The Research Magnificent | Page 7

time the lightning flashed, there was a
red light in Benham's eyes. . . .
It was only three days after when Prothero discovered exactly the same phenomenon in
the School House boothole and talked of cats and cattle, that White's confidence in their
friend was partially restored. . . .

4
"Fear, the First Limitation"--his title indicated the spirit of Benham's opening book very
clearly. His struggle with fear was the very beginning of his soul's history. It continued to
the end. He had hardly decided to lead the noble life before he came bump against the
fact that he was a physical coward. He felt fear acutely. "Fear," he wrote, "is the foremost
and most persistent of the shepherding powers that keep us in the safe fold, that drive us
back to the beaten track and comfort and--futility. The beginning of all aristocracy is the
subjugation of fear."
At first the struggle was so great that he hated fear without any qualification; he wanted
to abolish it altogether.

"When I was a boy," he writes, "I thought I would conquer fear for good and all, and
never more be troubled by it. But it is not to be done in that way. One might as well
dream of having dinner for the rest of one's life. Each time and always I have found that it
has to be conquered afresh. To this day I fear, little things as well as big things. I have to
grapple with some little dread every day-- urge myself. . . . Just as I have to wash and
shave myself every day. . . . I believe it is so with every one, but it is difficult to be sure;
few men who go into dangers care very much to talk about fear. . . ."
Later Benham found some excuses for fear, came even to dealings with fear. He never,
however, admits that this universal instinct is any better than a kindly but unintelligent
nurse from whose fostering restraints it is man's duty to escape. Discretion, he declared,
must remain; a sense of proportion, an "adequacy of enterprise," but the discretion of an
aristocrat is in his head, a tactical detail, it has nothing to do with this visceral sinking,
this ebb in the nerves. "From top to bottom, the whole spectrum of fear is bad, from panic
fear at one extremity down to that mere disinclination for enterprise, that reluctance and
indolence which is its lowest phase. These are things of the beast, these are for creatures
that have a settled environment, a life history, that spin in a cage of instincts. But man is a
beast of that kind no longer, he has left his habitat, he goes out to limitless living. . . ."
This idea of man going out into new things, leaving securities, habits, customs, leaving
his normal life altogether behind him, underlay all Benham's aristocratic conceptions.
And it was natural that he should consider fear as entirely inconvenient, treat it indeed
with ingratitude, and dwell upon the immense liberations that lie beyond for those who
will force themselves through its remonstrances. . . .
Benham confessed his liability to fear quite freely in these notes. His fear of animals was
ineradicable. He had had an overwhelming dread of bears until he was twelve or thirteen,
the child's irrational dread of impossible bears, bears lurking under the bed and in the
evening shadows. He confesses that even up to manhood he could not cross a field
containing cattle without keeping a wary eye upon them--his bull adventure rather
increased than diminished that disposition--he hated a strange dog at his heels and would
manoeuvre himself as soon as possible out of reach of the teeth or heels of a horse. But
the peculiar dread of his childhood was tigers. Some gaping nursemaid confronted him
suddenly with a tiger in a cage in the menagerie annexe of a circus. "My small mind was
overwhelmed."
"I had never thought," White read, "that a tiger was much larger than a St. Bernard
dog. . . . This great creature! . . . I could not believe any hunter would attack such a
monster except by stealth and with weapons of enormous power. . . .
"He jerked himself to and fro across his cramped, rickety cage and looked over my head
with yellow eyes--at some phantom far away. Every now and then he snarled. The
contempt of his detestable indifference sank deeper and deeper into my soul. I knew that
were the cage to vanish I should stand there motionless, his helpless prey. I knew that
were he at large in the same building with me I should be too terror-stricken to escape
him. At the foot of a ladder