Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/744

736 and Sir Charles Napier. When the Duke of Wellington was in the Peninsula in 1810, the City of London addressed the throne, protesting against the bestowal of "honorable distinctions upon a general who had thus far exhibited, with equal rashness and ostentation, nothing but an useless valor."

But if bravery is liable to exist in excess, on the one side, it is a comfort to think that it is capable of cultivation, where deficient. There may be a few persons born absolutely without the power of courage, as without the susceptibility to music,—but very few; and, no doubt, the elements of daring, like those of musical perception, can be developed in almost all. Once rouse the enthusiasm of the will, and courage can be systematically disciplined. Emerson's maxim gives the best regimen: "Always do what you are afraid to do." If your lot is laid amid scenes of peace, then carry the maxim into the arts of peace. Are you afraid to swim that river? then swim it. Are you afraid to leap that fence? then leap it. Do you shrink from the dizzy height of yonder magnificent pine? then climb it, and "throw down the top," as they do in the forests of Maine. Goethe cured himself of dizziness by ascending the lofty stagings of the Frankfort carpenters. Nothing is insignificant that is great enough to alarm you. If you cannot think of a grizzly bear without a shudder, then it is almost worth your while to travel to the Rocky Mountains in order to encounter the reality. It is said that Van Amburgh attributed all his power over animals to the similar rule given him by his mother in his boyhood: "If anything frightens you, walk up and face it." Applying this maxim boldly, he soon satisfied himself that man possessed a natural power of control over all animals, if he dared to exercise it. He said that every animal divined by unerring instinct the existence of fear in his ruler, and a moment's indecision might cost one's life. On being asked, what he should do, if he found himself in the desert, face to face with a lion, he answered, "If I wished for certain death, I should turn and run away."

Physical courage may be educated; but it must be trained for its own sake. We say again, it must not be left to moral courage to include it, for the two faculties have different elements,—and what God has joined, human inconsistency may put asunder. The disjunction is easy to explain. Many men, when committed on the right side of any question, get credit for a "moral courage," which is, in their case, only an intense egotism, isolating them from all demand for human sympathy. In the best cause, they prefer to belong to a party conveniently small, and, on the slightest indications of popular approbation, begin to suspect themselves of compromise. The abstract martyrdom of unpopularity is therefore clear gain to them; but when it comes to the rack and the thumbscrew, the revolver and the bowie-knife, the same habitual egotism makes them cowards. These men are annoying in themselves, and still worse because they throw discredit on the noble and unselfish reformers with whom they are identified in position. But even among this higher class there are differences of temperament, and it costs one man an effort to face the brute argument of the slung-shot, while another's fortitude is not seriously tested till it comes to facing the newspaper editors.

We have given but a few aspects of a rich and endless theme, and have depicted these more by examples than analysis, mindful of the saying of Sidney, that Alexander received more bravery of mind by the example of Achilles than by hearing the definition of fortitude. If we have seemed to draw illustrations too profusely from the records of battles, it is to be remembered, that, even if war be not the best nurse of heroisms, it is their best historian. The chase, for instance, though perhaps as prolific in deeds of daring as the camp, has found few Cummings and Gerards for annalists, and the more trivial aim of the pursuit diminishes the permanence of its records. The