rror lies.

"Mother. Your forehead is cool, and your speech collected. Do you know
where you are?

"Boy. I know where I am, and I see things just as they are; you are
beside me, and upon the table there is a book which was written by a
Florentine. All this I see, and that there is no ground for being
afraid. I am, moreover, quite cool, and feel no pain--but--but--

"And then there was a burst of 'gemiti, sospiri ed alti guai.' Alas,
alas, poor child of clay! as the sparks fly upward, so wast thou born
to sorrow--Onward!"

That is a description of amazing power, but of course we are here
dealing with a definite brain-malady, in which the emotional centres
are directly affected. This in a lesser degree no doubt affects more
people than one would wish to think; but it may be considered a
physical malady of which fear is the symptom and not the cause.

Let us then frankly recognise the physical element in these irrational
terrors; and when one has once done this, a great burden is taken off
the mind, because one sees that such fear may be a real illusion, a
sort of ghastly mockery, which by directly affecting the delicate
machinery through which emotion is translated into act, may produce a
symptom of terror which is both causeless and baseless, and which may
imply neither a lack of courage nor self-control.

And, therefore, I feel, as against the Ascetic and the Stoic, that I am
meant to live and to taste the fulness of life; and that if I begin by
choosing the wrong joys, it is that I may learn their unreality. I have
learned already to compromise about many things, to be content with
getting much less than I desire, to acquiesce in missing many good
things altogether. But asceticism for the sake of prudence seems to me
a wilful error, as though a man practised starvation through uneasy
days, because of the chance that he might some day find himself with
not enough to eat. The only self-denial worth practising is the
self-denial that one admires, and that seems to one to be fine and
beautiful.

For we must emphatically remember that the saint is one who lives life
with high enjoyment, and with a vital zest; he chooses holiness because
of its irresistible beauty, and because of the appeal it makes to his
mind. He does not creep through life ashamed, depressed, anxious,
letting ordinary delights slip through his nerveless fingers; and if he
denies himself common pleasures, it is because, if indulged, they
thwart