But it is, after all, the faculty of imagination which, more than all else, confuses the phenomena of courage and cowardice. A very imaginative child is almost sure to be reproached with timidity, while mere stolidity takes rank as courage. The bravest boy may sometimes be most afraid of the dark, or of ghosts, or of the great mysteries of storms and the sea. Even the mighty Charlemagne shuddered when the professed enchanter brought before him the vast forms of Dietrich and his Northern companions, on horseback. We once saw a party of boys tested by an alarm which appealed solely to the imagination. The only one among them who stood the test was the most cowardly of the group, who escaped the contagion through sheer lack of this faculty. Any imaginative person can occasionally test this on himself by sleeping in a large lonely house, or by bathing alone in some solitary place by the great ocean; there comes a thrill which is not born of terror, and the mere presence of a child breaks the spell,—though it would only enhance the actual danger, if danger there were.
This explains the effect of darkness on danger. "Let Ajax perish in the face of day." Who has not shuddered over the description of that Arkansas duel, fought by two naked combatants, with pistol and bowie-knife, in a dark room? One thrills to think of those first few moments of breathless, sightless, hopeless, hushed expectation, —then the confused encounter, the slippery floor, the invisible, ghastly terrors of that horrible chamber. Many a man would shrink from that, who would march coolly up to the cannon's mouth by daylight.
It is probably this mingling of imaginative excitement which makes the approach of peril often more terrible than its actual contact. "A true knight," said Sir Philip Sidney, "is fuller of gay bravery in the midst than at the beginning of danger." The boy Condé was reproached with trembling, in his first campaign. "My body trembles," said the hero, "with the actions my soul meditates." And it is said of Charles V., that he often trembled when arming for battle, but in the conflict was as cool as if it were impossible for an emperor to be killed.
These stray glimpses into the autobiography of heroism are of inestimable value, and they are scanty at best. It is said of Turenne, that he was once asked by M. de Lamoignon, at the dinner-table of the latter, if his courage was never shaken at the commencement of a battle? "Yes," said Turenne, "I sometimes undergo great nervous excitement; but there are in the army a great multitude of subaltern officers and soldiers who experience none whatever." This goes to illustrate the same point.
To give to any form of courage an available or working value, it is essential that it have two qualities, promptness and persistency. What Napoleon called "two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage" is rare. It requires great enthusiasm or great discipline to be proof against a surprise. It is said that Suwarrow, even in peace, always slept fully armed, boots and all. "When I was lazy," he said, "and wanted to enjoy a comfortable sleep, I usually took off one spur." In regard to persistency, history is full of instances of unexpected reverses and eleventh-hour triumphs. The battle of Marengo was considered hopeless, for the first half of the day, and a retreat was generally expected, on the part of the French; when Desaix, consulted by Bonaparte, looked at his watch and said,—"The battle is completely lost, but it is only two o'clock, and we shall have time to gain another." He then made his famous and fatal cavalry-charge, and won the field. It was from a noble appreciation of this quality of persistency, that, when the battle of Cannæ was lost, and Hannibal was measuring by bushels the rings of the fallen Roman knights, the Senate of Rome voted thanks to the defeated general, Consul Terentius Varro, for not having despaired of the republic.
Thus armed at all points, incapable of being either surprised or exhausted, courage achieves results which seem miraculous. It is an element of inspiration, something superadded and incalculable, when all the other forces are exhausted. When we consider how really formidable becomes the humblest of quadrupeds, cat or rat, when it grows mad and desperate and throws all personal fear behind, it is clear that there must be a reserved power in human daring which defies computation and equalizes the most fearful odds. Take one man, mad with excitement or intoxication, place him with his back to the wall, a knife in his hand, and the fire of utter frenzy in his eyes,—and who, among the thousand bystanders, dares make the first attempt to disarm him? Desperate courage makes one a majority. Baron Trenck nearly escaped from the fortress of Glatz at noonday, snatching a sword from an officer, passing all the sentinels with a sudden rush, and almost effecting his retreat to the mountains; "which incident will prove," he says, "that adventurous and even rash daring will render the most improbable undertakings successful, and that desperate attempts may often make a general more fortunate and famous than the wisest and best-concerted plans."
It is this miraculous quality which helps to explain the extraordinary victories of history: as where the army of Lucullus at Tigranocerta slew one hundred thousand barbarians with the loss of only a hundred men,—or where Cortés conquered Mexico with six hundred foot and sixteen horse. The astounding narratives in the chivalry romances, where the historian risks his Palmerin or Amadis as readily against twenty giants as one, secure of bringing him safely through,—or the corresponding modern marvels of Alexandre Dumas,—seem scarcely exaggerations of actual events. A Portuguese, at the siege of Goa, inserted a burning match in a cask of gunpowder, then grasped it in his arms, and, crying to his companions, "Stand aside, I bear my own and many men's lives," threw it among the enemy, of whom a hundred were killed by the explosion, the bearer being left unhurt. John Haring, on a Flemish dyke, held a thousand men at bay, saved his army, and finally escaped uninjured. And the motto of Bayard, Vires agrainis unus habet, was given him after singly defending a bridge against two hundred Spaniards. Such men appear to bear charmed lives, and to be identical with the laws of Fate. "What a soldier, what a Roman, was thy father, my young bride! How could they who never saw him have discoursed so rightly upon virtue?"
From popular want of faith in these infinite resources of daring, it is a common thing for persons of eminent courage to be stigmatized as rash. This has been strikingly the case, for instance, in modern times, with the Marquis of Wellesley 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.