I have made especial study of the reports of the Society for Psychical Research, the book entitled "Fear," by Prof. Angelo Mosso, of Turin, Italy, and the contributions to the _American Journal of Psychology_ by President G. Stanley Hall, of Clarke University, Worcester, Massachusetts; Dr. Colin A. Scott, Professor of Psychology and Child Study at Cook County Normal School, Chicago, Illinois; and others who are devoting particular attention to the causes and effects of fears in children; together with the after-effect of early fears upon persons when they are fully grown. The claim of these students is that the consideration of the future that constitutes _forethought_ is a mixture of hope, faith and fear, the sum of which is the stimulant to action and progress, hope and faith being the civilized or divine motives, and fear being the animal motive. My own experience and observations corroborate this contention, but I find that the fear element of forethought is _not_ stimulating to the more civilized persons, to whom duty and attraction are the natural motives of stimulation, but is weakening and deterrent. As soon as it becomes unnecessary, fear becomes a positive deterrent, and should be entirely removed, as dead flesh is removed from living tissue. I have also demonstrated, beyond the possibility of doubt, that _the fear element can be eliminated_ out of forethought _as soon as it becomes evident that it is unnecessary, separable and eliminable_, and that _energy_ and _desire_ for progress and growth _are beautifully stimulated as the result of its elimination_. To assist in the analysis of fear, and in the denunciation of its expressions, I have coined the word "_fearthought_" to stand for the unprofitable element of forethought, and have defined that variously-interpreted word "worry" as _fearthought, in contradistinction to forethought_. I have also defined "fearthought" as the _self-imposed_ or _self-permitted_ suggestion of _inferiority_, in order to place it where it really belongs, in the category of harmful, unnecessary, and, therefore, not-respectable things. Darwin and Spencer and other biologists have asserted that if primitive man had not been urged by fear of discomfort he would have sat upon a stone, naked, near the roots or the herbs that served to appease his hunger--if it also happened to be near to a spring where he could quench his thirst--until he died; and that fear has been the impelling motive in the progress of the race. This was undoubtedly true up to a certain point, but, like many of the laws of _ye olden tyme_, is not applicable to the present nor to us. There is now sufficient protection vouchsafed by forethought, and sufficient attraction furnished by affection and duty, to lead the van in the pursuit of progress, and to set an example that will be its own torch-bearer in guiding the trend of thought and of action.