However we may reason, however we may decry these views, as savage, impracticable, unnatural and undesirable, the fact is, that we all feel alike upon this subject. The thousands in a Roman amphitheatre only evinced a trait, that belongs to our common nature, when they instantly, and without consulting each other, gave the signal to save that gladiator, who most clearly manifested cool self-possession and contempt of death. After witnessing the execution of a criminal, who shows courage, the spectators go away describing, with animated gesture, and in terms of admiration, the fearlessness of the fellow the moment before his death. We all speak with unmingled satisfaction of the circumstance, in the death of our friends, that they departed in the conscious dignity of self-possession and hope. All readers are moved with one sensation, as they read the record of the noble trait in the character of Cæsar, gracefully folding himself in his mantle, after he had received so many mortal thrusts. Few of us hear unmoved of the old English patriot, who requested the executioner to support him up the steps to the scaffold, adding that he would shift for himself to get down; or of the other, who cried, as he stooped his head to the block, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori! If I recollect, it is Silliman, who gives the affecting notice of the last hours of the duke of Richmond, the late governor general of Canada. Invested with all conceivable circumstances to render life desirable, he was bitten by a favorite dog in a rabid state; and died, in the most excruciating tortures, of the terrible hydrophobia. When the horrible paroxysm was felt by him to be approaching, he was accustomed to nerve his sinking courage by these words; ‘Henry, remember, that none of your ancestors were cowards.’ I give the trait from recollection, but have heard substantially the same account from other sources. This is the secret of the perverse general admiration of warriors, and heroes, and great generals. It is this principle in its blindness, which finds a niche of favor in so many hearts for duellists. In a word, intrepidity, deny it who may, is the trait which finds more universal favor with human nature in general than any other. Why? Because we are weak and frail beings, exposed to innumerable pains and dangers; and the quality we most frequently need, is courage. Without it life is a living death, a long agony of fear. With it, we die but once, enduring at the most but a momentary pang, never anticipated, never embittering a moment in advance with imaginary suffering.
We have no hesitation in affirming, that it would be no more difficult to educate the coming generation of civilized people to this spirit, than it is to impart it to the whole race of males among the red men. However inferior we may count these people, in comparison with ourselves in other respects, they have at least one manifest advantage over us; they never torment themselves, because they know they must die.
But we are told that the actual possession of this spirit would produce such a recklessness of life, that the great ends of Providence would be defeated; and people would expose themselves to death with so little concern, that the race would waste away and become extinct. We never need combat a theory, an abstract opinion, when the case can be settled by a fact. Is it so with the warriors of the red men? On the contrary, can another people be found so wary, so adroit to evade, or resist danger, so fertile in expedients to save life? The coward of their number meets the death he would fly; and the intrepid warrior puts forth all the resources of his instinctive sagacity, all his keen and practised discernment, to discover the best means of evasion. If he must meet that death, which his skill cannot evade, nor his powers resist, he instantly settles down upon the resource of his invincible heroism of endurance.
In fact, one of the direct fruits of the intrepidity we would wish to see universal, is, that it will give its possessor all possible chances for preserving health and life. It saves him from the influence of fear, a passion among the most debilitating, and adverse to life, of any to which our nature is subject. Braced by his courage, he passes untouched amidst a contagious epidemic, to which the timid and apprehensive nature falls a victim. In danger it gives him coolness and self-command, to discover, and avail himself of all his chances of wise resistance, or probable escape. In sickness, he has all the aids to recover, which nature allows, in being delivered from the most dangerous symptom in innumerable maladies, the debilitating persuasion of the patient, that he shall not rise from his sickness. In a word, the direct reverse of the charge is the fact. The wise and enlightened fearlessness, which I consider it so important to acquire, is in every way as much the preserver of life, as it is indispensable to happiness; as cowardice proverbially runs in the face of the hideous monster that it creates.
5. The fact, that an evil is felt to be alleviated, which is shared in common with all around us, has been generally recognised, though this perverted sympathy has been traced to the basest selfishness, by a humiliating analysis of our nature, which I have neither space nor inclination to develope. We all know, that the same person, who is most beneficent, most active in his benevolence, and large in his wishes to do good, would shrink from a great calamity, which he saw himself destined to encounter, for the first and the last among his whole race. But inform him, that by an impartial award he shares it in common with all his kind, and you reconcile him at once to his lot. Whether the spirit of his resignation in this case be pure, or polluted in its origin, it is not my present purpose to inquire. It is sufficient to be assured, that there is such a feeling deeply inherent in human nature. The suffering patient, as he lays himself down to part from all friends, to be severed from all ties, to see the green earth, the bright sun, and the visible heavens no more, and to be conscious, that the everlasting circle of ages will continue its revolutions without ever bringing him back to the forsaken scene, cannot repine, that he has been put upon this bitter trial alone. He must be deeply conscious, view it in what aspect he may, that it presents no new harshness nor horror to him. Of all the countless millions, that have passed away, and been replaced by others, like the vernal leaves, death has stood before every solitary individual of the mighty mass, the same phantom king of terrors. Each has contemplated the same inexorable, irreversible award, been held in the same suspense of hopes, and fears, and compelled to endure the same struggles. Looking upon the immense mortal drama of ages, the actors seem slowly and imperceptibly to enter, and depart from the scene. But in the lapse of one short age, the hopes, fears, loves and hatreds of all the countless millions have vanished, to be replaced by those of another generation. The heart swells at the recollection how much each of these mortals must have endured, in this stern and inevitable encounter, as measured by our own suffering in the same case. It is only necessary for the patient to extend his vision a few years in advance of his own decease; and his friends, his children, his visitants, all that surround him, will in their turn recline on the same bed. Who cannot feel the palpable folly of repining at an evil shared with all, that have been, are, or will be!
‘Not to thy eternal resting place,
Shalt thou retire alone: * *
**Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings,