"Wells, H G - The Research Magnificent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wells H G)

fear. He never, however, admits that this universal instinct is any
better than a kindly but unintelligent nurse from whose fostering
restraints it is man's duty to escape. Discretion, he declared,
must remain; a sense of proportion, an "adequacy of enterprise," but
the discretion of an aristocrat is in his head, a tactical detail,
it has nothing to do with this visceral sinking, this ebb in the
nerves. "From top to bottom, the whole spectrum of fear is bad,
from panic fear at one extremity down to that mere disinclination
for enterprise, that reluctance and indolence which is its lowest
phase. These are things of the beast, these are for creatures that
have a settled environment, a life history, that spin in a cage of
instincts. But man is a beast of that kind no longer, he has left
his habitat, he goes out to limitless living. . . ."

This idea of man going out into new things, leaving securities,
habits, customs, leaving his normal life altogether behind him,
underlay all Benham's aristocratic conceptions. And it was natural
that he should consider fear as entirely inconvenient, treat it
indeed with ingratitude, and dwell upon the immense liberations that
lie beyond for those who will force themselves through its
remonstrances. . . .

Benham confessed his liability to fear quite freely in these notes.
His fear of animals was ineradicable. He had had an overwhelming
dread of bears until he was twelve or thirteen, the child's
irrational dread of impossible bears, bears lurking under the bed
and in the evening shadows. He confesses that even up to manhood he
could not cross a field containing cattle without keeping a wary eye
upon them--his bull adventure rather increased than diminished that
disposition--he hated a strange dog at his heels and would manoeuvre
himself as soon as possible out of reach of the teeth or heels of a
horse. But the peculiar dread of his childhood was tigers. Some
gaping nursemaid confronted him suddenly with a tiger in a cage in
the menagerie annexe of a circus. "My small mind was overwhelmed."

"I had never thought," White read, "that a tiger was much larger
than a St. Bernard dog. . . . This great creature! . . . I could
not believe any hunter would attack such a monster except by stealth
and with weapons of enormous power. . . .

"He jerked himself to and fro across his cramped, rickety cage and
looked over my head with yellow eyes--at some phantom far away.
Every now and then he snarled. The contempt of his detestable
indifference sank deeper and deeper into my soul. I knew that were
the cage to vanish I should stand there motionless, his helpless
prey. I knew that were he at large in the same building with me I
should be too terror-stricken to escape him. At the foot of a
ladder leading clear to escape I should have awaited him paralyzed.
At last I gripped my nurse's hand. СTake me away,' I whispered.