Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/798

778 it important, to give it relief, vividness, and force. Suppose one person should warn another that he is going to prick him with a pin at a particular point in the skin. For some minutes that pin-prick will have a menacing presence. All the force of the victim's attention will be borne upon it, though it is really inoffensive, and the thought will finally become almost painful. If the same prick had surprised him without his having had time to think about it and concentrated attention upon the insignificant wound, it would probably have passed off unnoticed. But by virtue of attention it has become a great matter. So we may prepare for something we dread, and the long preparation will contribute to double our fear of it. Thus attention is, as well as imagination, an excitatory force, and may render extremely sensitive to fear persons who, without it, might have been bold to insolence. It is true that attention is voluntary to a certain point. We may, it is said, turn away our thoughts to some other subject. But attention can be commanded only when indifferent matters are in question. Violent imaginings and strong emotions command it and are not commanded by it. Thus, from whatever side we regard the problem, we shall find that fear, whether as a sensation or as a conscious emotion, is dependent on our individual excitability and is quite independent of the will. Yet the will may intervene; but, however powerful we may suppose it to be, it has no effect on our feelings, but only on our acts.

The soldier who hears the bullets whistling around him can not control his emotion, which is legitimate; but, by an effort of the will, he can keep from running away and continue to march on. Perhaps a still stronger effort of the will would be required to arrest the psychical reflex movement of dodging, but that is also possible. The will is, therefore, equivalent to a power of inhibition. The power is variable among different persons, and this variability occasions the different degrees of courage.

We have here, apparently, an antagonism between two contrary forces: on one side is the emotion, which incites to certain acts; on the other side is the will, or inhibitory power, which prevents those acts. It seems that when we are stirred by an emotion it can be best opposed by an inverse emotion. The soldier in battle is sustained against his fear by the honor of the flag, the sense of personal dignity, the presence of his chiefs and comrades, ideas of duty and discipline, fear of chastisement, love of country, the hope of reward, and other strong motives. But the soldier's will and the factors that re-enforce it have no control over his organic movements. Though he can resist the inclination to run away and to dodge, he can not hinder himself from trembling and growing pale, or prevent the violent beatings of his heart and the cold sweat. It would therefore be unjust to reproach a person who has passed through a great danger for having become pallid and quaked. Turenne quaked, and he was not a coward.