WHAT IS COURAGE?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18374, 14 April 1923, Page 13

WHAT IS COURAGE?

VALOUR OF IGNORANCE.

GAME HUNTER'S EXPERIENCE

SENSE OF DUAL MENTALITY.

Some interesting observations on the quality of courage- have been published recently in tho London Times. The discussion was opened with an article in the loading columns under the title, "The Valour of Ignorance." •... ■.-- ;

Referring to "a typo of physical courage that was a common experience of the war," the Times says:—Men were found in the field who, through some saving deficiency of imaginative power or some under-specialisatiom of the nervous system, were totally free from any thought of the dangers which they ran. Such men. if they survived at all, performed prodigies of valour. Where angels might well have feared to tread, they not only trod, but won ground and vantage for their comrades and their country. Their valour, however admirable, wag in a 'sense the valour of ignorance. They did not know what fear was.

A variant on such instinctive and unconscious courage is the recklessness of the man who, tally conscious of the dangers when he thinks of them in cold blood, is ridden in the hour of action by a daemonic energy which blinds him to all but the immediate purpose. , Very different from either type- is the finedrawn man •of imagination, who, gifted with the faculty of seeing the full possibilities of what he is called upon to undergo, and often in a white heat of physical fear in consequence, nevertheless is able to draw upon a hidden store of resolution and to go through the ordeal with outward calm., AH three types have produced their heroes. While secretly envying those whose valour is basjed either on ignorance of the danger or on temporary blindness to it, the .thinking world will probably give the palm to the man whose mind knows and whoso flesh shrinks but who none the less' endures. Facing the Unknown. In the sphere of physical danger that judgment is, no doubt just. But it no longer seems valid beyond question in another setting. To face the intangible unknown may well demand the highest brand of courage. Here and there in his life, and inevitably at its close, every man comes to the door to which he finds no key, the veil through which he may not see. His natural craving is to learn what lies beyond. To know even the worst seems more bearable than not to know at all. In that ;>ass the highest valour is to accept the necessity of ignorance, and to march on all the same. To many the longing to know is unendurable. The man who resists that temptation displays the supreme valour of ignorance, but in no ordinary or derogatory sense. For his valour is rather the valour of knowing that intellectual knowledge has its appointed bounds, and thatsome other guide is needed for the darkness into which his way must lie. ' This prompted a correspondent to relate personal experiences of tests of courage. He wrote:— have had experience in the matter of "funk" which has fallen to the lot of few people. I was badly mauled by a- lion, and only just escaped death from shock and wounds. My state of terror when convalescent made >. life hideous; danger from every source confronted me wherever I went. By refusing to cave in, and by resuming the chase at the first opportunity, I regained my self-confidence to the extent of being cool at the critical moment; but ho sooner was the excitement passed than imagination ran riot, almost to the point of delirium. . » " _ ■; x "The Hair of the Dog." During some half-a-dozen subsequent big-game shooting expeditions I lost no opportunity of hunting dangercfis game, but I experienced the utmost rcfief when I failed to find them. This tormenting state of mind \ was ■< cured v suddenly by "the hair of the dog that bit him." I was charged by a wounded lion. I knew I was going to be charged, and made up my mind that in no circumstances would I fire till the lion was so close as to make the shot a certainty. The lion fell dead 9Et. from me, and from that moment the joy *f the chase returned, and "let them all come" became the motto. ■ Then came the war. For years I had known terror unreasoning and invincible, and,l was afraid of what might happen if it returned. To my satisfaction, I found that the minor bombardments of 1915 affected me with a. sense of exhilaration only, and that crawling in "No Man's Land" by night had a constant fascination. ' . :■" '■ . ':'- ... Having earned the reputation of being without fear,' I was entrusted with a desperate mission, in which my: active career was brought to a close in the German wire. Now, I believe this freedom from fear to have been due not to "the valour of ignorance," for few know more of "funk" than I, but to a deadening of the function of fear by a sort of dual mentality. ... ' . I had the .feeling of being another person, watching someone else doing the job, and the fear of death and wounds gave place to a consuming curiosity ! as to what would happen next, just as one might watch, without being able to interfere, soldiers, unconscious of danger, walking to their deaths in an ambush. This state of mind had the advantage that, even when in the middle of the night, when everything went wrong, and I found myself "alone in the Bodies* wire, with a shattered knee and a piece of bomb in my lung, I found my brain in such perfect working order as to be,able success-, fully to plan my course of action without haste or fear, and with an entirely detached interest. ' '■••*. .' ', — A Woman's Experience. - ; J An "Irishwoman" wrote:—My experience of "Courage" \ tallies with that of a "Big-game Hunter," though not put to so high a test.' Three times in the last six months I had to face real dancer, twice being cross-examined with a revolver held against my shoulder and once hiding and escaping from a body of desperate men who would have, shot me out of hand if. they had caught me. Each time my ordinary self seemed an interested spectator willing and able to .give advice as to what to do or say, and I seemed to watch another part of myself, carrying it out. In fact, I seemed to have a thinking brain, planning ahead and without fear as if the bodily results were nothing to it; -and a brain for actio*, which also was without fear, partly because it believed implicitly that the orders eiven by the other brain were absolutely right, and partly because it and the body it was controlling seemed outside my real self, and so did not care what happened. I may say that in the middle of the last adventure I suddenly got "the wind up, and for a couple of minutes could neither think nor act, but only look wildly round to see if there was not some hole i could bolt into and hide for ever and ever. ■_