When the fear is allowed to take hold of one, however, and no effort is made to overcome it, it may prove quite seriously disturbing. The unaccustomed, however, means more than anything else in this matter. Sometimes, [{621}] indeed, people have a dread of the dark that seems to be inborn and that apparently cannot be overcome, that, like the fear of cats or of lightning, may be quite beyond rational control. Hobbes, the English philosopher, was so perturbed by darkness that he kept a light in his bedroom all night. I know this to be the case in a clergyman who had been quite undisturbed about darkness until he was awakened one night by a burglar. He demanded "who's there?" and received as answer without further parley a bullet that fortunately struck only the head of the bed, but so close that it singed him. The burglar escaped, but the clergyman was never afterwards able to sleep without a light. Rousseau, the French philosopher, was also much afraid of darkness. Ordinarily it is presumed that superstition has something to do with this fear and that the victim of it has ghosts in mind or at least dreads spirit manifestations. Neither Hobbes nor Rousseau, however, was likely to be timorous about ghostly visitants. It was with them a physical idiosyncrasy.
Associated with dread of darkness is the fear of finding some one in a dark room whose presence may startle us. Sir Samuel Romilly, famous for his labors for the reform of the English criminal law, and who must be considered one of the great humanitarians of the nineteenth century, had this dread to an acute degree. It went so far that whenever he slept in a strange place he carefully examined all the possible hiding-places in the room and in wardrobes or closets connected with it and, as a last precaution, never failed to look under the bed. He did this even when he was in his own house. [Footnote 49] This, however, is not so unusual, even among men, as might be thought. Most women who sleep alone want to investigate under the bed and in a hotel closets and wardrobes and even bureau drawers are likely to be examined. Habit in this regard may make one quite miserable and over-solicitous. I have had patients whose sleep was seriously disturbed by the remembrance that they had not looked under the bed and who feared to get up and light a light to do so lest there should be someone there. Indeed, the idea of putting their feet on the floor before the light had come to reassure them seemed quite out of the question.
[Footnote 49: Curiously enough. Sir Samuel Romilly, in spite of his dread of the dark, committed suicide and went prematurely into the darkness of the beyond, apparently without his usual tendency to precaution.]
Dreads Connected with Water.—Strange as it may seem, water constitutes a source of dread for some people. We have the records of it in the peculiarities of great men and it is not unusual to meet it in common life. Dropping water is a source of disturbance for most people. It is quite impossible for the majority of men and women to go on writing or reading with any comfort if water is dropping near them. Dropping water, when one is trying to go to sleep, is one of the worst of awakeners. The Chinese are said to put people to death in horrible torture by having a drop of water fall at regular intervals on their heads. Robert Boyle, the great father of chemistry and a very sensible man in many ways, is said to have been thrown into convulsions by the sound of water dropping from a faucet. The splashing of water on some people is a poignant source of torture. I have had a woman patient who could not go to services where there was a sprinkling of water, for it seriously disturbed her and gave her a sense of depression that would not be overcome for some time. Peter the Great, though the father of the [{622}] Russian navy, and though he passed many years of his life in Holland, used to shudder at the sight of water, and if, when out driving, his carriage passed near a stream or over a bridge, he would close the windows and be overtaken with terror that brought the perspiration out all over him.
Dread of Death.—The fear of death is one of the dreads that bothers young as well as old, and, curiously enough, as its inevitable approach becomes more certain, men are prone to dread it more. Long ago Sophocles said:
None cleave to life so fondly as the old,
—and this has remained true for all the centuries since. A young man is quite ready to throw his life away, but the old man hesitates and even in the midst of suffering, if it is not absolutely continuous, craves that death shall not come. Sophocles' great rival, the elder Greek dramatic poet AEschylus, had said:
How far from just the hate men bear to death
Which comes as safeguard against many ills,
—but his message was only for those with the character to face the worst. One may reason with the dread of death, however, and patients can be given motives from philosophy, literature, religion and experience that will help to relieve, though it will not entirely cure them. Shakespeare said in "Julius Caesar":
Cowards die many times before their deaths.
The valiant never taste of death but once,