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.
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