Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus FearthoughtFletcher, Horace
Philosophy
Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus Fearthought
Fletcher, Horace
Fear; Happiness
We observe in this list that fear not only affects the mind and
the nervous and muscular tissues, but the molecular chemical
transformations of the organic network, even to the skin, the hair, and
the teeth. This might be expected of a passion which disturbs the whole
mind, which is represented or externalized in the whole body.
Dr. Tuke reiterates the fact which has been so frequently observed,
that epidemics owe a great deal of their rapid extension and violence
to the panic of fear which exists among the people. When yellow fever,
cholera, smallpox, diphtheria, and other malignant diseases obtain a
footing in a community, hundreds and thousands of people fall victims
to their own mental conditions, which invite the attack and insure its
fatality. When the disease was new and strange, as the yellow fever was
to the interior in its visitation in 1878, when the doctors were not
familiar with it, the nurses not trained to it, the people, having no
confidence in its management, lost hope, their fears became excessive,
and consequent mortality was frightful.
How does fear operate upon the body to produce sickness? By paralyzing
the nerve centres, especially those of the vasomotor nerves, thus
producing not only muscular relaxation, but capillary congestions of
all kinds. This condition of the system invites attack, and there is no
resilience, or power of resistance. The gates of the citadel have been
opened from within, and the enemy may enter at any point.
What determines the specific nature of the disease which attacks a
person thus prostrated by fear? Men are frequently prostrated by fear
in storms or fire or earthquakes or accidents, and no disease results.
It is because they have been not thinking and brooding over any special
morbid conditions. But in an epidemic, say of yellow fever, the
subjects connected with the disease are strongly pictured on the mind.
They are talked of, read about, discussed and written about, until the
mind is full of images of fever, delirium, black vomit, jaundice,
death, funerals, etc. When such is the case, no microbes or bacteria
are needed to produce an outburst of yellow fever. The whole mass of
horrors already stamped upon the mind is simply reflected and repeated
in the body.
"As a man thinketh, so is he," said Solomon. Thoughts become things,
apprehensions take form and substance, and lo! the disease. In the
height of his happiness and prosperity, Job permitted himself to brood
in silent fear over the possibility of losses and misfortunes, and he
had at last to exclaim, "The thing which I greatly feared has come upon
me."
Sudden and great fears are not frequent. The fears of every day, the
constant apprehensions and anxieties of life, which are really fears
of impending evil, prey upon our vitality and lessen our power of
resisting, so that any passing disease may be photographed on our minds
and seen upon our bodies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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