not
so dreadful as they appear to be, and that the mistakes we have made
are not irreparable. But no one can remove danger or regret from us, or
relieve us of the necessity of facing our own troubles; the most that
they can do, indeed, is to encourage us to try again.

But we cannot hope to change the conditions of life; and one of its
conditions is, as I have said, that we cannot foresee dangers. No
matter how vividly they are described to us, no matter how eagerly
those who love us try to warn us of peril, we cannot escape. For that
is the essence of life--experience; and though we cannot rejoice when
we are in the grip of it, and when we cannot see what the end will be,
we can at least say to ourselves again and again, "this is at all
events reality--this is business!" for it is the moments of endurance
and energy and action which after all justify us in living, and not the
pleasant spaces where we saunter among flowers and sunlit woods. Those
are conceded to us, to tempt us to live, to make us desire to remain in
the world; and we need not be afraid to take them, to use them, to
enjoy them; because all things alike help to make us what we are.

II

SHAPES OF FEAR

Now as I look back a little, I see that some of my worst experiences
have not hurt or injured me at all. I do not claim more than my share
of troubles, but "I have had trouble enough for one," as Browning
says,--bereavements, disappointments, the illness of those I have
loved, illness of my own, quarrels, misunderstandings, enmities,
angers, disapprovals, losses; I have made bad mistakes, I have failed
in my duty, I have done many things that I regret, I have been
unreasonable, unkind, selfish. Many of these things have hurt and
wounded me, have brought me into sorrow, and even into despair. But I
do not feel that any of them have really injured me, and some of them
have already benefited me. I have learned to be a little more patient
and diligent, and I have discovered that there are certain things that
I must at all costs avoid.

But there is one thing which seems to me to have always and invariably
hampered and maimed me, whenever I have yielded to it, and I have often
yielded to it; and that is Fear. It can be called by many names, and
all of them ugly names--anxiety, timidity, moral cowardice. I can never
trace the smallest good in having given way to it. It has been from my
earliest days the Shadow; and I think it is the shadow in the