y goal before us or not;
when we fear, we are like the butterfly that flutters anxiously away
from the boy who pursues it, who means out of mere wantonness to strike
it down tattered and bruised among the grass-stems.

IV

VULNERABILITY

There have been many attempts in the history of mankind to escape from
the dominion of fear; the essence of fear, that which prompts it, is
the consciousness of our vulnerability. What we all dread is the
disease or the accident that may disable us, the loss of money or
credit, the death of those whom we love and whose love makes the
sunshine of our life, the anger and hostility and displeasure and scorn
and ill-usage of those about us. These are the definite things which
the anxious mind forecasts, and upon which it mournfully dwells.

The object then in the minds of the philosophers or teachers who would
fain relieve the unhappiness of the world, has been always to suggest
ways in which this vulnerability may be lessened; and thus their object
has been to disengage as far as possible the hopes and affections of
men from things which must always be fleeting. That is the principle
which lies behind all asceticism, that, if one can be indifferent to
wealth and comfort and popularity, one has a better chance of serenity.
The essence of that teaching is not that pleasant things are not
desirable, but that one is more miserable if one loses them than if one
never cares for them at all. The ascetic trains himself to be
indifferent about food and drink and the apparatus of life; he aims at
celibacy partly because love itself is an overmastering passion, and
partly because he cannot bear to engage himself with human affections,
the loss of which may give him pain. There is, of course, a deeper
strain in asceticism than this, which is a suspicious mistrust of all
physical joys and a sense of their baseness; but that is in itself an
artistic preference of mental and spiritual joys, and a defiance to
everything which may impair or invade them.

The Stoic imperturbability is an attempt to take a further step; not to
fly from life, but to mingle with it, and yet to grow to be not
dependent on it. The Stoic ideal was a high one, to cultivate a
firmness of mind that was on the one hand not to be dismayed by pain or
suffering, and on the other to use life so temperately and judiciously
as not to form habits of indulgence which it would be painful to
discontinue. The weakness of Stoicism