the arch-enemy of mankind, can be eliminated from the habit of thought—can be entirely eradicated; but not by repression.—Horace Fletcher.
IN setting about the overcoming of fear, we must first understand what it is we fear. It is always something that has not yet happened; that is, it is non-existent. Trouble is an imaginary something that we think of, and which frightens us with its possibility. Suppose you are afraid of yellow-fever; that is, you are afraid of the suffering caused by the disease, and especially of its probable fatal termination. As long as you have not the fever, it does not exist for you. If you have it, it has not killed you yet, and it may not do so. The most that can actually exist for you at any one time is pain and physical weakness. A state of terror aggravates every disagreeable feature of the illness and makes a fatal issue almost certain. It is because this disease is so feared that it is so often fatal, and even its contagion seems to be governed very largely by the fear people have of it, in spite of germs, and microscopic proofs of their part in the development of the disease. That is, the germs do not often affect a normal, healthy, fearless person.
During a yellow-fever epidemic at New Orleans, in the days before all the doctors had agreed that the disease is contagious, a young Northern teacher arrived at Natchez, Miss., in a high fever. Dr. Samuel Cartwright was called. The next morning he, according to Dr. William H. Holcomb, called the officers of the hotel and all the regular boarders into the parlor and made them a speech something like this:
“This young lady has yellow-fever. It is not contagious. None of you will take it from her; and if you will follow my advice, you will save this town from a panic, and a panic is the hot-bed of an epidemic. Say nothing about this case. Ignore it absolutely. Let the ladies of the house help nurse her, and take flowers and delicacies to her, and act altogether as if it were some every-day affair, unattended by danger. It will save her life, and perhaps, in the long run, many others.”
The advised course was agreed to by all but one woman, who proceeded to quarantine herself in the most remote room of the hotel. The young teacher got well, and no one in the house except this terror-stricken woman took yellow-fever. Even she recovered.
“By his great reputation and his strong magnetic power,” says Dr. Holcomb, “Dr. Cartwright dissipated the fears of those around him and prevented an epidemic. For this grand appreciation and successful application of a principle—the power of mind and thought over physical conditions, a power just dawning on the perception of the race—he deserves a nobler monument than any we have accorded heroes and statesmen.”
Most people are afraid to walk on a narrow place high above ground. If that same narrow space were marked on a broad walk, they could keep within it perfectly, and never think of losing balance. The only dangerous thing about walking in such a place is the fear of falling. Steady-headed people are simply fearless; they do not allow the thought of possible danger to overcome them, but keep their physical powers under perfect control. An acrobat has only to conquer fear to perform most of the feats that astound spectators. For some feats, special training and development of the muscles, or of the eye and judgment, are necessary, but a cool, fearless head is all that is necessary for most.
The images that frighten a child into convulsions in a dark room do not exist for the parent. When the child is convinced that the ghosts and monsters are not real, the terror ceases. A city child who had never walked on the grass showed terror when first placed on yielding turf, and walked as gingerly as if it had been hot iron. There was nothing to be afraid of, but the child thought there was. Once the belief of danger was eradicated, the fear was gone. So it would be with grown-up fears if habit, race-thought, and wrong early training did not set us in grooves that are hard to get out of. If we could but once rise to the conviction that fear is but an image of the mind, and that it has no existence except in our consciousness, and no power to harm, except that which we give it, what a boon it would be to the human race!
Take a very common fear—that of losing one’s position. The people who make their lives miserable worrying about this possible misfortune have not yet been discharged. As long as they have not, they are suffering nothing, there is no danger of want. The present situation is therefore satisfactory. If discharge comes, it is then too late to worry about its coming, and all previous worrying would have been pure waste, doing no good, but rather weakening one for the necessary struggle to get placed again. The thing to worry about then will be that another place will not be found. If a place is found, all the worrying will again be useless. Under no circumstances can the worrying be justified by the situation at any particular time. Its object is always an imaginary situation of the future.
In overcoming your various fears, follow each one out to its logical conclusion thus, and convince yourself that at the present moment the things you fear do not exist save in your imagination. Whether they ever come to pass in the future or not, your fear is a waste of time, energy, and actual bodily and mental strength. Quit worrying just as you would quit eating or drinking something you felt sure had caused you pain in the past. If you must worry about something, worry about the terrible effects of worrying; it may help you to a cure.
Merely convincing yourself that what you fear is imaginary will not suffice until you have trained your mind to throw off suggestions of fear, and to combat all thought that leads to it. This means constant watchfulness and alert mental effort. When the thoughts of foreboding, or worry, begin to suggest themselves, not only do not indulge them, and let them grow big and black, but change your thought, think of all that tends in the opposite direction. If the fear is of personal failure, instead of thinking how little and weak you are, how ill-prepared for the great task, and how sure you are to fail, think how strong and competent you are, how you have done similar tasks, and how you are going to utilize all your past experience and rise to this present occasion, do the task triumphantly, and be ready for a bigger one. It is such an attitude as this, whether consciously assumed or not, that carries men to higher and yet higher places.
This same principle of crowding out the fear-thought by a buoyant, hopeful, confident thought can be applied to all the many kinds of fear that daily and hourly beset us. At first it will be hard to change the current of thought, to cease to dwell on sombre and depressing things. An aid in the process is often advisable. A sudden change of work to something requiring concentration of mind will often act as a switch. Recalling some humorous or pleasant incident will often “drive dull care away,” as the school song has it. A very interesting or very humorous book is pretty sure to work well if one really reads with attention.
In the last analysis, all fear resolves itself into fear of death, and writers on the means of getting rid of fear dwell especially on this basic form. Death will perhaps always be a mystery, but whatever view of it be taken, a logical analysis will remove the terror of it, especially that form which makes lifeless human flesh a repulsive and terrible object. We think the feeling that Hindoos have about the flesh of animals is very queer, since to us this is most appetizing food. Our own fear of a human corpse is just as foolish as the Hindoo fear, and if we would rid ourselves of fear, we must teach ourselves so. Familiarity with the thing feared is always advisable, and frequently is quite sufficient. We know this to be true with horses, and have only to apply the matter to our own foolish fears. Horace Fletcher advises even a course in a hospital dissecting-room if nothing else will dissipate the unreasoning fear of a dead body.
“Whatever may lie beyond the tomb,” says W. E. H. Lecky, “the tomb itself is nothing to us. The narrow prison-house, the gloomy pomp, the hideousness of decay, are known to the living, and the living alone. By a too common illusion of the imagination, men picture themselves as consciously dead—going through the process of corruption, and aware of it; imprisoned, with a knowledge of the fact, in the most hideous of dungeons. Endeavor earnestly to erase this illusion from your mind; for it lies at the root of the fear of death, and it is one of the worst sides of mediaeval and much modern art that it tends to strengthen it. Nothing, if we truly realize it, is less real than the grave. We should be no more concerned with the after-fate of our discarded bodies than
