o
dispel them. We cannot begin to do that while we are under the dominion
of a particular fear, for the strength of fear lies in its dominating
and nauseating quality, so that it gives us a dreary disrelish for
life; but if we really wish to combat it, we must beware of inactivity;
it may be comfortable, as life goes on, to cultivate a habit of mild
contemplation, but it is this very habit of mind which predisposes us
to anxiety when anxiety comes. Dr. Johnson pointed out how
comparatively rare it was for people who had manual labour to perform,
and whose work lay in the open air, to suffer from hypochondriacal
terrors. The truth is that we are made for labour, and we have by no
means got rid of the necessity for it. We have to pay a price for the
comforts of civilisation, and above all for the pleasures of
inactivity. It is astonishing how quickly a definite task which one has
to perform, whether one likes it or not, draws off a cloud of anxiety
from one's spirit. I am myself liable to attacks of depression, not
causeless depression, but a despondent exaggeration of small troubles.
Yet in times of full work, when meetings have to be attended, papers
tackled, engagements kept, I seldom find myself suffering from vague
anxieties. It is simply astonishing that one cannot learn more common
sense! I suppose that all people of anxious minds tend to find the
waking hour a trying one. The mind, refreshed by sleep, turns
sorrowfully to the task of surveying the difficulties which lie before
it. And yet a hundred times have I discovered that life, which seemed
at dawn nothing but a tangle of intolerable problems, has become at
noon a very bearable and even interesting affair; and one should thus
learn to appreciate the tonic value of occupation, and set oneself to
discern some pursuit, if we have no compulsory duties, which may set
the holy mill revolving, as Dante says; for it is the homely grumble of
the gear which distracts us from the other sort of grumbling, the
self-pitying frame of mind, which is the most fertile seed-plot of fear.

"How happy I was long ago; how little I guessed my happiness; how
little I knew all that lay before me; how sadly and strangely afflicted
I am!" These are the whispers of the evil demon of fearfulness; and
they can only be checked by the murmur of wholesome and homely voices.

The old motto says, "Orare est laborare," "prayer is work"--and it is
no less true that "laborare est orare," "work i