The Conquest of Fear Part 2

X

The deduction I make is this, that a law which was operative on such a scale before man had come into the world at all must be still more effective now that we can help to carry it out. The life-principle is not less ingenious than it ever was, while the conquest-principle must have widely expanded. It is an axiom in all progress that the more we conquer the more easily we conquer. We form a habit of conquering as insistent as any other habit. Victory becomes, to some degree, a state of mind. Knowing ourselves superior to the anxieties, troubles, and worries which obsess us, we _are_ superior. It is a question of att.i.tude in confronting them. It is more mental than it is material. To be in harmony with the life-principle and the conquest-principle is to be in harmony with power; and to be in harmony with power is to be strong as a matter of course.

The individual is thus at liberty to say: "The force which never failed before is not likely to fail in my case. The fertility of resource which circ.u.mvented every kind of obstacle to make me what I am--a vertebrate, breathing, walking, thinking ent.i.ty, capable of some creative expression of my own--will probably not fall short now that I have immediate use for it. Of what I get from the past, prehistoric and historic, perhaps the most subtle distillation is the fact that so far is the life-principle from balking at need, need is essential to its activity. Where there is no need it seems to be quiescent; where there is something to be met, contended with, and overcome, it is furiously 'on the job.' That life-principle is my principle. It is the seed from which I spring. It is my blood, my breath, my brain. I cannot cut myself off from it; it cannot cut itself off from me. Having formed the mastodon to meet one set of needs and the b.u.t.terfly to meet another, it will form, something to meet mine, even if something altogether new. The new--or what seems new to me--is apparently the medium in which it is most at home. It repeats itself never--not in two rosebuds, not in two snowflakes. Who am I that I should be overlooked by it, or miss being made the expression of its infinite energies?"

XI

What this reasoning did for me from the start was to give me a new att.i.tude toward the multifold activity we call life. I saw it as containing a principle that would work with me if I could work with it.

My working with it was the main point, since _it_ was working with me always. Exactly what that principle was I could not at the time have said; I merely recognised it as being there.

The method of working with it was simple in idea, however difficult in practice. It was a question of my own orientation. I had to get mentally into harmony with the people and conditions I found about me. I was not to distrust them; still less was I to run away from them. I was to make a parable of my childish experience with the Skye terrier, a.s.suming that life was organised to do me good. I remembered how many times the Bible begins some bit of pleading or injunction with the words, "Fear not."

Other similar appeals came back to me. "Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong I fear not."[1] "Quit yourselves like men; be strong."[2] "O man greatly beloved, fear not! Peace be unto thee! Be strong, yea, be Strong."[3] When, at some occasional test, dismay or self-pity took hold of me I formed a habit of saying to myself, in our expressive American idiom: "This is your special stunt. It's up to you to do this thing just as if you had all the facilities. Go at it boldly, and you'll find unexpected forces closing round you and Coming to your aid."

[1] The Book of Isaiah.

[2] First Book of Samuel.

[3] Book of Daniel.

Which is just what I did find. To an amazing degree people were friendly, while conditions became easier. Fear diminished because I had fewer things to be afraid of. Having fewer things to be afraid of my mind was clearer for work. Work becoming not only more of a resource but more remunerative as well, all life grew brighter. Fear was not overcome; I had only made a more or less hesitating stand against it; but even from doing that I got positive results.

CHAPTER II

THE LIFE-PRINCIPLE AND G.o.d

I

It is obvious that one could not dwell much on the power of the life-principle without coming sooner or later to the thought of G.o.d. As already hinted, I did not come to it at once because my conception of G.o.d made Him of so little use to me.

And yet, in popular phraseology, I had "served" G.o.d all my life. That is, brought up in an atmosphere in which the Church was a divinely inst.i.tuted system for utilising G.o.d, I served the system, without getting much beyond the surface plane of what were technically known as "services." When trial came such services offered me an anodyne, but not a cure.

II

The first suggestion, that my concept of G.o.d might not be sufficient to my needs came out of a conversation in New York. It was with a lady whom I met but that once, within a year or two after my experience at Versailles. I have forgotten how we chanced on the subject, but I remember that she asked me these questions:

"When you think of G.o.d _how_ do you think of Him? How do you picture Him? What does He seem like?"

Trying to reply I recognised a certain naivete, a certain childishness, in my words even as I uttered them. In my thoughts I saw G.o.d as three supernal men, seated on three supernal thrones, enshrined in some vague celestial portion of s.p.a.ce which I denominated Heaven. Between Him and me there was an incalculable distance which He could bridge but I could not. Always He had me at the disadvantage that He saw what I did, heard what I said, read what I thought, punis.h.i.+ng me for everything amiss, while I could reach Him only by the uncertain telephony of what I understood as prayer. Even then my telephone worked imperfectly. Either the help I implored wasn't good for me, or my voice couldn't soar to His throne.

The lady smiled, but said nothing. The smile was significant. It made me feel that a G.o.d who was no more than what I had described could hardly be the Universal Father, and set me to thinking on my own account.

III

I wish it were possible to speak of G.o.d without the implication of dealing with religion. By this I mean that I am anxious to keep religion out of this whole subject of the conquest of fear. The minute you touch on religion, as commonly understood, you reach the sectarian. The minute you reach the sectarian you start enmities. The minute you start enmities you get mental discords. And the minute you get mental discords no stand against fear is possible.

But I mean a little more than this. Man, as at present developed, has shown that he hardly knows what to do with religion, or where to put it in his life. This is especially true of the Caucasian, the least spiritually intelligent of all the great types of our race.

Fundamentally the white man is hostile to religion. He attacks it as a bull a red cloak, goring it, stamping on it, tearing it to shreds. With the Caucasian as he is this fury is instinctive. Recognising religion as the foe of the materialistic ideal he has made his own he does his best to render it ineffective.

Of this we need no better ill.u.s.tration than the state of what we conventionally know as Christendom. Christendom as we see it is a purely Caucasian phase of man's struggle upward, with Caucasian merits and Caucasian defects. Nowhere is its defectiveness more visible than in what the Caucasian has made of the teaching of Jesus Christ. It was probably a misfortune for the world that almost from the beginning that teaching pa.s.sed into Caucasian guardians.h.i.+p. I see in the New Testament no indication on the part of Our Lord and the Apostles of wis.h.i.+ng to separate themselves from Semitic co-operation. The former taught daily in the Temple; the latter, as they went about the world, made the synagogue the base of all their missions. The responsibility for the breach is not under discussion here. It is enough to note that it took place, and that Caucasian materialism was thus deprived of a counteragent in Hebrew spiritual wisdom. Had this corrective maintained its place it is possible that religion might now be a pervasive element in the Caucasian's life instead of being pigeon-holed.

IV

The Caucasian pigeon-holes G.o.d. Otherwise expressed, he keeps G.o.d in a specially labelled compartment of life, to be brought out for occasional use, and put back when the need is over. It is difficult to mention G.o.d to a Caucasian reader without inducing an artificial frame of mind. As there are people who put on for strangers and guests an affected, unnatural politeness different from their usual breezy spontaneity, so the Caucasian a.s.sumes at the thought of G.o.d a mental habit which can only be described as sanctimonious. G.o.d is not natural to the Caucasian; the Caucasian is not natural with G.o.d. The mere concept takes him into regions in which he feels uneasy. He may call his uneasiness reserve or reverence, or by some other dignified name; but at bottom it is neither more nor less than uneasiness. To minimise this distress he relegates G.o.d to special days, to special hours, to services and ceremonials. He can thus wear and bear his uncomfortable cloak of gravity for special times, after which he can be himself again. To appeal to G.o.d otherwise than according to the tacitly accepted protocol is to the average Caucasian either annoying or in bad form.

I should like, then, to dissociate the thought of G.o.d from the artificial, sanctimonious, preternaturally solemn connotations which the Name is certain to bring up. I want to speak of Him with the same kind of ease as of the life-principle. I repeat, that I never found Him of much use in allaying fear till I released Him from the Caucasian pigeon-hole to see Him, as it were, in the open. Once in the open I got rid, to some degree, of the Caucasian limitations of thinking along the lines of sect, just as in the infinitude of the air you can forget for a minute houses with rooms and walls. The discovery--that is, discovery for myself--that G.o.d is Universal, which is not so obvious as it sounds, was, I think, the first great step I made in finding that within that Universal fear should be impossible.

V

About the same time I chanced on a pa.s.sage written by Joseph Joubert, an eighteenth-century French Catholic, not so well known to the modern reader as he ought to be, which impressed me deeply.

"L'ame ne peut se mouvoir, s'eveiller, ouvrir les yeux, sans santir Dieu. On sent Dieu avec l'ame comme on sent l'air avec le corps.

Oseraije le dire? On connait Dieu facilement pourvu qu'on ne se contraigne pas a le definir--The soul cannot move, wake, or open the eyes without perceiving G.o.d. We perceive G.o.d through the soul as we feel air on the body. Dare I say it? We can know G.o.d easily so long as we do not feel it necessary to define Him."

I began to see that, like most Caucasian Christians, I had been laying too much stress on the definition. The Trinity had, so to speak, come between me and the G.o.dhead. I had, unconsciously, attached more importance to G.o.d's being Three than to His being G.o.d. Seeing Him as Three I instinctively saw Him as Three Persons. Seeing Him as Three Persons I did not reflect that the word Person as applied to G.o.d must be used in a sense wholly different from that in which we employ it with regard to men. To get into what I call the open I had to bring myself to understand that we cannot enclose the Infinite in a shape, or three shapes, resembling in any way the being with digestive organs, arms, and legs, which worked its way up from slime.

That is, in order to "dwell in the secret place of the Most High,"[4]

where one is immune from fear, I was obliged to give up the habit of embodying G.o.d in any form. I had to confess that what is meant by the Three Persons in One G.o.d I did not know. Furthermore, I saw no necessity for thinking that I knew, since such knowledge must transcend all scope of the human mind. The formula, if you must have a formula, is one thing; but the turning it into a statute of limitations and applying it to the Illimitable is another.

[4] The Book of Psalms.

To make my position clearer, and to avoid the subject of religion, let me add that, inferring from the Bible that there is a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost, I did not feel it imperative on my part to go beyond this use of terms. Merely to abstain from definition was like a load taken off my mind. How the Son was begotten of the Father, or the Holy Ghost proceeded from them both, or what eternal mysteries were symbolised in this purely human phraseology, were, it seemed to me, matters with which I need not concern myself, seeing that they pa.s.sed all my comprehension.

Not the Trinity should come first to powers so limited as mine--but G.o.d.

It dawned on me, too, that G.o.d need not necessarily be to me what He is to others, nor to others what He is to me. Of the Infinite the finite mind can only catch a finite glimpse. I see what I can see; another sees what he can see. The visions may be different, and yet each vision may be true. Just as two painters painting the same landscape will give dissimilar views of it, so two minds contemplating G.o.d will take of Him only what each is fitted to receive. Water poured into differently coloured gla.s.ses will take on the colour of the cup which it fills, even though it be the self-same water in them all. If I find G.o.d for myself I shall probably not behold in Him exactly what anyone else in the whole world or in all time has ever beheld in Him before.