Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus FearthoughtFletcher, Horace
Philosophy
Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus Fearthought
Fletcher, Horace
Fear; Happiness
The experience of Mr. George Kennan, the Siberian traveler, and
brilliant writer and lecturer, relative to fear and its cure, is
singularly like my own, and was related to me in an exchange of
personal confidences, last year.
The _Atlantic Monthly_ for May, 1897, contains an excellent account
of Mr. Kennan's case, and I am permitted by the publishers, Messrs.
Houghton, Mifflin & Company, to reprint it; which I have done under
Appendix "B."
Fear is rarely general as related to different causes for fearthought.
I have been told of a case of specific fear that is interesting because
of its unreasonableness. It was the case of a filibuster who had been
on several raids where death was the almost certain penalty for being
caught, and where the chances of being caught were almost certain.
On the frontier our subject was known as a dare-devil, not afraid
of anything, and yet he was always in mortal terror of a dark room.
In infancy he had been scared into obedience by tales of goblins in
the dark, and he had never rid himself of their influence. Anything
on earth he could see held no terror for him, but he could not see
the phantoms he created in the dark, and was therefore a slave to
fear of them. It is probable that the bravado of his active life was
partly caused by the desire to "average up" on courage, and, if so,
the baleful effects of fear in this case were very far-reaching and
destructive to the peace of society.
General experience teaches that whenever you find a bully, you find a
yellow streak of cowardice somewhere in his composition; and, more than
probable, bravado is assumed by him, in order to "square" himself with
his own self-respect.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] Two other brochures by Dr. Holcomb are published by the Purdy
Company. They are "Condensed Thoughts about Christian Science" and "The
Power of Thought in the Production and Cure of Disease."
HOW TO ELIMINATE FEAR.
It has been observed that the rooting out of any particular phase
of fearthought, weakens the strength of all of the other phases.
For instance, suppression of _anger_ and _worry_ tends to suppress
all suspicion, and even fear itself, while special attack upon the
fearthought called envy will perceptibly diminish the tendency to
jealousy and avarice. There seems to be such close relationship between
all of the forms of fearthought, that whatever affects one, affects all.
Fear of death undoubtedly underlies all fearthought. Fear of poverty,
fear of accident, fear of sickness, all reach further than these
calamities, to the possibility of death resulting from them. In
this way we can trace all expressions of fear, either directly or
indirectly, through the different forms of selfness, to fearthought of
death.
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