Where No Fear Was by Arthur Christopher Benson
page 74 of 151 (49%)
page 74 of 151 (49%)
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he was familiar with the worst calamity of all, the causeless
melancholy which makes life weary and distasteful without ever removing the certainty that it is in itself desirable. We may see from all this that to attempt to seek a cure for fear in reason is foredoomed to failure, because fear lies in a region that is behind all reason. It exists in the depth of the spirit, as in the fallen gloom of the glimmering sea-deeps, and it can be touched by no activity of life and joy and sunlight on the surface, where the speeding sail moves past wind-swept headlands. We must follow it into those depths if we are to deal with it at all, and it must be vanquished in the region where it is born, and where it skulks unseen. XII TENNYSON, RUSKIN, CARLYLE There were three great men of the nineteenth century of whom we know more than we know of most men, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Tennyson, in whose lives fear was a prominent element. |
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