I am disposed to agree with Captain Dolbey that the man who knows no fear exists only in the imagination of the lady novelist or those who fight their battles at the base. He is invented because these naïve people suppose that a hero who is conscious of fear ceases to be a hero. But the truth surely is that there would be no merit in being brave if you had no fear. The real victory of the hero is not over outward circumstance, but over himself. One of the bravest men of our time is a man who was born timid and nervous and suffered tortures of , and who set himself to the deliberate conquest of his fears by challenging every danger that crossed his path and even going out of his way to meet the things he . By sheer will he beat down the enemy within, and to the external world he seemed like a man who knew no fear. But the very essence of his was that he had fought fear and won.  
It is time we got rid of the notion that there is anything discreditable in knowing fear. You might as well say that there is something discreditable in being to tell a falsehood. The is not in having no temptation to lie, but in being tempted to lie and yet telling the truth. And the more you are tempted the more splendid is the resistance. Without temptation you may make a plaster saint, but not a human hero. That is why the familiar story of Nelson when a boy—"Fear! grandmother. I never saw fear. What is it?"—is so false. Nelson did some of the bravest things ever done by man. They were brave to the of recklessness. The whole episode of the battle of Copenhagen was a breathless challenge to all the of . On the facts one would be compelled to admit that it was an act of uncalculating recklessness, except for one incident which flashes a sudden light on the mind of Nelson and reveals his astonishing command of himself and of circumstance. When the issue was trembling in the balance and every moment lost might mean disaster, he prepared his audacious message of terms to the Crown Prince . It was a magnificent piece of what, in these days, we should call . When he had written it, a wafer was given him, but he ordered a candle to be brought from the cockpit and sealed the letter with wax, a larger seal than he ordinarily used. "This," said he, "is no time to appear hurried and informal." With such self-possession could he on fear when he had a great end in view. But when there was nothing at stake he could be as fearful as anybody, as in the accident to his carriage, recorded, I think, in Southey's "Life of Nelson."
 
That incident of young Swinburne's climb of Culver Cliff, in the of Wight, expresses the common-sense of the matter very well. At the age of seventeen he wanted to be a officer, and he to climb Culver Cliff, which was believed to be impregnable, "as a chance of testing my nerve in the face of death which could not be surpassed." He performed the ............