VII. When coming in recurrent or periodic attacks.
VIII. When the physical and mental reactions are of great intensity.
IX. When they are dissociative.
X. When they lead to dissolution.
Fear is not a matter of belief. To regard fear as a form of belief, is fallacious, dangerous, and suicidal. It is as dangerous as to consider smallpox and cholera the result of faith. We must never forget that fear is one of the most fundamental of animal instincts having its roots deep down in animal life existence. To ignore this fact is suicidal.
According to the great anthropologist, Galton: “Every antelope in South Africa has to run for its life every one or two days, and the antelope starts and gallops under the influence of a false alarm many times a day. Fear is a fundamental condition of animal existence.”
The fear instinct in its healthy normal state is a protection and defense. As Ribot puts it: “The basis of fear exists in the organism, forms part of the constitution of animals and man, and helps them to live by a defensive adaptation:” In fact, we may even go to the point of affirming that the fear instinct, like all other healthy, normal instincts, is absolutely requisite in the total economy of animal and human life.
In man, however, fear should not be at the mercy of blind animal instincts and reflexes, but should be guided and controlled by reason, by reflection, by scientific, medical measures, by scientific sanitation, by physical and mental hygiene, and by the rational cultivation and development of all human functions and faculties.
One of the greatest Greek thinkers well puts it: “Imbeciles, fools, and the mad alone have no understanding of fear. True education, true reason, and true courage consist in the knowledge of what to fear and what not to fear.”
Mysticism, occultism, and credulity act like virulent germs, fatal to man. “Metaphysical” cults anesthetize the intellect, put judgment into lethargic sleep from which there is no awaking. Mysticism kills the most precious essence of man’s life,—the critical sense of human personality.