"These things," Benham had written, "are much more horrible when one
considers them from the point of view of an easy-chair";--White gave
an assenting nod--"ARE THEY REALLY HORRIBLE AT ALL? Is it possible
that these charred and slashed and splintered persons, those Indians
hanging from hooks, those walkers in the fiery furnace, have had
glimpses through great windows that were worth the price they paid
for them? Haven't we allowed those checks and barriers that are so
important a restraint upon childish enterprise, to creep up into and
distress and distort adult life? . . .

"The modern world thinks too much as though painlessness and freedom
from danger were ultimate ends. It is fear-haunted, it is troubled
by the thoughts of pain and death, which it has never met except as
well-guarded children meet these things, in exaggerated and
untestable forms, in the menagerie or in nightmares. And so it
thinks the discovery of anaesthetics the crowning triumph of
civilization, and cosiness and innocent amusement, those ideals of
the nursery, the whole purpose of mankind. . . ."

"Mm," said White, and pressed his lips together and knotted his
brows and shook his head.



10


But the bulk of Benham's discussion of fear was not concerned with
this perverse and overstrained suggestion of pleasure reached