I crossed a mesa and came to an abrupt drop-off—two hundred feet sheer. It astonished me. I hadn't experienced anything like this quiver of horror for years. All members and muscles bolted at the thought of advancing closer to the edge. I sat down to think it out. It never had occurred before that I wasn't my nervous system, and must not let it get me down.
The more I thought, the more I perceived that I must do the thing I dreaded so. In fact, I had told trusting young people that they were not their bodies, not their emotions, not even their minds—that these must be made to obey. Here I had a chance to prove if I were less in action than talk. I forced my fluttering young self to the edge.... Dizziness—wobbly limbs, fancied shoves from behind, the call of the huge shadowed space below, a queer sense of parting in mid-air, the body thumping down, another and liberated self gladly spurning the ground—all these symptoms of panic followed swiftly.
I held until calm came, and I then could study this little coil of forgotten fears—a civilised mess.... The weakness was absurdly easy to overcome after the will was once aroused. There's no end or limitation to will force when awakened. The greater the man, the more awe he has for this subject. There's a glow that follows conquest of any kind; the mere call of the will to action brings a sense of power in the heart. There is no way more speedily to dispel pain, anger, passion, fear, or any of these tentacles of personality—than to summon the power of will to instant action. The particular matter of this precipice showed me a trick about calling up the force—priceless to me afterward in bigger tests, and for opening the way of self-conquest to boys.
One must decide what one wants to do—then carry it out to the death. Discrimination, art, all culture and knowledge may be brought to bear in making the decision—but after that, it must be carried out—just that.
Fears belong to the abdomen. You can feel them there. They are quicker than thought. Perhaps you had a twinge of nerves over some sight or sound or odour, before your mind could tell you what you were afraid of.... I have often told the young ones here—listening a bit to my own voice—that there isn't anything living or dead, phantom, shell, or living soul, that has got the authority to make the spirit of man quail.
Courage is spirit.
Most people don't care to try to deal with it; they let it have its way.... Do you recall the fears of the dark room as a child—fear always stealing behind—upstairs alone, the rush to the light, almost screaming tension?... I heard a patter of steps the other evening and knew the whole story—a boy of seven. He had been sent upstairs without a light. I sent him back, told him to stay there until he got himself in hand—to stay in the dark and think the bogie down. He was well afterward.
I have known some under-fire work. A man soon gets himself in hand to look straight at a white-fringed trench. Fear of sharks furnished another test. From a child the deep-sea devourers had an exquisite fascination for me—to be cut in two under brine, white belly, backward mouth, black-rimmed, hairy pig eyes, the double-rows of teeth.... Pacific Islanders swim in the same harbour with fourteen-foot scavengers, careless of whole schools of monsters, yet scurry to their boats at the sight of one solitary, different fin. I had seen the so-called, man-eating brutes, "grey nurses," dim grey horrors with dull black spots. A well-fed imagination also came into play.
I went swimming in the surf with a splendid Australian chap—a doctor home from the trenches.... He left me back in the surf lines and started out to sea. I finished my swim decently in toward North America, and lay on the strand. From time to time off in the sunset I saw my friend's head.... I was glad to grab the beach-comber when he came in.