is not alarmed by
bears, catamounts, or wolves, nor the grazier by his bull, nor the
dog-breeder by his bloodhound, nor an Arab by the simoom, nor a farmer
by a fire in the woods. The forest on fire looks discouraging enough
to a citizen: the farmer is skilful to fight it. The neighbors run
together; with pine boughs they can mop out the flame, and, by raking
with the hoe a long but little trench, confine to a patch the fire
which would easily spread over a hundred acres.
In short, courage consists in equality to the problem before us. The
school-boy is daunted before his tutor by a question of arithmetic,
because he does not yet command the simple steps of the solution which
the boy beside him has mastered. These once seen, he is as cool as
Archimedes, and cheerily proceeds a step farther. Courage is equality
to the problem, in affairs, in science, in trade, in council, or in
action; consists in the conviction that the agents with whom you
contend are not superior in strength or resources or spirit to you.
The general must stimulate the mind of his soldiers to the perception
that they are men, and the enemy is no more. Knowledge, yes; for the
danger of dangers is illusion. The eye is easily daunted; and the
drums, flags, shining helmets, beard, and mustache of the soldier have
conquered you long before his sword or bayonet reaches you.
But we do not exhaust the subject in the slight analysis; we must not
forget the variety of temperaments, each of which qualifies this power
of resistance. It is observed that men with little imagination are
less fearful; they wait till they feel pain, whilst others of more
sensibility anticipate it, and suffer in the fear of the pang more
acutely than in the pang. ’Tis certain that the threat is sometimes
more formidable than the stroke, and ’tis possible that the beholders
suffer more keenly than the victims. Bodily pain is superficial, seated
usually in the skin and the extremities, for the sake of giving us
warning to put us on our guard; not in the vitals, where the rupture
that produces death is perhaps not felt, and the victim never knew what
hurt him. Pain is superficial, and therefore fear is. The torments
of martyrdoms are probably most keenly felt by the by-standers. The
torments are illusory. The first suffering is the last suffering, the
later hurts being lost on insensibility. Our affections and wishes for
the external welfare of the hero tumultuously rush to expression in
tears and outcries; but we, like him, subside into indifferency and
defiance, when we perceive how short is the longest arm of malice, how
serene is the sufferer.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup
or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms
that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of
every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to
do. It is directness,--the instant performing of that which he ought.
The thoughtful man says, you differ from me in opinion and methods; but
do you not see that I cannot think or act otherwise than I do? that my
way of living is organic? And to be really strong we must adhere to
our own means. On organic action all strength depends. Hear what women
say of doing a task by sheer force of will: it costs them a fit of
sickness. Plutarch relates that the Pythoness who tried to prophesy
without command in the Temple at Delphi, though she performed the
usual rites, and inhaled the air of the cavern standing on the tripod,
fell into convulsions, and died. Undoubtedly there is a temperamental
courage, a warlike blood, which loves a fight, does not feel itself
except in a quarrel, as one sees in wasps, or ants, or cocks, or cats.
The like vein appears in certain races of men and in individuals of
every race. In every school there are certain fighting boys; in every
society, the contradicting men; in every town, bravoes and bullies,
better or worse dressed, fancy-men, patrons of the cock-pit and the
ring. Courage is temperamental, scientific, ideal. Swedenborg has left
this record of his king: “Charles XII., of Sweden, did not know what
that was which others called fear, nor what that spurious valor and
daring that is excited by inebriating draughts, for he never tasted
any liquid but pure water. Of him we may say, that he led a life more
remote from death, and in fact lived more, than any other man.” It was
told of the Prince of Condé, “that there not being a more furious man
in the world, danger in fight never disturbs him more than just to make
him civil, and to command in words of great obligation to his officers
and men, and without any the least disturbance to his judgment or
spirit.” Each has his own courage, as his own talent; but the courage
of the tiger is one, and of the horse another. The dog that scorns to
fight, will fight for his master. The llama that will carry a load if
you caress him, will refuse food and die if he is scourged. The fury
of onset is one, and of calm endurance another. There is a courage of
the cabinet as well as a courage of the field; a courage of manners in
private assemblies, and another in public assemblies; a courage which
enables one man to speak masterly to a hostile company, whilst another
man who can easily face a cannon’s mouth dares not open his own.
There is a courage of a merchant in dealing with his trade, by which
dangerous turns of affairs are met and prevailed over. Merchants
recognize as much gallantry, well judged too, in the conduct of a wise