ghtning lit the dormitory and showed him to White
white-faced and ablaze with excitement, sitting up with the bed-clothes
about him. "Oh WOW!" wailed the muffled voice of little Hopkins as the
thunder burst like a giant pistol overhead, and he buried his head still
deeper in the bedclothes and gave way to unappeasable grief.

Latham's voice came out of the darkness. "This ATHEISM that you and
Billy Prothero have brought into the school--"

He started violently at another vivid flash, and every one remained
silent, waiting for the thunder....

But White remembered no more of the controversy because he had made a
frightful discovery that filled and blocked his mind. Every time the
lightning flashed, there was a red light in Benham's eyes....

It was only three days after when Prothero discovered exactly the same
phenomenon in the School House boothole and talked of cats and cattle,
that White's confidence in their friend was partially restored....

4

"Fear, the First Limitation"--his title indicated the spirit of Benham's
opening book very clearly. His struggle with fear was the very beginning
of his soul's history. It continued to the end. He had hardly decided to
lead the noble life before he came bump against the fact that he was
a physical coward. He felt fear acutely. "Fear," he wrote, "is the
foremost and most persistent of the shepherding powers that keep us
in the safe fold, that drive us back to the beaten track and comfort
and--futility. The beginning of all aristocracy is the subjugation of
fear."

At first the struggle was so great that he hated fear without any
qualification; he wanted to abolish it altogether.

"When I was a boy," he writes, "I thought I would conquer fear for good
and all, and never more be troubled by it. But it is not to be done in
that way. One might as well dream of having dinner for the rest of one's
life. Each time and always I have found that it has to be conquered
afresh. To this day I fear, little things as well as big things. I have
to grapple with some little dread every day--urge myself.... Just as
I have to wash and shave myself every day.... I believe it is so with
every one, but it is difficult to be sure; few men who go into dangers
care very much to talk about fear...."

Later Benham found some excuses for fear, came even to dealings with
fear. He never, however, admits that this universal instinct is any
better than a kindly but unintelligent nurse from wh