Montaigne discusses the emotion called fear: what can it do to us and why, and how many different kinds of fear exist?
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'Sometimes fear adds wings to the heels. Sometimes it nails them to the ground' |
‘I was amazed, my hair stood
on end, and my voice stuck in my throat’ Virgil, Aeneid.
I can’t say what it is that
causes fear to have the impact on us that it does. It is a strange passion; the
physicians say there is no other that makes our judgment falter so much. I
myself have seen many become frantic from fear, and even in those that are very
calm normally, it causes a terrible confusion and shock. I’m not talking just
about the ‘vulgar sort’, to whom fear means their departed rising up from the
grave, or werewolves, or nightmares or phantoms, but also of soldiers, over
whom fear should have the least power. Fear can convert armed squadrons into
flocks of sheep, make their spears and swords into reeds and blades of grass,
their friends into their enemies, and the French flag into the Spanish!
When Rome was seized by Mr.
Bourbon, a man guarding the city was seized with such fear that he ran directly
into the enemy, thinking he was retreating into the city. Bourbon’s army
thought he was advancing to attack, and drew their weapons. When the man at
last realized his mistake, he retreated blindly, at full speed; and ended up in
the middle of an open field. He was unharmed, but another guard who reacted in
a similar way was not so lucky, and was killed. Another gentleman, in the same
battle, was so seized by fear that he sank to the floor, stone-dead, without
being wounded or hurt at all.
Sometimes fear adds wings
to the heels. Sometimes it nails them to the ground. The Emperor Theophilius, upon losing a battle in
Spain, was so astonished that he could not move, and one of his commanders had
to go up to him and tell him, ‘Sir, if you do not follow me, I will kill you;
for it is better you should lose your life than, by being taken, lose your
empire’. But that’s what fear can do; it can deprive us of all sense of duty or
honour.
The thing in this world that
I am most afraid of is fear, that feeling along, more than any other accident.
Fear can drive out all intelligence from the mind. Take the story of Pompey’s
friends: they had witnessed his horrible murder on their ship, but when they
saw enemy Egyptian ships coming towards them, they were possessed with such
great alarm that they could think of nothing but fleeing. Only when they had
reached safety did they grieve for their captain. The more potent passion
had, till then, suspended their tears.
Those that have been injured
in a skirmish, even if they are wounded and bloody, may be asked the next day
to attack once more, but those who have become truly afraid of their enemy can
never again be made to do so much as look him in the face.
Those that are in
immediate fear of losing their property, of banishment, or of slavery, live in
perpetual anguish and lose all appetite and all calm, whereas those that are
actually poor, slaves, or exiles often live their lives as happily as the next
man. And then those who, tired of being
perpetually in fear, have hanged or drowned or shot themselves lead us to
believe that fear can be more persistently intrusive, more unbearable, than
death itself.
The Greeks acknowledged
another kind of fear, different from those we have so far discussed: the fear
that surprises us without any visible cause. Whole nations and armies can be
struck from it, like an impulse from heaven. Diodorus Siculus, the Greek historian, calls this fear a
‘panic terror’ and relates the story of Carthage (ancient North-African city
near present-day Tunis), where this type of fear took root. Nothing was heard
in Carthage when this struck except for frightened voices and crying, and
residents ran out of their houses in alarm, and attacked, wounded, and killed
one another, as if they had been enemies that had come to attack the city.
Everything was in disorder and fury until, with prayers and sacrifices, they
appeased their gods.
